Week 31/2025: Experiments in time blocking
Week of 28 July 2025
I started testing out Cal Newport’s Time Blocking system.
My usual disclaimer: This post is wholly researched and written by me. I do not use AI in my writing. I will always bring you my stories in my real human voice.
Time blocking and tiny experiments
This week, I started an experiment.
I love experiments!
Way back in 2016, I embarked on a series of 30-day experiments, based on Kylie Dunn’s “My Year of TED” project, in which Kylie undertook a series of 30-day challenges across a whole year and blogged about it.
Her project got turned into a book and a TED talk.
Mine fizzled out after a few months.
But I do like the idea of trying something for a short period of time, with no pressure to get it right or to keep doing it, but just to see what happens.
This is the idea behind the book Tiny Experiments by Anne Laure Le Cunff, which is not a book I’ve read (yet). In a recent training session, the lovely Daniel from Spacemakers talked about this book and introduced me to the idea of making a ‘pact’, where the aim is to try something new for a brief period and see what you can learn from it.
It’s beautiful in its simplicity.
I will [thing] for [time].
That’s it.
So, I said last week:
I will use the Time-Block Planner to plan my work and study every day for 4 weeks.
So what is this Time-Block Planner?
The Time-Block Planner is the invention of productivity superstar Cal Newport, who has written several books including Slow Productivity (recommended). He invented this time blocking system —well I mean, obviously he didn’t invent time blocking but he created this method of using it—to help himself stay on track with his daily plan (and get back on track if he falls off).
If you’re new to time blocking and have no idea what I’m talking about . . . it just means that you block out hours in your day to do work you need to get done, and you do only that work in that block of time. There are plenty of websites that explain it in more detail. Here’s a random one I found, or you could listen to this episode of the Spacemakers podcast.
The system
Cal developed his system because in real life, even if you have the best plan in place, you often get pulled away from what you had planned to do at the start of the day and it can be hard to get back on track. Or the thing you’d allocated an hour for took two hours, so you didn’t do something else that you’d planned. The idea behind this system is that you don’t worry about that. You just regroup, redraw your plan and get back to work.
He put it into a neat book, which I thought looked cool and bought many years ago. Let’s say about five years ago . . . and it has sat on my shelf since then.
He released a new, improved version in 2023, which I had the good sense not to buy so at least I didn’t have two of them on the shelf.
I’ve been trying time blocking, with limited success, for a while. I hate schedules but I need schedules to get anything done. Or rather, I like the act of scheduling, but then I just sit and watch as the time blocks fly by and I do something completely different and never do the thing I blocked out time to do.
So my experiment or, in Anne Laure Le Cunff’s language, my pact, was to use this Time-Block Planner every day to plan my work and study [thing] for four weeks [time period].
Okay, but what actually is this mystical planner?
It’s a very simple planner that includes a weekly planning page and a two-page daily spread.
On the right hand side of daily spread, there’s a grid for you to time block up to 11 hours of your work day, and on the left hand side there’s space that Cal says is to make notes of ideas and potential tasks that come into your mind while you’re working so you don’t get distracted. You write them down, carry on working and process them later.
(Spoiler: I haven’t used this page for this.)
The daily grid
The idea is to fill up the whole day with time blocks, including meetings, and if something happens to stop you following the plan, you cross the rest of the day out and start again.
So . . . here’s how you might start a day.
Cal suggests where you have a few little tasks you want to get done in a time block, you can make a little annotation such as the (1) above and put them in the top-right corner to keep track of them.
So the day starts well and you work through your first two time blocks. Yay! But then you have the 10.30 meeting. And things happen at the meeting and you end up with some tasks you need to do straight away.
Day plan messed up, right?
No!
All you do is re-draw the rest of the day to fit this in, and get back to work.
You get back from lunch and there’s an urgent task waiting for you, so it’s time to remake the day again.
And you continue doing this for the rest of the day. (Hopefully you don’t need to re-do it more than three times . . .)
The weekly plan
I spent some time on Monday morning setting it up and reading what to do because there’s also a weekly planning page which I hadn’t noticed at first.
Ideally, you’d do some planning on this page either before Monday morning or first thing on Monday before you start work to give you an idea of what your week looks like.
There’s no formula for this page so you can use it in a way that makes most sense for you. You could make a summary of what you need to get done each day and when key meetings are, or you could outline what you need to do for each project you’re working on or, I don’t know, you could draw a picture of your cat.
Then you go forth and plan your first time blocks for the day.
Daily metrics
Each daily spread also has a small section for you to include a record of things you want to track, like water, steps, hours you’ve spent doing focused work, times you got distracted . . . whatever you want that’s meaningful for you. (Refer to the first picture.) I just started with water and whether or not I did my mid-day reset.
Finally, there’s a checkbox for doing your shutdown ritual, which Cal recommends as a thing to bring your work day to an end and shift your focus to whatever comes next. Home time, personal time, family time, whatever.
You can make this shutdown ritual as simple or as complicated as you like but it might include a final email check, a check of your to-do list, making your preliminary plan for the next day and clearing your desk. (You might also remind yourself to do the work that got shunted during the day to make space for the things that cropped up during the day.)
Cal says ticking the box that you’ve done it is a signal to your brain that your work day is complete and you don’t have to think about work any more.
The experiment
So that’s the system and my plan to use it.
Will it work? Well, because it’s an experiment, it doesn’t have to work. All I have to do is see what happens over the next four weeks and to be open and curious about it.
Cool.
Habit tracker
Existing habits
- Go outside first thing (7 days): 6/7
- 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 5/7
- Hip exercises (5 days): 6/5
- Walk (7 days): 7/7
- Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 7/7
- 9.00 shutdown & dim lights (6 days): 4/6
- Evening routine (6 days): 5/6
New habits
- Fill water bottle in the morning (4 days): 4/4
- Carry a notebook with me when I walk (7 days): 4/7
- Mid-day journalling (7 days): 7/7
- Thinking time (4 days): 3/4
- Read aloud (7 days): 6/7
Summary of the week
Some positive things
This week’s uni lecture was about fairytales. It was great!
Even before I started using the Time-Block Planner, I did have a sometimes-habit of blocking out chunks of my day when I wanted to focus on a particular task. I’ve set them up as recurring appointments in my calendar . . . and rarely stick to them. Even so, not everyone respects them when they’re booking meetings. (Maybe because I don’t respect them myself . . .) However, this week someone actually asked if I’d be okay with coming to a meeting during one of those blocks. I felt that was very considerate, and I was able to move things around to do that. So thank you, anonymous work person.
This week was our first week back at acting class after our performance and it was heaps of fun.
I finally got rid of my Spotify subscription, something that had been hanging round my neck for weeks, thanks to a little push from someone on my social media. There are many reasons for this and here are some of them.
What did I learn this week?
Our head (skull plus brain and other bits) weighs about five kilos. That is actually very heavy.
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) was a Danish astronomer, who lost his nose in a duel with his cousin and had a prosthetic believed to have been made of silver. However, when they exhumed his body in 2010 they discovered it was actually made of brass. He started studying law but seeing a prediction of a solar eclipse come true in 1560 led him to astronomy and wanting to devote his life to correcting existing tables recording stellar and planetary positions.
What did I notice this week?
HMAS Adelaide drifting up the river.
The house that once had this letter box was demolished last year. The re-built house is pretty much complete and it looks like they have kept the same letterbox.
The cherry blossoms are out.
What was the best thing this week?
Going to see Emma, presented by Bijou Tasmania, at The Playhouse Theatre on Saturday afternoon.
I know nothing about Jane Austen and have never read any of her books. But having had a sneak peek at part of one of the scenes a few weeks ago, and knowing how fantastic Benedicta McGeown, who plays the title roles is, I decided to go.
I wasn’t disappointed. It was fabulous, very funny, and the costumes were amazing.
Perhaps I should read the book now. Or even read Pride and Prejudice.
What am I reading this week?
- Twelfth Night by Shakespeare
- Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney
- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
What am I watching this week?
- Masterchef Australia
- Bay of Fires
- Emma
- Doctor Who ‘Earthshock’
- Stranger Things Season 3
About The Author
