Time Blocking as the Next "Decision Making" Criteria?

[ivanjay205]

I find it interesting that David Allen preaches so much about the clarify stage to decide what to do at a very granular level. I find that when I follow this to a T I move my projects forward soooooo much faster as all of my decision making is done.

However, I find that I struggle with the decision making in the "engage" phase. Sometimes I become so numb to the list I will default back to email etc and I know I am wasting opportunities to be productive. I think this is mostly because of today's world...... Contexts are becoming more and more irrelevant (at least to me). I have the usual context / tags that I am sure so many people have.... Agenda's (with subtags for each person I interact with), calls, computer, errands, iphone, office, home, etc.

My problem is that these are becoming less useful and I find it pretty rare that I use contexts anymore for selecting next actions. For example, the other day I needed to buy something for my house... I didn't feel up to or have the time to go to the store so I went on amazon and bought it. It was in the errand context/tag, but I used my iphone or could have used my computer as well. It could have been done from the office or home.... Similarly, I need to speak to a colleague about something. Well my natural instinct is an agenda, but I could use a call to dial them, or computer to video call or chat on Microsoft Teams.

So what I am finding now is that in the Engage mode I have a laundry list of next actions. And unless I have a time constraint filtering them down to a meaningful list is very difficult.

I have tried to set up various perspectives (I use Omnifocus) based on Area of Focus in day of the week to "theme" things which works nicely. But, there is no reason I can only do work finance on Tuesday. I really could do HR things too, so I feel like I am limiting myself by over-routining and restricting my own tasks.

And at the end of the day wouldn't it be interesting to take clarify one step further and not even have to decide what to do when but have it pre-planned? Hence why I question is time blocking the next functional evolution to Getting Things Done were as part of clarification maybe selecting when you engage with this activity is more relevant than the context nowadays?

I have wanted to try my theory and have searched high and low for a "time blocking" application that supports projects in the GTD methodology freedom and method but cannot seem to find anything. I am curious if anyone else has? I tinkered with ai based items such as freeclaim.ai and usemotion but they do not support projects, someway, or waiting for lists. I felt very out of control. I am a computer guy so I dont want to do something manually on paper. And trying to manage it via a calendar app seems limiting to me.

I explored time blocking apps without ai but similarly no method for waiting for, someday, etc. and again way out of control.

Curious if anyone else has tried anything like this? Or general thoughts on how to improve the engage function of GTD?

 

[Wilson Ng]

When I do my weekly review on Friday afternoon, I plan for the next week. I look at my task lists and dwindle it down from the 100s of task I could possibly due to about 10-20 tasks that I want to do for the next week.

When I do my end-of-day review, I look at the list of 10-20 tasks and I choose 3-5 tasks that I want to do tomorrow. I'll put one task as my morning MIT (Most Important Task) and schedule anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes to work on it. Then I'll schedule an afternoon MIT and an evening MIT. Put an appointment in my calendar app to do one MIT. Block out time with another appointment for my afternoon MIT. Then schedule one evening MIT. Sometimes life gets crazy at work with walk-in clients and I can't get to my morning MIT. Then I'll just move it to a bit later in the day. I have just one morning MIT so it's easy enough to move it. If I schedule too many time blocks, it becomes a mess trying to just push it back.

Most of my MITs are not the 5-15 minute tasks. They tend to be more time-intensive and requires a bit more time. If I want to knock off a bunch of 5-15 minute tasks, I'll just create a time block for "computer work" or "office paperwork" and batch a bunch of smaller tasks together to work on.

I realized that I can't time block every hour unless I work in a field where I get little interruptions. One time block in the morning, one time block in the afternoon, and one time block in the evening works well for me.

My evening MIT tends to be something I can do at home. It's mostly likely a personal project that I do outside of work.

Scheduling 1-3 MITs has been helpful in engaging. I would recognize that Life gets in the way of things and I have to tend to those interruptions as they come. Customers are the ones that pay my bills and I'm gonna have to set aside my MIT to tend to their work order.

I like to plan the day before by choosing the 3 MITs. This reduces the decision making process. I already know what I want to do for the morning, afternoon, and evening. If I can finish the first MIT, I'm already working on the second MIT if I don't have any walk-in customers. Then I can finish the third MIT. If I finish those, I'll choose another MIT or work on a group of batched tasks (computer, office paperwork, calls).

Plan ahead of time with the time blocks to eliminate time trying to figure out what to do next.

 

[Gardener]

Contexts are becoming more and more irrelevant (at least to me). I have the usual context / tags that I am sure so many people have.... Agenda's (with subtags for each person I interact with), calls, computer, errands, iphone, office, home, etc.

My first thought is that maybe having these un-personalized contexts could be part of the problem?

I don't have Computer, but I do have Writing and other contexts for activities that happen to be done using the computer. Since the computer is always there, these contexts are based on other resources/circumstances.

For example, Writing assumes that I can anticipate at least an hour or two of time without external interrupting demands. Paperwork, which is also usually done on the computer, doesn't assume that--a Paperwork task might be paying a bill online, for example, or putting in a mail hold before going on a vacation. Shopping is also usually done on the computer.

I don't have Calls because I could make a call any time. If that weren't true--if, say, I usually worked in a noisy, distraction-filled space and calls required that I retreat to a quiet place--then I likely would have that Calls context.

I do have Home Tasks, but I also have Cooking, Decluttering, Sewing, and so on--all things that I do at home, but they involve other resources or a particular mindset.

And so on.

So what I am finding now is that in the Engage mode I have a laundry list of next actions. And unless I have a time constraint filtering them down to a meaningful list is very difficult.

Is it possible that you have too many potential next actions, and more should go to Someday/Maybe?

And at the end of the day wouldn't it be interesting to take clarify one step further and not even have to decide what to do when but have it pre-planned?

This would absolutely not work for me. For one thing, unexpected things come up, and for another, I can't always predict that my mind will be ready to, for example, do deep design for programming, as opposed to being in a fuzzy mode that's only good for totally routine tasks.

And that's for my job, where most resources will be available most of the time. For, say, the garden, I can't know what the weather, soil moisture, weeds, insects, etc., etc., will be doing. I went out yesterday to do some infrastructure stuff with irrigation, and realized that if I didn't switch my maximum priority to weeding, I would regret it.

So if I time blocked I'd spend a ton of time blocking and correcting the blocking and correcting the corrected blocking and...

Now, time blocking in the sense that I give four hours of Saturday afternoon to the garden--sure. But I'm not going to know, with any assurance, which tasks I'll do during those four hours.

 

[Jeremy Jones]

I've recently redesigned my contexts because the defaults simply never worked for me, and as lines have become more blurred, it's even worse.

So I've gone to:

• Agendas
• Anywhere (which is almost never used)
• Calls
• Computer
• Errands (which is almost always empty)
• Home (for tasks which I must be at home to accomplish)
• Office (for task which I must be at my company to accomplish)

The bulk of my tasks are starting to be placed in Agendas, Calls, Home and Office. I've got a lot of things in Computer, which are starting to feel like they don't belong there, because the context is where I can think about them and execute them.

The fact is I usually don't need to be at my company office to do Office tasks, and the only Home-related tasks I can do at work are those where I must accomplish them during the work day, which are usually calls.

Basically I'm finding I need to greatly simplify my context buckets to avoid paralysis.

 

[ivanjay205]

I do have "unpersonalized" contexts but I do think they are appropriate. I honestly could not thing of what else to do. I use Area of Focus almost as a second filter of context. Monday is client focused projects, Tuesday is client + Business Finance, Wednesday is Client + Long Range Strategy, Thursday is Client + HR and Professional Development, Friday is client + IT. That does help filter the noise A LOT and get to a manageable list. What I struggle with, and maybe it is my own neurosis, is there is no rule that says I can only do HR on Thursday. So am I missing opportunities to move those things earlier in the week. But perhaps with my role (I am the President of a mid-size family business so everything pretty much comes up to me responsibility and oversight wise) that is how it needs to happen.

 

[ivanjay205]

I've recently redesigned my contexts because the defaults simply never worked for me, and as lines have become more blurred, it's even worse.

So I've gone to:

• Agendas
• Anywhere (which is almost never used)
• Calls
• Computer
• Errands (which is almost always empty)
• Home (for tasks which I must be at home to accomplish)
• Office (for task which I must be at my company to accomplish)

The bulk of my tasks are starting to be placed in Agendas, Calls, Home and Office. I've got a lot of things in Computer, which are starting to feel like they don't belong there, because the context is where I can think about them and execute them.

The fact is I usually don't need to be at my company office to do Office tasks, and the only Home-related tasks I can do at work are those where I must accomplish them during the work day, which are usually calls.

Basically I'm finding I need to greatly simplify my context buckets to avoid paralysis.

We are pretty aligned here. I have made a subset of computer to some very specific tools that are not lightweight so when I am in them it is best to bulk complete items in that area. I find that helps me a bit.

I got rid of anywhere as I never used it. But I did add an iPhone context. It is a bit of a duplicate with computer but I do find that now if I am sitting on the soccer field for example watching my son I can also knock off something simple or some general browsing.

Errands to be is a struggle as Amazon is not an errand but it is shopping and often when I cannot get to errands I backup to amazon.

What I do find well is I setup a perspective in Omnifocus specifically for mobile that pulls calls, iphone/web surfacing together. I think that helps me on the road. But that computer list for me is where I would say 70% of my work goes.

 

[TesTeq]

I do find that now if I am sitting on the soccer field for example watching my son I can also knock off something simple or some general browsing.

@ivanjay205 How can you simultaneously watch your son playing soccer and work on your smartphone? What about the goals he scored that you missed?

 

[ivanjay205]

@ivanjay205 How can you simultaneously watch your son playing soccer and work on your smartphone? What about the goals he scored that you missed?

Oh I spend a lot of time on the soccer field as he plays very competitively so there is 45 minutes of stretching before the game, halftime, etc. Lots of opportunities to be productive! he is also a goalie so when his team is playing well.... Well it makes for a pretty uneventful game if it is always on the other side of the field! but that is a low stress day for a goalie dad so that is good!

 

[SoResolute]

Interesting question. I reread GTD last year and renewed my whole set-up. At first I did indeed use contexts to work on specific task, but at the moment I'm in the same position as you: I hardly use contexts anymore and I feel overwhelmed by all the tasks that are piling up in Things3. I have created a system with monthly, quarterly and yearly reviews and I clean up Things3 every quarter (and remove tasks or move them to Someday/Maybe), but still...

My approach at the moment is that I mark any tasks that really have to be done this week with an "urgent" tag, and then I make a to do list for the day (with pen and paper), but I don't feel very satisfied with this system to be honest.

I also tried time blocking (and also did this the old school way, with pen and paper) but it didn't work for me, exactly because of the two reasons that Gardener mentioned: sometimes unexpected things come up, and other times you are just not in the right mindset to do the type or work that you scheduled. (For example, I would schedule "Administration" which is one my contexts, but then I would realize that I felt so energized that it might be better to use this mental energy for tasks that need more focus, such as creating new lesson materials for my courses).

I'm thinking about getting rid of contexts because they don't serve me and just bother me at the moment to be honest... But I'm not sure yet. Please let me know if you found a solution.

 

[rp_w00d]

I do have "unpersonalized" contexts but I do think they are appropriate. I honestly could not thing of what else to do. I use Area of Focus almost as a second filter of context. Monday is client focused projects, Tuesday is client + Business Finance, Wednesday is Client + Long Range Strategy, Thursday is Client + HR and Professional Development, Friday is client + IT. That does help filter the noise A LOT and get to a manageable list. What I struggle with, and maybe it is my own neurosis, is there is no rule that says I can only do HR on Thursday. So am I missing opportunities to move those things earlier in the week. But perhaps with my role (I am the President of a mid-size family business so everything pretty much comes up to me responsibility and oversight wise) that is how it needs to happen.

FWIW, it sounds like you would benefit from more delegation. Do you have a family member you could train to handle the HR function? Critical area that REALLY needs full time focus.

 

[RomanS]

I also tried time blocking [...] but it didn't work for me [...]: sometimes unexpected things come up, and other times you are just not in the right mindset to do the type or work that you scheduled. (For example, I would schedule "Administration" which is one my contexts, but then I would realize that I felt so energized that it might be better to use this mental energy for tasks that need more focus, such as creating new lesson materials for my courses).

I didn't read the whole discussion process. Sorry if my answer does not fit. But my spontaneous thought was: Why don't you just call the blocked time "focus time" or similar? Which task you then work on in this time, you then decide spontaneously. That's how I do it from time to time. I also schedule the time so that I can really work undisturbed, for example in my home office.

 

[ivanjay205]

I didn't read the whole discussion process. Sorry if my answer does not fit. But my spontaneous thought was: Why don't you just call the blocked time "focus time" or similar? Which task you then work on in this time, you then decide spontaneously. That's how I do it from time to time. I also schedule the time so that I can really work undisturbed, for example in my home office.

This is actually exactly what I do. I have 1 1/2 hours blocked on my calendar daily of focus time in the morning as that is when I am most productive to knock out some work and I allow the rest of the day to be for meetings etc. I have come to know that within my role that 1 1/2 hours is my sacred time to do work. Outside of that, it just is not going to happen. If a meeting gets cancelled etc. I get some opportunity to get into something else. But I do hold that focus time sacred and dont give it up and make sure I can do my work during that time.

 

[ivanjay205]

FWIW, it sounds like you would benefit from more delegation. Do you have a family member you could train to handle the HR function? Critical area that REALLY needs full time focus.

Yea in the long-term commitment of trying to train some under me to take on some responsibilities. Long term vision for sure but it is something I work on!

 

[Cpu_Modern]

I use Area of Focus almost as a second filter of context. Monday is client focused projects, Tuesday is client + Business Finance, Wednesday is Client + Long Range Strategy, Thursday is Client + HR and Professional Development, Friday is client + IT. That does help filter the noise A LOT and get to a manageable list. What I struggle with, and maybe it is my own neurosis, is there is no rule that says I can only do HR on Thursday.

What I heard a lot of good things about is the "The Entrepreneurial Time System" offered by Dan Sullivan. He lets you divide your time into three types of days: free days with zero work, focus days with money relevant activities, and buffer days filled with preparation, small admin tasks and so on. Maybe this is part of the answer for you, too.

This connects to your quoted thoughts above insofar, as we have this "artificial" context of not allowing us to work on some things even if we could. This seems illogical at first, believe me it is not just a neurosis of yours. But, with the ETS comes a certain reasoning to it, why you would limit yourself in that way. This is what is lacking with your system! You just divide by AoF and that's it! I think you are on a right track there, just not complete yet.

The other opportunity I see is refactoring the projects. For instance, you say you work every Thursday on some HR stuff. Why have many projects that just get a little effort week after week? Wouldn't it be better to work a couple of days in a row on some of these HR projects and then be done with the whole bulk?

 

[ivanjay205]

What I heard a lot of good things about is the "The Entrepreneurial Time System" offered by Dan Sullivan. He lets you divide your time into three types of days: free days with zero work, focus days with money relevant activities, and buffer days filled with preparation, small admin tasks and so on. Maybe this is part of the answer for you, too.

This connects to your quoted thoughts above insofar, as we have this "artificial" context of not allowing us to work on some things even if we could. This seems illogical at first, believe me it is not just a neurosis of yours. But, with the ETS comes a certain reasoning to it, why you would limit yourself in that way. This is what is lacking with your system! You just divide by AoF and that's it! I think you are on a right track there, just not complete yet.

The other opportunity I see is refactoring the projects. For instance, you say you work every Thursday on some HR stuff. Why have many projects that just get a little effort week after week? Wouldn't it be better to work a couple of days in a row on some of these HR projects and then be done with the whole bulk?

Funny I was doing some googling and I kind of inherently do a version of that Entrepreneurial Time System but I think with a focus on it I could probably do more. Currently, I theme my days as you saw in my post, Saturday's are my true day off, Sunday is a bit of a long term thinking day and reset my mind for the week to come. One concept I came across was to move all of your admin stuff to one day. I really really like that idea. Because I track them right now by area of focus I find that in each of my focus work blocks everyday I take up the first half with recurring low hanging fruit action items. By that time I feel like only 30 minutes left and I cannot tackle anything big. I love the idea of maybe starting Monday with all of the admin recurring stuff to get it out of my way.

As to your latter point about focusing on a project for several days I will on occassion do that. Basically if I have a high priority item I will continue it to make it complete. However, if I do not I do find that things linger as often I will need to re-educate myself on where I am with the project on a weekly basis. That takes some mental energy. I also have been thinking about working more in my project list vs next action list AFTER I decide what to do. This way I stay focused with a project and hopefully work it to completion. But I think going back to the admin tasks of moving to a central day might help that cause.

It looks to me like any book or information on this system is pretty dated or not readily available. Have you seen anything out there? I only found some short web articles that give you the three types of days. Nothing more than that.

 

[Cpu_Modern]

It looks to me like any book or information on this system is pretty dated or not readily available. Have you seen anything out there? I only found some short web articles that give you the three types of days. Nothing more than that.

Well, the system itself is not really complicated, so you won't need a huge amount of information to implement it.

Here is the home page where you can get the two PDFs with the basic implementation:
https://now.strategiccoach.com/timemanagement


Here are two of these web articles you mentioned that I found helpful:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2-strategies-taking-effective-free-days-entrepreneur-dan-sullivan

How to Use the Entrepreneurial Time System

Could the entrepreneurial time system help you take better control over your day and make more money?

www.tonycaldwell.net

Here are videos I watched and where helpful for me to understand the system:

But the thing is really simple. You determine how much days you want to have for each type and then you plan that in your calendar.

 

[gtdstudente]

I find it interesting that David Allen preaches so much about the clarify stage to decide what to do at a very granular level. I find that when I follow this to a T I move my projects forward soooooo much faster as all of my decision making is done.

However, I find that I struggle with the decision making in the "engage" phase. Sometimes I become so numb to the list I will default back to email etc and I know I am wasting opportunities to be productive. I think this is mostly because of today's world...... Contexts are becoming more and more irrelevant (at least to me). I have the usual context / tags that I am sure so many people have.... Agenda's (with subtags for each person I interact with), calls, computer, errands, iphone, office, home, etc.

My problem is that these are becoming less useful and I find it pretty rare that I use contexts anymore for selecting next actions. For example, the other day I needed to buy something for my house... I didn't feel up to or have the time to go to the store so I went on amazon and bought it. It was in the errand context/tag, but I used my iphone or could have used my computer as well. It could have been done from the office or home.... Similarly, I need to speak to a colleague about something. Well my natural instinct is an agenda, but I could use a call to dial them, or computer to video call or chat on Microsoft Teams.

So what I am finding now is that in the Engage mode I have a laundry list of next actions. And unless I have a time constraint filtering them down to a meaningful list is very difficult.

I have tried to set up various perspectives (I use Omnifocus) based on Area of Focus in day of the week to "theme" things which works nicely. But, there is no reason I can only do work finance on Tuesday. I really could do HR things too, so I feel like I am limiting myself by over-routining and restricting my own tasks.

And at the end of the day wouldn't it be interesting to take clarify one step further and not even have to decide what to do when but have it pre-planned? Hence why I question is time blocking the next functional evolution to Getting Things Done were as part of clarification maybe selecting when you engage with this activity is more relevant than the context nowadays?

I have wanted to try my theory and have searched high and low for a "time blocking" application that supports projects in the GTD methodology freedom and method but cannot seem to find anything. I am curious if anyone else has? I tinkered with ai based items such as freeclaim.ai and usemotion but they do not support projects, someway, or waiting for lists. I felt very out of control. I am a computer guy so I dont want to do something manually on paper. And trying to manage it via a calendar app seems limiting to me.

I explored time blocking apps without ai but similarly no method for waiting for, someday, etc. and again way out of control.

Curious if anyone else has tried anything like this? Or general thoughts on how to improve the engage function of GTD?

Every Next Action is either Done: 1. At a Particular Time/Day (Calendar [Kronos]) or 2. When appropriate (Context [Kairos])?

 

[VanceZ]

I have heard of some that use an Energy Level context to filter next actions. Brimming with Creative Energy down to Mindless/Minimally Taxing and probably one or two in between? As ivanjay205 mentioned, it sounds like the 1 1/2 hour block in the morning would align well with a Full Energy context, whereas there could be several items for a Quick Hitter list, maybe two - with and without mental energy. I’d envision these contexts requiring more and probably deeper consideration during the weekly review. And also some practice to assess next actions optimally for each context. I’m also certain there would be times when a Full Energy task just couldn’t wait for optimal energy. Always pros and cons.

 

[Tom_Hagen]

...

I'm thinking about getting rid of contexts because they don't serve me and just bother me at the moment to be honest... But I'm not sure yet. Please let me know if you found a solution.

I believe that the problems with using contexts come from trying to assign each next action to exactly one context. For example: the next action is to contact our aunt for a recipe for sour rye soup. We set the context: "Phone call" and then write via Whatsapp on the computer and it seems to us that the contexts are not working. Meanwhile - first, you should consider where the change of decision comes from? Maybe our aunt talks too much and Whatsapp is the "safer" option. Or maybe our aunt is always busy and we have to try various forms of communication. Therefore, it seems to me that in many cases it would be advisable to assign many possible contexts to the next action or to make better decisions and stick to them consistently. Similarly with shopping. What is the reason of changing from Errands (outside) to Amazon? Perhaps we had to attach two or more contexts to it? Moreover, some contexts can be the sum of others, eg Online or Devices or something similar can mean: computer + smartphone.

 

[ivanjay205]

Well, the system itself is not really complicated, so you won't need a huge amount of information to implement it.

Here is the home page where you can get the two PDFs with the basic implementation:
https://now.strategiccoach.com/timemanagement


Here are two of these web articles you mentioned that I found helpful:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2-strategies-taking-effective-free-days-entrepreneur-dan-sullivan

How to Use the Entrepreneurial Time System

Could the entrepreneurial time system help you take better control over your day and make more money?

www.tonycaldwell.net

Here are videos I watched and where helpful for me to understand the system:

But the thing is really simple. You determine how much days you want to have for each type and then you plan that in your calendar.

Sorry for the slow response as I was on vacation so not really perusing anything on the computer

that being said back now! I really like this idea..... And I think for starters want to set Monday, Wed, Fri as my buffer days really doing my "admin repetitive" stuff and trying to make Tuesday and Thursday longer blocks of focus activity.

That being said I use Omnifocus.... Have you had any good strategies following GTD on how to tag or manage next actions to align with this principle? It would be really interesting to have all of these types of items appear on a Monday for me as a list of things to do.