Time Redeemed: The Beauty of Giving Up Time Blocking

 

I have a confession to make at the start of this post. I originally titled it “Time Redeemed: The Beauty of Time Blocking.” You’ll notice now that I’ve inserted the phrase “Giving Up” in the middle of that title.

Why? Well, you’re about to see why in greater detail, but I want you to know that my ultimate goal writing in this space each day is to show you the reality of our lives. I don’t want to delete things simply because they didn’t end up being tied with a pretty red bow. I tried something new and had every reason to believe it would be a perfect fit into our lives, but in the end, it wasn’t. I recognize that it might be just what you need, so I’m still going to share about it, but I’m also going to share why it wasn’t right for us!

If you’ve been reading here long, you know I am quite the fan of lists, color-coding, planners, itineraries, alphabetizing, label making, and anything else that represents organization and efficiency.

I wasn’t always that way. If you could have known me as a child, you would have held out little hope that I would ever get my act together. My room was a disaster area, and it could have qualified for federal assistance if my parents had turned it in, I’m sure. I lived in chaos, with piles everywhere. I once had a bookcase literally topple over in my room, because I had loaded it down so improperly with junk that it couldn’t stand anymore. (This was back before we knew furniture in kids’ rooms should be fastened to the wall.)

But now, thankfully, I am aware of organization and quite the advocate for it. I’m always looking for ways to increase my life-organization, and sometimes people roll their eyes and say I’m too overboard. It used to hurt, but I’ve decided not to let it bother me anymore.

Last November, when Ryan and I went to Ohio for Love INC training, one of the presenters talked about the virtues of time blocking. I’d heard of it and had even mildly participated in it when I worked at WBCL. Jamie, who had my job before me, was even more organized than I, and she had her online calendar set up in color-coded time blocking. I just didn’t know that’s what it was. I continued to use her system to drive my work days, even after she left.

So what is time blocking, and how is it different from a to-do list? How does it work with (or not work with) a to-do list?

Time blocking is exactly what it sounds like. It’s all about blocking out sections of your day for specific purposes, but the blocks are general. To-do lists are the specifics of what fill the blocks of time.

For example, if you have an hour-by-hour calendar of the day in front of you, you might block out from 6-7 a.m. for your morning routine. That’s the time block. In that time, your to-do list might include making coffee, having breakfast, taking a shower, doing your hair, getting dressed, and putting on your makeup.

Time blocking and list making each serve as a means of accountability and organization, but they function in different ways.

When we went to our Love INC training, I was just a month away from starting my new job, and I knew it would be extremely important for me to manage my time well, not just in working from home, but also in balancing a full-time job alongside our personal life. While I didn’t want to give up my beloved lists, I decided to add time blocking to see if it would help me make the best use of my days.

It did not.

I want to tell you what I learned from it, though!

·       *   Flexibility can be a struggle for me, so I tried hard not to make my blocks of time TOO specific. I tried to define them loosely enough that I could breathe, yet specifically enough to accomplish what needs done. But immediately,

·       *   I blocked not just my work time but also my personal time with Ryan. I was trying to help us view our time together as a valuable appointment. (It’s probably a whole separate post topic, but sometimes we struggle to protect our time as much as we should. Things come up, people ask us to do things, and not everyone understands that “our time” matters too.)

·       *   I reminded myself that time blocking is a silicone plan, not a cast iron plan. The results may stretch in strange directions, and not feel solid at all, but it’s okay. It’s still capable of holding my plans and making room where needed. That is, after all, the beauty of the whole thing.

Why didn’t it work for us?

·      *    Maybe if I had tried this in a different season, it would have been fine. For us, right now, trying to juggle two jobs, a puppy, and a move, it was too constricting to create this plan and then see it change constantly. It brought me more stress than relief, and I decided that was counterintuitive to the entire point.

·       *   I made a paper block, and that meant it simply could not be easily changed. Though I typically loathe the digital version of anything, I can see how in this exercise, a digital version would offer more flexibility.

·        *  It took me over an hour to even MAKE the plan, and that’s an hour I could use somewhere else.

My biggest success in this experiment was giving myself permission to let go of something because I saw it wasn’t working for us at this time. Maybe one day, I’ll try again. But for now, this just wasn’t a fit. However…if you want to try, check out this video, and it was pretty helpful for me in understanding how to set up a block. Check it out if you want to learn more!