Strategy for Better work-life balance and time management: Calendar Blocking

Posted on by shannacyeung

I’ve been working towards better work-life balance, in particular allocating time for making progress on multiple projects and making time for  different realms of my life. My friend Amy is an inspiration to me in regards to being highly organized and making time for personal hobbies, , fitness, her relationship and more. She taught me the Calendar Blocking technique which was immensely helpful for preventing studying/medical school work  from taking over my entire life – which definitely happened multiple times during my first year of medical school.  I asked her to write a Calendar Blocking guest post because this technique to be helpful to all the readers here and she kindly agreed. I’ve edited her post to add in how I apply this method specifically for medical school. Her original post is on her blog. Let us how know whether Calendar Blocking helps you and whether you have any suggestions on better time management and work-life balance 🙂

(Feb 2020: I have since stopped Calendar blocking and returned to using a paper planner for my daily to-dos combined with Google Calendar to remember events. Calendar blocking didn’t work for me because 1) the ending times of my med school commitments are unpredictable, 2 ) I have a lot of meetings that I can’t foresee too full in advance, and 3) I realized that I don’t enjoy planning my weeks in advance and prefer being more spontaneous e.g. If I’m in the mood to study vs. to write. But these are still useful tips to consider). 

What is Calendar Blocking? 

Calendar blocking: the act of scheduling your tasks into physical representations of time, with the expectation that the scheduled tasks are going to be accomplished during the period it’s been scheduled for. Your to-do list tells you the tasks that you need to do, whereas Calendar Blocking helps you visualize how to manage and utilize your time to accomplish everything. Calendar Blocking is blocking out the amount of time you think each task is going to take you and dedicating a specific time to doing that task as if it were a meeting or appointment.

Why should you Calendar Block?

I can give you a number of reasons (as I do below) as to how calendar blocking improves your productivity and helps you to accomplish more. But, the most convincing proof is the effect it has when you give it a try. Try it for just a week, and see if it does anything for you.

Calendar blocking:

  1. Prevents time wasting. Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the amount of time allotted to it. Calendar Blocking forces you to estimate realistically how long each task should take to complete and gives each task a start and end time to keep you focused and use the shortest possible time to complete the task.
  2. Reveals where inefficiencies lie. Calendar blocking requires us to estimate the time a task should take, and we see how much time it realistically takes. By having this knowledge, you can find ways of improving efficiency on tasks that are currently done inefficiently.
  3. Shows us how we’re using our time. The No.1 time suck is: our ignorance of the amount of time we waste. When you don’t know how your time is being wasted, there’s no way to decrease wasted time, and so that allows for time to continue to be wasted.
  4. Forces us to be intentional with spending our time. The simple act of writing out what you’re going to do at a specific time forces us to be intentional with how we spend our time. It’s likely that most of us would not plan a 3-hour Instagram scroll session everyday after work. By scheduling our time, you will become intentional by spending time on your priorities.
  5. Prevents procrastination. If it’s on your calendar, then you can see that if you delay starting this task it’s eventually going to cut into time allotted for your other priorities. You see exactly what will be suffering by your procrastination. Calendar blocking transforms time from this amorphous, unstructured form into a structured representation on your calendar, and you can see exactly what you’re sacrificing by procrastinating.
  6. Balances urgent with the important. If it’s a priority, calendar blocking allows you to schedule in that first, so that you don’t end up compromising on the important priorities. If you get hit with a bunch of urgent tasks at work, you’ll be able to shift around the important tasks to a different time and ensure that everything gets done.
  7. Promotes deep work. When you’re calendar blocking, you put only 1 thing on your calendar for each slot. That means during that time slot, you’re deeply focused and committed to performing that one task.
  8. Ensures the priorities get done. The higher in priority tasks are, the earlier you budget time for those tasks, and other commitments fit into your schedule around the time left-over from top-priority tasks. Once your calendar is full, it simply is full and the things that didn’t fit will have to wait. Gone are the excuse: I have no time to do x, y, z. What you’re really saying is that they are not priorities. If they are priorities, you’ll make sure they’re put in your calendar and they get done. If they’re not real priorities, do you really have to worry about if they get done?

Where should you Calendar Block?

Personally, I use Google Calendar. It syncs across all my devices, it’s compatible with email and automatically adds in meetings and events, and with the drag-and-drop interface it’s super easy to re-schedule things and create calendar time blocks.
I have different calendars dedicated to different facets of my life: life, blog, work & academics, shared calendar with boyfriend, etc, and they each have their unique colours to make the visualization pleasant and pretty.

Shanna: During the school year, I use a “work” calendar for activities that can be moved around if needed such as studying and research, and a “events” calendar that included set activities such as dinners with others, appointments, research meetings, networking events, etc, that are fixed at a particular time and a “tests and deadlines” calendar for just exams & OSCEs so I can hide all the other stuff and see when the important exam dates are. I started a different method during the summer where I use the “work” calendar for my research and a  personal calendar for personal activities such as plans with friends and workouts.

When should you calendar block?

I recommend having a routine—doing it on a set day or a set time ensures you don’t forget. Whether you like to plan the next day at bedtime, or plan out your whole week on Sundays, or split up your week into 2 halves and plan for a few days at a time. Whatever system works for you!

Shanna: Planning for the week can take surprisingly long. This Sunday I spent 1.5-2 hours calendar blocking which includes coming up with tasks, contacting other people to schedule meetings, replying to emails/messages.

Howto Calendar Block?

Here is the fun part of the post! There are so many different ways to calendar block, and in this post I’ll be walking through my process.

  1. Things that are already on my calendar: appointments and obvious commitments
    1. General organizational tip: add in your appointments or other events right when you hear about it! These are non-negotiable, so there’s not much calendar blocking magic that we need to work on these things.
    2. Things I must do (ex. work) Although I don’t always know what I’m going to be doing at work, I block off 8:30-5pm for ‘Lab’ on my calendar everyday. Just seeing that this time isn’t occupied is helpful to realistically managing your time.
    3. Shanna: I find it helpful to be more specific with my research work because I juggle multiple research projects at time. Monday morning is Project #1, and the afternoon is Project #2. E.g. If a team member is giving me some writing Tuesday night, then I’ll schedule time to review and edit hat  Wednesday morning.
    4. Shanna: For research projects where I work in a team, this planning time also involving contacting other team members to discuss what our upcoming priorities are and to schedule team meetings
    5. Shanna: Schedule in commute time and add in buffer time in case parking is hard to find has helped me more on-time to appointments.
  2. First thing I add in: important but non-essential tasks/events
    1. In this section goes everything that is important, but there’s no official structure in place to make sure I do the tasks (unlike work). Things like: Exercise, Blogging, Reading, etc. These non-essential but important tasks.
  3. Second thing I add in: everything else!
    1. I work in the other things that are not real priorities, just the things I’d like to get done/do. Usually leisure activities go into this category.
    2. Shanna: This is when you text the friend you haven’t seen for a while to coordinate time to catch up.
  4. Third thing: I plan my weekends
    1. My weekends tend to have zero structure (no required work, fewer planned commitments) so it’s completely up to me how I want to spend that time.
    2. Typically my weekend calendar includes: Unfinished tasks from the week, Blogging, Household tasks (laundry, vacuuming, room tidy-up, etc.), Self-care, and Leisure activities.
    3. Shanna: I’ve accepted that my weekends as a medical student usually require work time but I still like to make fun plans for the weekend. I might also combine work time with treating myself at a cute cafe.
  5. Last step: revise
    1. After you’ve planned your time, take a look at your calendar for the week. Does it seem too full or too free? With an idea of your time commitments, you can reschedule that lunch with a friend for another day, or maybe not read so much this week. You know what your limits are, so revise your calendar to fit what works for you.

I hope you found this post helpful. I hope I did not give anyone the impression that I am the epitome of managing time well, get absolutely everything done, and that I never succumb to procrastination or wasting time. I do make mistakes, and plenty often.I still have many days where I fall behind on my task list or don’t manage to get everything done. However, calendar blocking has been transformative in helping me realize how I spend my time and teaching me to be more intentional, and that has led to improvements in my productivity.

ILet me be honest with you, when I first heard about calendar blocking I thought that it was too much pressure to block out my entire schedule and expect myself to stick to it. I can remember many of the reasons I didn’t think Calendar blocking was the right organizational system for me.
All of my time is now completely structured, which leaves no room for spontaneity or flexibility.
I don’t know how long certain tasks are going to take, and so I can’t accurately block out periods of times dedicated to those things.
Time spent at work is generally people telling me what I should do, and so I don’t have much control over how I spend my time.

Calendar blocking is whatever you want it to be. If you want some spontaneity, then plan some in. If you’re not sure how long you should schedule for certain tasks, online calendars have the functionality to quickly make adjustments to your schedule as needed.

Shanna: Schedule in buffer time. When scheduling work time, add in an extra half hour or more of buffer time. Book off that Friday night free from research work because you could potentially have a social plan that you’re not 100% about sure yet. Be unafraid to move things around to an earlier or later day, or later week. Your best friend needs to talk to you? You can push aside that workout because now she’s the most important priority to you right now. Do what feels right to you.