Is There An Optimal Ratio Between Fixed and Non-Fixed Time-blocks?

00:00:04.600 | Hi Cal, this is Gert. I'm an entrepreneur in Belgium and I have two questions regarding time blocking.

00:00:11.000 | First question is, is there an optimal aspect ratio between fixed time blocks and time blocks that you can schedule freely in the weekly review leading up to the week to come?

00:00:23.000 | I mean, I have a number of fixed tasks that I need to do every week, such as for instance invoicing.

00:00:30.000 | I can put those in a repetitive time block into Outlook, but I'm looking for an optimal, if there is an optimal aspect ratio between those fixed, pre-fixed time blocks and those that I can fill in week to week depending on the tasks that I want to work on.

00:00:46.000 | Second question is, is there an optimal aspect ratio between deep work time blocks and the non-deep work time blocks in which I have to do the daily grind as a matter of speech?

00:00:59.000 | If you could provide some insight into that, I would be largely thankful. Thank you. Bye.

00:01:04.000 | Well, Gert, let's start with your first question. And just to clarify this for those who are listening, what I believe Gert is asking about is the difference between time blocks you put on your calendar in advance when you're doing your weekly plan.

00:01:21.000 | So it's Monday morning, you're doing your weekly plan and you say Thursday at noon, I'm doing invoicing.

00:01:28.000 | The balance between those and the time blocks you figure out each day when you're doing your daily time block planning, oh, how do I want to spend the hours today, where you look at what is not already taken up on your calendar, and you work with that free time.

00:01:42.000 | So first, I want to say there's generally two types of things that will go on your calendar during weekly planning.

00:01:51.000 | So events, appointments, meetings, that goes to your calendar directly, right, as soon as you organize them. But what are the type of time blocks you might add to your calendar in advance?

00:02:01.000 | There's typically two categories here. There is blocks that come out of autopilot scheduling.

00:02:07.000 | So this is something that emerged from my original work on time management for students, in which I like to take regularly occurring work, work that occurs every week.

00:02:18.000 | You know, you have to do it. And you find a set time and place you do it.

00:02:23.000 | I call that autopilot scheduling because you don't have to think about that work. It just shows up on your calendar like a doctor's appointment or a meeting.

00:02:28.000 | You just know this is when I do it. Autopilot scheduling lives on your calendar.

00:02:32.000 | So now you're putting time aside for regular occurring work. And in fact, you might be doing this for the entire semester, for the entire quarter.

00:02:40.000 | I'm always going to do invoices on Thursday afternoon. Let me just make that a repeated appointment on my calendar.

00:02:46.000 | Then there is advanced scheduling. So sometimes when you're working on your weekly plan, you look at some things that are important.

00:02:53.000 | Here's a non-trivial task. It really has to get done this week. I'm going to put aside the time right now for when that's going to get done.

00:03:00.000 | And you put that on your calendar. So that also is a way that work gets on your calendar in advance.

00:03:06.000 | Let me make that concrete from my own life this week.

00:03:10.000 | When I was doing my weekly plan, I saw one of the things on my plate that was important is reviewing faculty applications.

00:03:17.000 | I'm on a search committee, and a bunch of applications have come in, and there's a batch of these I have to review before we meet next week.

00:03:26.000 | And that's a long task. It takes time to go through all these applications.

00:03:30.000 | And so I already put on my calendar last Monday, recording this on Thursday, last Monday, I put on my calendar a big block for tomorrow for Friday, in which I'm going to do that application processing.

00:03:41.000 | Why? Because it was important, it had to get done, and it was going to require a non-trivial amount of time.

00:03:45.000 | So I wanted to protect that time in advance.

00:03:48.000 | So between autopilot scheduling and advanced scheduling, you might have a fair amount of stuff on your calendar.

00:03:54.000 | Each day you time block plan, when you build your time block plan, you transfer those onto your plan, and then you make decisions about what to do with the time that remains.

00:04:02.000 | Is there an ideal ratio here? I will tell you, Gert, this has been my thinking more recently, has been shifting towards more on your calendar in advance is better.

00:04:15.000 | And I have just been having this thought, and I'll tell you where it came out of.

00:04:21.000 | It's because I wrote this New Yorker article recently on slow productivity.

00:04:26.000 | And one of the big ideas behind slow productivity, you've heard me talk about on the podcast, when that article I focused in on one particular piece of slow productivity, which is work volume needs to be lower when you have a very large work volume.

00:04:38.000 | So the number of things on your plate that needs to get done, when that gets too big, lots of bad things happen.

00:04:43.000 | Short circuits our planning brain, the planning portion of our brain that makes us anxious, and the fixed collaborative overhead of all these things begins to eat up all of our schedule.

00:04:52.000 | So we want to try to keep our work volume reasonable.

00:04:56.000 | Moving more work directly onto your calendar to say this is when I'm going to do that work is an implicit mechanism to help keep your work volume more reasonable.

00:05:07.000 | Because if you have to find the time for when you were going to do something at the moment that you're committing to do it, you will be facing the reality of your schedule.

00:05:19.000 | And so when you say, yeah, I will review these applications, you need four hours to do it and say, I have to go find those four hours.

00:05:26.000 | You might realize you don't have those four hours for another couple of weeks.

00:05:29.000 | Now you can be realistic about it.

00:05:31.000 | But when you get to that week where you have to do the four hours application review, and you've already protected that time on Friday, and now you don't have any other time on that Friday to do other things and those other things don't get on your schedule.

00:05:42.000 | So I've increasingly been a believer of maybe we should pre allocate more time for more work.

00:05:49.000 | Because it forces us to confront that our time is a scarce resource.

00:05:52.000 | And here's how much I'm already using.

00:05:54.000 | No fixed ratio Gert, do whatever seems reasonable, but do not be worried if you find your calendar is very crowded with work you have placed there in advance from autopilot and advanced scheduling.

00:06:06.000 | Don't be upset about that.

00:06:07.000 | I actually think that is a good approach.

00:06:11.000 | Now to get to your second question.

00:06:13.000 | This is the deep to shallow work ratio that I talked about in my book, Deep Work.

00:06:18.000 | It's something that many people have now deployed in their own work environments.

00:06:22.000 | I think you should have a clear ratio.

00:06:26.000 | So you should have an answer to this question you're asking, how many deep work hours to shallow work hours?

00:06:31.000 | Am I trying to hit in a standard week?

00:06:34.000 | This should be a number that you establish with whoever supervises or manages you so everyone is on the same page.

00:06:41.000 | You should then use your time block plan as a record to look back and say how much did I actually do deep work?

00:06:48.000 | How much time did I actually do shallow work?

00:06:49.000 | What was the ratio I hit?

00:06:51.000 | And if it is below the ratio that you decided on with your manager, with your supervisor, then you have a clear number to say we have to change something.

00:06:59.000 | We said I should do 50/50 and I'm only doing 25% of my time deep work.

00:07:04.000 | Something has to give and you have a number here to make that clear.

00:07:07.000 | I'm not going to give you an ideal ratio because what I have discovered, hearing from my readers who have used this method, the ratio can vastly differ depending on what your job is and what season you're in of your job.

00:07:21.000 | [Music]

Is There An Optimal Ratio Between Fixed and Non-Fixed Time-blocks?

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