1: Benjamin Franklin outlines his daily calendar and routine in his remarkable autobiography.
Ben organized his days into six “time blocks,” Sahil Bloom writes in his book The 5 Types of Wealth.
- 5:00 to 8:00 a.m.: Rise, wash, and address Powerful Goodness; contrive day’s business and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study; and breakfast
- 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.: Work
- 12:00 to 2:00 p.m.: Read or overlook my accounts, and dine
- 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. Work
- 6:00 to 10:00 p.m.: Put things in their places, supper, music, or diversion, or conversation; examination of the day
- 10:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. Sleep
While much has changed over the ensuing two hundred years, there is still power in structuring our days using blocks of focused time. These time blocks are a “simple time-management and calendar strategy that blocks out discrete windows of time for specific activities.”
This week (here and here and here), we are exploring how to use different tools and strategies to create Sahil’s concept of “time wealth.”
“The concept of time-blocking is simple,” Sahil writes. “Windows of time are blocked to work on distinct, specific tasks. Rather than manage our life through a to-do list, we manage our life through our calendar. . .
“Time-blocking leverages the well-established psychological principle that setting an intention for your time is critical for driving progress,” he notes. “Planning our day in this manner will allow us to focus deeply on the specific task at hand, limit the negative impact of distractions, and give us a degree of control over what we do and when we do it.”
2: Sahil then builds on the idea of basic time blocks by further categorizing his professional time into four overarching areas.
- Type 1: Management Time “is what most of us spend the majority of our professional lives in,” he writes. Management time can be “highly productive and efficient, but it can also create a focus on movement rather than progress.”
Typical activities of Management Time include:
-
- Meetings
- Calls
- Presentations
- Email processing
- Team and people management
- Type 2: Creation Time is what many of us “scramble to get done in the gaps between Management Time blocks,” Sahil observes.
Typical activities of Creation Time include:
-
- Writing
- Coding
- Building
- Preparing
- Type 3: Consumption Time “is one of the two forgotten types of professional time,” he writes. “It is where new ideas for creation and growth are planted.”
In his book Atomic Habits, author James Clear makes the point that everything we create is downstream from something we consumed upstream. “Consumption Time focuses on quality upstream to ensure quality downstream,” Sahil notes.
Typical activities of Consumption Time include:
-
- Reading
- Listening
- Studying
- Type 4: Ideation Time “is the second of the two forgotten types of professional time,” he writes. “It is where new ideas for creation and growth are cultivated and grown.
Modern life often lacks reflection and quiet time. The result is that “we make linear progress and miss out on the asymmetric opportunities that require creative, nonlinear thinking,” Sahil observes. “Ideation Time is focused on this stillness and thought.”
Typical activities of Ideation Time include:
-
- Brainstorming
- Journaling
- Walking
- Self-reflecting
Monday, we looked at tracking our time using an Energy Calendar. We can expand upon this tool also to categorize and color-code our tasks according to the four types of time:
- Red: Management time
- Green: Creation time
- Blue: Consumption time
- Yellow: Ideation time
Then, at week’s end, we look at the overall mix of colors on our calendar. We’re looking for trends and patterns. We ask:
- What color dominates our calendar?
- Are there distinct windows of Creation Time?
- Are the colors organized or randomly scattered?
“This simple exercise should give us a clear picture of what our current mix of professional time looks like,” Sahil writes. “From that baseline, we can work toward a more optimal balance.”
3: Sahil has three tips to achieve optimal balance:
Tip 1: Batch Management Time: “Management Time is necessary for most of us, but it can bleed out and dominate our days if we let it,” he notes. “Calls, meetings, presentations, and email tend to fill every moment of the day, making us feel like we’re constantly busy, running faster and faster but never getting anywhere.”
Instead, we can create discrete blocks of time to handle our key Management Time activities. “Have one to three email-processing blocks per day. Have one to three call and meeting blocks per day,” he suggests.
“The goal here is to avoid a schedule where the red bleeds out across every single day,” he writes. “We are trying to keep the Management Time windows as discrete as possible to create space for the other types of time.”
Tip 2: Increase Creation Time: “Creation is what propels us forward with more interesting projects and opportunities,” Sahil notes. “We all need more Creation Time in our days. . .
“As we batch Management Time, carve out distinct windows for Creation Time,” he recommends. “Block them on our calendar. Don’t check our email or messages during them. Focus on creation during our Creation Time.”
Tip 3: Create Space for Consumption and Ideation Time: “Consumption and Ideation are the forgotten types of time because we rarely create space for them, but they are critical to long-term, compounding progress,” Sahil writes. “History’s most successful people have all made a practice of creating space for reading, listening, learning, and thinking.”
We can begin with one short time block for Consumption Time and another for Ideation Time. The key is staying focused on consumption and ideation during these periods.
More tomorrow!
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Action: Calculate my “Time Wealth Score” by rating myself from 1 – 5 on the following questions:
- I have a deep awareness of the finite, impermanent nature of my time and its importance as my most precious asset.
- I have a clear understanding of the two to three most important priorities in my personal and professional lives.
- I am able to consistently direct attention and focus on the important priorities I have identified.
- I rarely feel too busy or scattered to spend time on the most important priorities.
- I am in control of my calendar and priorities.
Reflection: Where would I like to make progress? What am I willing to do to make progress?