Time Blocking 101

How Does Elon Musk Manage His Time? Time Blocking Guide

Elon Musk Time Blocking for Productivity

Today I will talk about Time Blocking, this is a great time management technique that high performance people like Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter (cof cof, X…), founder of OpenAI, PayPal, and The Boring Company, use everyday.

You might have wondered in the past how the richest man on earth manages his time and work, and that’s where time blocking comes in. I have been testing it myself for 2 months now and I have to say it completely changed how I get things done and manage my time. The good news is that this technique can be used by anyone in all backgrounds, everyone can benefit from it.

Without further do, let’s get straight into it.

What is Time Blocking?

Time blocking consists of blocking specific blocking in our calendar the time in which we want to reserve for which task.

On average, knowledge workers spend one-third of their workweek processing email. (Source: Sereneapp), If you find yourself getting distracted regularly, and doing “fake work” (checking email, responding to your colleague’s messages, etc.), you will benefit a lot from this technique. Having it time-boxed in your calendar you will have a greater capacity to do deep work, and focused work without distractions.

How to actually do Time Blocking?

Time Blocking it’s as simple as it can be, there is no need to make it a complex system. Often, less is more when it comes to these systems, as we want to reduce the friction to actually doing the technique.

The way to do time blocking is simple, here’s how you do it:

  1. Simply pick a calendar app, I use Google Calendar, and is the one I recommend.
  2. Each morning or evening (I prefer mornings), go to your calendar and plan and time-box your activities throughout the day. Based on your to-do list, ongoing projects, habits, and recurring tasks.
  3. Do the tasks without distractions. That’s it.

 

Here is what my calendar looks like from last week if you are curious (if you don’t understand Portuguese don’t worry too much about it):

My time-boxed calendar. Time Blocking.

Here is another great example I found in the web:

Calendar Exemple - Time Blocking
Image source: https://asana.com/resources/what-is-time-blocking

Categories and Separate Calendars

You might have noticed from the above examples, that tasks are divided by colors or separate calendars, which is great so that you know in which kind of activities you are spending time in your week, and review and adjust if necessary.

I recommend creating categories for each area of your life, here are some that you might want to use:

  • Work
  • Relationships
  • Personal
  • Health
  • Learning
  • Birthdays
  • etc.

 

Useful Tips

  1. Don’t switch between tasks.
  2. If you fall off track, and you will, your plans always change now and then, don’t default to back-and-whit thinking (If it is not perfect, there is no point, I might as well give up), simply get back on track and move things around if you need to.

 

Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law says that if we say we have 1 year to write the essay it will take 1 year, if you say it will take 1 month it will take 1 month. When the deadlines are far away we usually don’t prioritize our activities, and end up far more time on stuff that doesn’t really contribute to the end result. And spending a day on a thing that could be done in just 1 hour.

Time Blocking takes advantage of this, so by allocating a time-box to the task or subtask we have greater clarity on what we really need to be doing.

Benefits of Time Blocking

Productivity

You will find that you can get so much more done, and in control of how you spend your time, so you run your day and the day don’t run you.

I have blocked on my calendar to write this blog post, that’s why I can actually do it and not get distracted with “fake work”.

Free Time and Work-Life Balance

As you make time for your free time and well-earned leisure time, you will find that you can enjoy those more. Instead of constantly switching between work and free time, you can actually focus more in free time the same way it happens with work activities. And ultimately have a better work-life balance.

Reduced stress and overwhelm

By planning our activities and schedule for the day, we will find less stress, anxiety, and lack of clarity and direction on what exactly we have to do. Time-blocking will give us more peace of mind and less overwhelming regarding what we have to do.

Increased Awareness

Time Blocking also gives you greater clarity on how you are spending your time and resources and in what activities and areas of your life. That is great data that you can use to review and make adjustments to get closer to how you want to spend your days and the goals you want to achieve.

Conclusion

A quick review:

We talked about what Time Blocking is, how to actually implement it in our lives, tips on how to get better at it, and ultimately the benefits of using this technique.

I want to emphasize again that time blocking is supposed to be a simple activity that you do every day, don’t overcomplicate it if you want to stick to it to get the benefits of it.

Thank you so much for reading along with me, and hopefully you got something of value here, have a great rest of your day! 🙂

Idris Moura

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Idris Moura

Creator and writer of the Curiosity Fuel newsletter. Exploring my curiosity and sharing ideas and frameworks to fuel your personal growth, without all the bullshit. Read my full story on About Me.

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