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Time blocking is an effective productivity strategy that can help you hone your focus, create anchors in your day, and ensure you’re giving enough calendar space to all the things that matter — not just your work.
A consistent practice of time blocking will help you ensure that you are making progress on your key outcomes, will prevent important things from slipping through the cracks, and can help you keep unexpected interruptions from derailing your day.
As effective as time blocking can be in our quest to make meaningful progress on what matters most to us, it’s not without its challenges. Here are the top challenges you can expect to face when you implement time blocking.
5 Challenges You’ll Face When Time Blocking Your Schedule
(1) Honoring Boundaries
At its core, time blocking is a practice of creating — and honoring — boundaries.
It’s one thing to set up blocks of time to tackle your most important work; it’s quite another to stick to those time blocks.
In my coaching practice and general life experience, I’ve found that most people struggle with boundaries to some degree. A full exploration of how and why we struggle with boundaries is beyond the scope of this essay; this is something I cover more in-depth in my workshops, courses, and private work.
That said, it’s helpful to be aware of the different ways boundaries issues arise when implementing time blocking. In the big picture, we’re talking about two main types of boundaries:
External Boundaries
Honoring External Boundaries requires holding firm to our time blocks when other people request our availability at a time that we’ve already committed to something else, or in the face of unscheduled interruptions. This requires saying no to others to honor commitments we’ve made to ourselves — something that many people struggle with.
Internal Boundaries
The even bigger challenge is to honor our Internal Boundaries. The most common places this arises is when
- You’re riding momentum on a project and want to keep going past your pre-determined time block.
- You don’t feel like doing what you had planned for a specific time.
(2) Finding the Right Place
Mastering the art of timing — doing the right thing at the right time — is only half the battle. The other essential skill of time blocking is the art of creating space — both space in your calendar and the physical space you need for the task.
Environment is more potent than willpower. The right physical location and set-up can be a make-or-break factor when it comes to getting things done effectively — or at all. This is especially the case for people with ADHD and other people who are highly-attuned to small variances in their surrounding environment.
The best location will vary based on the task and the person. For example, when it comes to creative work like writing, some people need a quiet place to focus, while others need a place with some low-level buzz.
Studies show that people with ADHD actually benefit from “brown noise” — known as stochastic resonance — to help our brains focus for a creative task.
The challenge that often arises for those of us with ADHD is that a place that works one day may not work the next day. Or maybe it works for a while but then it stops working.
For example, one day the coffee shop might have a good background noise that helps you dial in and focus, but the next day it’s too loud or chaotic.
The quiet of the local library may be just what you need to dial in for some deep work on a project, but the next time you go to work there the low level chatter is distracting.
(3) Finding the Right Balance of Scheduled vs Unscheduled
As much as we might think we want the freedom to do what we want when we want, it’s the structure that creates the space for flow states.
Most of us actually thrive when we have some structure to our days. Structure creates a sense of safety for the nervous system that allows us to find flow states and produce our best work.
Time blocking is an effective way to create this structure in our schedule. That said, too much structure can start to feel rigid and confining, preventing us from doing our best work. Sometimes the best ideas come when we aren’t sitting down to intentionally work on them, but when we’re roaming around aimlessly or washing the dishes.
The key to implementing a successful time blocking strategy is find the middle ground — a task often easier said than done.
(4) Energy Levels Don’t Align
An essential component of time blocking is to plan your tasks for the time of day when your energy rhythms are best aligned for what you need to do. At the outset, this might take you some time and experimentation to learn your rhythms and how to create energy states for the different types of work you do.
Even once you know your energy rhythms, keep in mind that you’re not a robot or a machine.
Many life events can disrupt our typical energy rhythms. Some of the big disruptors include:
- moving
- grief
- family stress
- financial stress
- physical health issues/injuries
- physical or emotional pain
- change of season
- hormonal issues
- weather
- other people
Sometimes we can be meticulous in planning our tasks for the right time and space only to find that our energy rhythms are off.
(5) Unexpected Setbacks
There’s a saying that “man plans and God laughs.” Sometimes it can seem like no matter how diligent you are in planning your schedule, something will come up that threatens to blow it up.
You sit down to do work on your computer and discover that the operating system needs an update, which eats up your time block. Or your computer is running super slow, making everything take longer.
You sit down to do a “simple” task and realize there are other pieces of information or content you need in order to actually do it.
One piece of your task, which you thought would be “one quick thing” within a bigger plan, actually takes the entire time block to figure out.
These Challenges Are Normal
Rest assured that all of these challenges are completely normal and very common. Time blocking is a helpful strategy, but it isn’t perfect — no strategy is. Think of it as a practice: like building muscle, it takes time and consistent effort to strengthen your time blocking skills.
What Challenges Do You Have?
I’d love to hear from you!
If you have tried to implement time blocking, what have been your biggest challenges with implementation?
If you haven’t tried time blocking, what’s been holding you back?
Please share in the comments!
[…] Within the strategy of time blocking, one of the most overlooked sub-strategies is context switching. This is an especially useful strategy for people with ADHD, as it can help with some of our particular challenges. […]