It’s the Fourth of July. Happy Independence Day to all my American friends and colleagues. Although I’m Canadian, I’ve spent a lot of time in the US—visiting or passing through 37 of the 50 states. I must say, I’ve never had a bad experience in America, and I look forward to the next trip which is to Chicago and taking the Amtrak down the Mississippi to New Orleans.
I was going to write something unique for today’s Kill Zone contribution but I’m going to cheat and recirculate a piece I recently published on my own site at Dyingwords.net. It’s about a time management tool I tried out. Here goes:
There’s only one area where we humans are truly equal. Time. Each of us are given exactly the same amount of time in our day. 24 hours. 60 minutes. 60 seconds. It’s how we use, track, and manage our time that sets us apart. Think of what you could accomplish with your time, and your energy, if you were able to supercharge your schedule with the game-changing 100 blocks strategy.
This strategy of dividing your waking time into 100, 10-minute blocks and tracking it comes from Tim Urban. Tim is a thought leader and prolific writer who hosts the popular website Wait But Why. I’ve followed Tim Urban for years, and I find him a fascinating man. One of his posts was titled 100 Blocks a Day. With credit to Tim for the images and graphs, I’ll paraphrase and personalize the content.
You probably sleep 7 to 8 hours per night. That leaves you with about 1,000 active minutes in your day. If you break that into 10-minute intervals, you isolate 100, 10-minute blocks.
Click Here or on the Image to Print This Graph
Throughout your day, you spend your time progressing through the 100 squares of blocks. When you wake, you’re in the first block and you run out of blocks when you go to bed. By stepping back and looking at what you’ve done in each block, you gain immense clarity from which you can supercharge your schedule.
By time tracking with blocks, we can readily see where we’ve been productive and where we weren’t. We can see time management efficiency, or we can see a complete waste of this priceless resource called time. We can see where to cut back and where to double down.
Ask yourself if each time-block furthered your definite purpose in life and which block was merely enjoyed for its moment. Ask if each block was a time gain or a time suck. Ask if each block allowed you to constantly create, to continue to consume, or to just comfortably cruise.
If you imagine your time blocks laid out on a 10×10 grid, you’d get a total screenshot of your day. How much of it was spent at work, and how much of that work time was productive and necessary? Or unnecessary? How much of your leisure time was worth the lack of effort? How much of your family time and friend time was enjoyed? And what really mattered in your day?
Graphing and tracking time blocks let you think about everything you spend your time on in context of value per 10-minute block. Preparing dinner might take 3 to 6 blocks. Ordering in takes none. Meditation might take 1 block and a yoga session 3 blocks. Ask what the dollar-per-hour or return-on-investment might be.
2 blocks of reading per evening might add 15 books per year to your mental library. Writing a novel might take 20 blocks per day and researching/writing/formatting/publishing something like this 675-word post takes 23 blocks or 3.8 hours. I know because I tracked it on the 100-block graph.
As part of this post, I recorded my entire day from the time I awoke to the time I shut down. I’ve always kept a journal and loosely tracked my time, but this was the first crack at being so detailed. Here’s a screenshot of my 10-minute time blocks for June 28, 2024.
I have to say this exercise was enlightening. It made me focus intently as I moved from morning to night. In my writing/content producing world, I have a massive project underway called City Of Danger. It’s in its third year of production, and it’ll be a year or two more before release because the delivery technology is under development. From this point forward, I’m going to religiously track the City Of Danger production time with the 100 block strategy. I’m curious if I’ve finally found something that can increase my focus and productivity.
Tim Urban of Wait But Why has three more insightful graphs. One is a 90-year period of human life in years. One is a 90-year period of human life in months. The other is a 90-year period of human life in weeks. Feel free to download them and begin plotting your blocks, supercharging your schedule, and changing your game.
Kill Zoners—Have you heard of this 100-block thing? Do you have a time management system that you use? Or, do you find that trying to track and manage time is just a waste of time? Comments please.
Very interesting. I’d never heard of this 100-block strategy. While obviously we all have the same 24 hours in a day, although I may sound crazy, as I’ve aged it has felt like life has gotten crazier and crazier and harder and harder to find time to do the things I want to do (i.e. not just day job and chores). Part of that is not having the energy I used to, I suppose.
While I’ve never tried the strategy of 10 minute blocks, as part of my journaling I keep track of where my time goes–work, chores, strength training, PT, cardio, writing, research, business of writing etc etc.
And these days time management is even harder because of trying to be an informed citizen and not relying on one news outlet to feed you info.
The most rewarding thing for me is when on Saturdays (basically my creative day of the week) I can gain a balance of at least half a day on creative endeavors and half a day to relax because I’ve learned how important it is to build in time to just relax and breathe in and out–gone are the days when I could go 90 miles an hour then drop into bed. A bonus is when creativity flows during lunch breaks at work.
Whatever method we use, I’ve found it very essential to monitor how I spend time and identify those patterns to see what adjustments I can make to make the most of those precious 24 hours each day.
One of the things I look forward to when I retire is to be able to use my morning hours for creativity–something I don’t presently get to do. I think that will be a wonderful blessing. In the mean time, I just need to find time to make that creativity flow in whatever time blocks, 10 minutes or otherwise, that I can. What was it Picard said? “Make it so.” 😎
Looking forward to reading other people’s insights on this topic.
Good morning, Brenda, and happy 4th. “Make it so.” I like that. Something I’ve worked on as I age is making more time for important stuff and saying no to unnecessary time wasters. I’ve also studied Stoicism which really helps put things in perspective – like not caring about things beyond our control… such as what the talking heads on the news think 🙂
Fascinating and impressive, Garry. However, I, for one, would freak out at the organization required, and I’d never get anything done. Too many of my blocks lately have been spent on the phone or chat with tech support, which would mess up my “schedule.”
I’m content in my retirement.
Hi Terry, and happy 4th to you, too. I’m a few days into test driving this 100 block system and fine it simple to manage. I made up a master sheet with time blocks on it and keep it beside me, filling it in as I do stuff. It’s not as anal as the one I did on June 28 when I wrote the post but I’m finding it a good snapshot as to what’s gone on in the day.
Interesting way to organize, Garry. What happens if you do five different tasks in a 10 minute block? It would take me 15 minutes to write down what I did 😉
What works better for me is to make a list of tasks I want to accomplish for a day or week, then check them off as they’re finished.
From your chart, it looks as if you spent about four hours writing and preparing this post for publication.
That’s reassuring b/c I often think I spend (waste?) too much time writing short pieces like posts, newsletters, articles, and magazine columns. What takes five minutes to read took five hours (or more) to create. I compare that to preparing Thanksgiving dinner–two days to put it together and it’s eaten in 20 minutes.
But whatever time management system that works for you is the best one.
I dunno, Debbie. I don’t think I’m capable of doing five tasks in ten minutes. I totally agree that the best system is whatever works for the individual. I’m going to keep trying this 100 block thing for a bit. If it works, I’ll keep on. If not, then back to the old way.
Morning, Garry! Happy 4th of July to you and all.
I keep a weekly to-do list with the major goals and projects for the week. I also keep project plans for each book I have. But I’ve never been a fan of time reporting, mainly because online time management requires *time* to set up and enter your time — a task in itself. But when I read your blog a few days ago, I realized the block method is a simple, low-tech, time-efficient way to track my daily activities, so I gave it a try.
The first thing I discovered was that the 100 ten-minute blocks didn’t work for me. They’re too small and it wasn’t obvious where each new hour started. So I made up a different matrix with 15-minute intervals. Four cells across make one hour, sixteen rows, so each row on the matrix corresponds to an hour. It’s easier that way.
I’m not sure I’ll use it every day, but it’s so much simpler than doing a time management app, and it’s a good tool for knowing where the time goes. Thanks for letting us know.
Great feedback, Kay. I like your 15-minute idea. The simpler, the better. I’ve never tried an online app for time management – too teccie for me 🙂
I saw this on your website, Garry, and was intrigued.
I downloaded the 100 blocks and I’m going to give it a whirl. It appeals to my OCD sense of organization.
Maybe I’ll figure out where all those hours in my day are going . . .
🙂
Let me know if this works for you, Deb. I’ve been at it a week and I’m seeing some benefit. I do like Kay’s 15- minute idea – I might try that.
Interesting approach, Garry. I’m not sure that would work for me, but you’ve got me thinking about tracking my time. If not in ten minute intervals, fifteen like Kay suggested, or even thirty minute ones?
The key I think to this working is keeping tracking simple. I like the symmetry of Kay’s 1/4 hour approach.
Thanks for a thought provoking post!
Hi, Dale & Happy Independence Day! What’s the old principle – KISS? I think the 15 to 30 minute block is a better plan than the 10.
You probably sleep 7 to 8 hours per night.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Exactly, Jim!
🙂
So timely as the day-job is trying to figure out scheduling matrices (on time/over time) for things that take different amounts of time.
I believe I’m gonna create a “hybrid” version of this table, blocking the time I THINK I’ll need for some tasks, and confirming or noting interruptions or overruns and the reasons behind them (I get so many “Stop what you’re doing, I need this ASAP” requests that aren’t catalogued let alone remembered when something else gets bumped), so tracking those will, hopefully give me some insight as to how often they occur, where or who they come from, and how long they take.
One of my biggest challenges is my (self diagnosed), ADHD / OCD ~ something interrupts my focus and I have to finish THAT to the detriment of getting the first task finished (or on its way to getting finished), if I’m not distracted by the next shiny (or crisis driven) task.
Additionally, the “cross campus commuting” (elevator wait times), to project job sites or face-to-face meetings aren’t accounted for in my “daily 8(+)”.
So by “assigning” 10 (15) minute increments to the work day, alongside a task or to-do/complete list, I think that, besides getting a modicum of control (ha!) on my calendar, I should be able to see what and how to delegate and/or defend my “productivity” to the bosses.
The blocks before and after the workday should be pretty revealing as well.
Oh, and a belated Happy Canada Day to y’all, eh?
😊
Nice comment, George. Sounds like a plan!
It looks … so tempting …
My name is Michael and I am a recovering Time-Management addict … I would love to try this but, for me, therein lies madness.
The first step is admitting you have too many spreadsheets 😉