It also helps you identify your priorities and gauge how much time you’re spending on a task. Using software helps you put everything down on (digital) paper and gives you a better perspective of your day. One of the ways to do that is to use time-blocking apps. Simply, time blocking is how you plan your time and your day. With the world going remote, managing your time is key to maintaining your focus. How you balance your tasks, events, meetings decide how productive your day is going to be. I think time blocking the entire day and then annotating with an eye on writing the story of your life for your future self to enjoy (beyond just documenting decisions and trying to get more productive) may make the exercise exponentially more valuable as well as more likely to stick because it would provide a bigger “why.” Of course, you could do this with paper, but looking up specific dates in the future would be simpler digitally.If you don’t control your time, it will control you. And Penn uses it as an excuse to reach out to people to say “20 years ago you and I were…” I wish I had a journal of the little details from when I was in college or my kids were growing up. I’ve been doing it since I heard the podcast and it has the side benefit of making me notice and reflect on the little, but important details of life (my son said this, or we laughed about that). We have terrible memories and the concept struck me as an amazing gift to your future self. 30 years later he goes back on the same date in his journal 1, 10, and 20 years to read about his life, especially what he was thinking. The right strategy implemented in a low-friction manner can be more than enough.Īn argument in favor of text files over paper: Penn Gillette of Penn & Teller fame explained on Tim Ferriss’ podcast that he’s been keeping a daily journal since he was 30. It helps emphasize the reality that if you want to get more important things done, you don’t need high tech software or complex systems. I love the simplicity of this digital implementation and its use of of post-hoc annotation. Huang then saves the document, leaving a record of what he did and what he learned during the day. #note maybe visit Monsters University next spring, Bono does related work – cool visual+audio unsupervised comparison, thoughtful about missing data, would work with ugrads (?), likes biking, teach compvis + graphics – ask about connection with computer vision – interviewing Spartacus as potential RA for next semesterĦpm faculty interview dinner with Madonna (Gracie’s) – will send me study design outline before next meeting – they want to hire 20 data science + SWE interns (year 3), 4 alums there as SWE – now a PM working on TravelAdvisor, thinking about applying to grad school Got unofficial notification ARO YIP funding award #annual #cv – #idea subliminal audio that leads you to dream about websites – automatically generate thumbnails from zoom behavior on web pages Review and release A/B Testing assignment grading – they’re a little inexperienced, suggested applying next year – Redesign assignment handout will be done by Monday, ship Thursday – where are things at with inviting portfolio reviewers? A: got 7/29 replies What makes Huang’s system particularly interesting is that he then annotates his time block schedule with notes about what actually happened during each block: Send reminders for CHI external reviewersģ:15pm join call with Umbrella Corp and industry partnership staffĦpm faculty interview dinner with Madonna – where are things at with inviting portfolio reviewers?ġ1:30am meet with student Enya (interested in research) Here’s an example schedule provided by Huang: (Though I use a paper notebook for my time blocks, I too appreciate the versatility of plain text files.) (For more details, see this article or Rule #4 of Deep Work.)Īnyway, this is all to say that I was excited when several readers pointed me toward a nice variation of time blocking implemented by Jeff Huang, a computer science professor at Brown University.Īs detailed in a post he wrote about his method, Huang uses a plain text file to make his time block plan for the day. In my experience, a serious commitment to time blocking can roughly double your results. The superior method is to give every minute of your workday a job by actually blocking off your time and assigning specific work to the blocks. Running your day from a to-do list (or, God forbid, an email inbox) leads to sub-optimal returns on the energy invested. As longtime readers know, I’m a big advocate of time blocking as a productivity method.
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