To Block, Box, or Both?
exploring time management techniques
Recently during a workshop I was running on time management, an attendee asked me to summarize the difference between time blocking and timeboxing. While they’re different tools, they’re closely related, so I wanted to do a little deep dive into both to offer some clarity.
Why Are We Drawn to Time Management?
If you want to learn about time management, Melissa Gregg’s book Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy offers a comprehensive review of the development of time management tools. I appreciate Gregg’s analysis of the reasons why we’re drawn to certain time management tools, apps, or approaches. Gregg writes,
To feel productive is to recognize as a personal accomplishment the qualities of efficiency endorsed by modern computing technologies and management mantras alike. (p. 78)
I’m intrigued by Gregg’s discussion of productivity as a feeling, one we pursue by checking off boxes on our to-do list during the “right” amount of time. But if we can always find another thing we feel like we should do in pursuit of feeling productive, how will we know when to stop? And what do we do if we feel like we never have enough time to finish everything on our bottomless to-do lists?
Scoping Your Projects to Your Time
When I teach time management, I like to open my lesson with two concepts: Parkinson’s Law and the Planning Fallacy.
Parkinson’s Law
Parkinson’s Law suggests that tasks will expand to fill the time we allow for them. This is important because when we give ourselves too much time to work on a task, we might unintentionally overwork on the project just because we have the time to do so.
Especially if you’re someone who feels increased motivation the closer you get to your deadline, starting your project weeks in advance might not motivate you as much, and you might end up actually wasting time trying to complete a 2-hour project across the span of 20 hours.
The Planning Fallacy
The Planning Fallacy occurs when we underestimate how long something will take us to complete. We often do this because we feel optimistic that we can quickly complete a task or we forget how long it has taken us in the past, so we might overpromise or overcommit, causing unnecessary stress for ourselves in the process.
One way to avoid The Planning Fallacy is to check in with your previous commitments—including sneaky behind-the-scenes tasks you never put on your to-do lists—and to establish a realistic deadline before you automatically commit to a task.
A Common Struggle
I sometimes struggle with Parkinson’s Law and The Planning Fallacy when it comes to writing. My favorite part of writing is outlining my ideas and creating a concept map. Although this is one of my strengths, if I’m not careful, I can spend too much time on this stage of the writing process (Parkinson’s Law). When I begin to fill in my outline with prose, I sometimes forget how much time it takes to draft and revise, so it’s important I allocate enough time for this part of my writing process (The Planning Fallacy).
If you struggle with Parkinson’s Law (spending too much time) and The Planning Fallacy (not allocating enough time), you’re in good company. Here’s how we might use time blocking and timeboxing as a way to check off our to-do lists with awareness.
Time Blocking
When we time block, we reserve parts of our schedule to focus on specific activities. Our time blocks might be determined by others—like my Friday evening restorative yoga class—or we might schedule them ourselves, like a repeated morning meditation practice.
As someone who works for herself and sets her own schedule, I tend to follow more of a “rhythm” than “routine” approach to my days. While I roughly time block parts of my week—like scheduling coaching calls to begin at 10am Tuesday through Friday so I can reserve my mornings for writing and administrative work and keep Mondays solely for consulting work—I don’t plan out my days hour-by-hour like some of the examples here. I personally feel too restricted by hour-by-hour time blocking, though I know folks who find it very helpful. To each their own!
We might choose to schedule time blocks into our calendar because we want to:
Set boundaries around our availability, which works especially well if you share a calendar with your family, colleagues, clients, or students.
Batch specific projects to certain times or days, giving ourselves permission to focus on those projects only during the time block and put our focus elsewhere when the time block ends.
Track how long we spend on specific tasks. This can help with logging hours, writing up annual reports, or preparing for performance reviews.
If you want to learn more about time blocking, check out these pieces:
Time blocking 101: A step-by-step guide to getting the most from your daily schedule — RescueTime Blog (2019)
7 Benefits of Time Blocking — Clockwise (2023)
Multitasking: Switching Costs — American Psychological Association
Timeboxing
When you set up your time blocks, it can help to consider timeboxing. I’m not surprised that the Harvard Business Review published a survey of productivity tools in 2018 that listed time boxing as the number one out of 100 most helpful tools.
I view timeboxing as putting up little fences around specific tasks so you can set boundaries around how long you spend on them. Like an excited or anxious farm animal, our tasks might get away from us unless we set up a strong boundary around them (remember Parkinson’s Law).
We might choose to timebox certain activities into our calendar because we want to:
Limit the amount of time we spend on a specific task that could end up taking way too long (like responding to email, creating social media posts, etc.).
Increase focus during a productivity session by monotasking on one thing.
Gamify our approach to our productivity with a pulse and pause technique such as the Pomodoro method, where we focus for 25 minutes and then take a 5-minute break.
If you want to learn more about timeboxing, check out these pieces:
How Timeboxing Works and Why It Will Make You More Productive — Harvard Business Review (2018)
Though I suggest we remember Gregg’s comment from Counterproductive about overidentifying our identity or self-worth with our performance on apps, this is a nice list of what’s out there right now: What are the best timeboxing apps in 2024? — Juliety (2024)
If you decide to explore time blocking and timeboxing in your calendars, I encourage you to be curious and notice what works best for you.
Instead of aiming for optimal efficiency, what if you aimed to practice time blocking breaks, rest, and downtime outside of your productivity sessions? If this is already something you do, or something you’d like to explore, I’d love to hear about it!
Take good care and talk soon,
Dr. Kate
