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The 3 Types of Time Blocks You Need to Schedule for a Productive Week
Go beyond merely scheduling time for tasks, and build a schedule that helps you guide your days toward achieving your goals
I’ve known about the importance of time management for a long time. I’ve understood that you need to schedule time to do the work that you know needs to get done. But what I didn’t fully realize until recently is that effective time management means more than just blocking out time to get tasks done. It requires scheduling time to do 3 entirely different — but entirely necessary — kinds of things each week over and above simply getting things checked off your to-do list.
To effectively use the time you have, you need to block out 3 key types of time. In their book The 12 Week Year, Brian Moran and Michael Lennington spell out 3 basic types of time blocks you need to schedule during your week in order to make the most of it: buffer blocks, strategic blocks, and breakout blocks.
The trick is to both schedule them in the right lengths, total amounts of time per week, and to prioritize them correctly. As I’ve begun doing this, the effect it’s had on my productivity have been significant. Once you understand these blocks of time, and what they can do, it’s hard to go back to any…
