There is a thread in the Focused forums referring to an article from The Guardian where a block scheduler gives herself 3-minute bathroom break blocks. I think that is too much. When the blocks get too small, you spend your time arranging your time instead of doing something. Blocks too small can start to feel like deck chairs on the Titanic.

When I started my series on block scheduling, I called it “hyper-scheduling”. That’s because I hadn’t researched it enough to realize everyone else in the world called it “block scheduling”. Regardless, and in spite of my silly name for it, rarely do I schedule a chunk of time less than an hour when I schedule my time. Looking at my current week, my only blocks less than an hour are my daily tasks of starting up and meditating, two things that I want to make sure I make time for and don’t need a full hour.

As I’m writing this, it’s Monday morning. Here’s my current schedule for the week.

You’ll see that nearly everything is at least an hour. While most of today is booked up, there are still blocks of open space throughout the rest of the week that will inevitably fill up as I move through the week. With these one-hour minimum blocks, it is not difficult to move things around as the need arises. One last note: because it is Monday, this schedule looks suspiciously organized and symmetrical. Have no fear. By Friday, it will look a lot less organized. Shit happens.