Time blocking best practices: How to boost your productivity

When I was 12, I'd pull out a notepad and make a plan for my day: 

• 10-10:30 - walk the dog
• 10:30-11:30 - clean room
• 11:30-12:00 - read magazines
• 12-12:30 - lunch

My schedules were always aspirational. In actuality, I'd walk the dog, then read magazines, of course! 

Now at Mural, I work with customers and coworkers from all over the world. Planning our calendars is important to get work done because we don't all share the same 9–5 hours. 

I coach clients on effective remote work habits, including making the most of flexible schedules, finding a balance between async and sync work, and managing their time better. Between time zones and flexible schedules, our team at Mural has a ton of freedom built in to our work, along with some constraints (e.g., when the heck do our colleagues in California connect with folks in Singapore?).

When you take control of your time, you are organizing and leveraging your greatest resource. Without asserting your authority and preferences on your schedule, you’ll be left with a disorganized mess of a calendar. An intentional system, along with good boundaries, will keep your precious time used for the most important tasks — and people — in your work life.

Enter: Time blocking. 

Maybe you feel like you’re reacting to whatever comes your way — messages, emails, calendar invites. You’re constantly interrupted, and never seem to get work done. Or you're constantly context-switching — moving from one topic to another, with no time to really focus or be strategic. Time blocking can help you feel calm and prepare for your work week.

Let’s first look at how you can set ‌your calendar to its ideal state, then talk about how to maintain it over time.

What is time blocking?

Time blocking is the intentional practice of dividing up your day or week into chunks of time to increase your productivity and focus your attention. The idea is to plan your schedule in advance, and allocate specific times to particular activities and tasks, including project work, meetings, breaks, or admin tasks.

Advantages of time blocking

I’m addicted to blocking out my time in advance. Whenever I’m assigned a new client project, I skip ahead to the deadline and plot out the major project milestones on my calendar as ‘holds’ right away. This way, any meetings that get scheduled, or small tasks that pop up, get oriented around my most important customer work. 

I also make sure my Fridays are pre-blocked for async work. This is the day I keep meeting-free so I can do hours of design work in one chunk, or other creative work — like writing this blog post. Here are some further reasons it’s beneficial:

Focus

Time blocking can be an incredibly useful approach to increase your focus and concentration. When you switch contexts quickly, like from a deep-dive analysis of data to presenting live to clients about your company’s vision, it causes fatigue and reduces ‌productivity (the infamous ‘toggle tax’ is real). 

Time blocking reduces the number of times a day or week you switch topics.

Time management

When you manage your time carefully, you're more aware of the realities of how long projects and tasks can take. The next time you take on a new work assignment, you'll be better able to anticipate how much time is needed since you’re conscious of how you spend your time. Plus, ideally you’re eliminating time-wasting activities along the way.

Productivity

One of the most valuable aspects of time blocking is prioritizing important and high-impact activities. Instead of letting your day run it’s course, you're mindfully and strategically choosing which tasks to complete when. 

Balance

Evenly distributing your workload will help prevent burnout, and reduce stress, since you’ll have planned out time to complete your most important projects and meetings. You'll also plan breaks and extra time to make sure you have time for your personal life and unexpected interruptions.

Types of time blocking

Everyone has preferences for how they like to manage their calendars, and how much effort they want to put in. The good news is, there are multiple time blocking techniques that you can use depending on your team and work style. Here are a few examples of how to time block:

• Task batching: Group similar tasks and complete them in one time block. For example, if you have a set of social media updates to build, you’d complete that project all together in a single stretch of time, and schedule all your meetings for the afternoon.
• Themed days: Assign different types of tasks to specific days of the week, like meetings on Tuesdays through Thursdays or writing tasks on Fridays.
• Time boxing: Even more goal-oriented and rigid, you’d complete your tasks in a specific time frame. For example, you might block your schedule to prepare for a UX interview from 9 – 10am on Mondays, or answer DMs at 8am, noon, and 4pm for 15 minutes. But compared to simply blocking your schedule, you limit how much time you spend on the task as a personal challenge to get work done efficiently.

I lightly theme my Fridays (design work), and am really intentional with ‌task batching. Meetings are mostly 10 – 3pm Monday through Thursday due to ‌coworkers locations, and because my energy levels are highest 6am – 10am. I get creative work, design work, and other high-priority content creation completed first thing, then head into my meetings feeling accomplished and calm. Plus, the social energy of meetings keeps me going through the end of my day, which is mid-afternoon, since I often start early.

But how do you maintain your beautifully organized calendar? Once those meeting requests, last-minute 1:1s, “quick syncs” and client pings start rolling in, your calendar might start to feel less fresh and more messy.

Time blocking tips

Here are a few time blocking tips to keep in mind to keep your schedule working for you, rather than the other way around. 

Maintain your calendar carefully

Before the workweek, take a close look at your calendar blocks for the week. If there’s a meeting or two that gets in the way of deep work, you may request to reschedule. Each day, think about changing the order of project work blocks based on what needs to be done first, or when you have the most energy.

Use color-coding to help visualize

Pick a color for each topic — e.g., dark blue for meetings; light blue for regular work; orange for high-priority tasks; green for client meetings; purple for personal. When you set up your calendar for the week, it'll be easier to find balance or theme your days if you can see what tasks are scheduled when.

Protect ‘deep work’ time

Start the week by picking a day or two as heavy meeting days, like Tuesday and Wednesday. If you have any control over when meetings get scheduled, aim to have those live calls on your chosen days. When you hit your capacity, whether it’s four calls or six hours of meetings — whatever is realistic for your role — begin declining meeting requests, reducing the meeting length, scheduling for the next week, or recommending async collaboration.

Set boundaries and stick to them

When you block your time for project work and tasks, meetings will inevitably get scheduled on top. Consider what works best for you and your company culture. 

• Will colleagues respect a block on your schedule, if it’s viewable on your calendar? 
• How might you communicate your need for deep work in a meeting reschedule or decline? 

Chat with your team in advance and let them know you’re trying time blocking, so they can better respect your needs for focus.

Use technology to your advantage

Typically, I just make manual adjustments to my calendar. But there are other options. 

Try built-in tools like Focus time in Google calendar or Clockwise. Maybe you want to use Calendly to have meeting times auto-scheduled, or link your deadlines in project management tools to your calendar. Find the right balance between automated calendar management and manually scheduling your time. 

Mural for managing calendars with your team

Time blocking is an activity best suited for your calendaring tool, but I use Mural for a few different activities that help calendar timeblocks be more effective.

Calendar audit

Most people will use the color-coding and naming rules in your calendaring tools. But when I coach some of my clients, I'll take screenshots of their calendars so we can look at them. Then, we place them in a mural and go through the options. 

Alternatively, you can lay out your calendar using the free Mural Weekly Planner template, shown above.

This lets you look at each meeting and task, noting if the time given is realistic, or if meetings could be moved or cut short. You can use sticky notes, icons, and emojis to mark your schedule, or make comments and tag people with questions. If your schedule is chaotic, or you're new to proactively time blocking, you might even complete this exercise weekly.

Project planning

Invite team members or clients to a Mural to collaborate on scheduling. Plan out your project tasks, decide meeting times, and align your time blocks with each others. Use these roadmaps or project plans to inform your daily time blocks.

Team charter

Maybe you have some new team members, or your responsibilities have recently changed. Clarify your team norms in a team charter!

Make promises to each other about when and how often you'll meet as a group, how fast you expect answers, or what days you'll all set aside for focused work (e.g., ‘Meetingless Mondays’). By agreeing as a team or department on these norms, individuals will have a much easier time blocking their schedules — fewer interruptions and more alignment.

Mural is the best way to visualize your work, get aligned, and plan your time better together. Sign up for a Free Forever account today and see the difference Mural can make for your productivity (...and sanity).