Time blocking planner

A way to plan your day by assigning each hour a task or kind of work, instead of working from a to-do list. Cal Newport describes it in Deep Work. The plan protects focus time, because meetings and email have their own blocks.

Block your most important work first, in the hours you focus best, usually the morning. Then add meetings, batch email and admin into one or two blocks, and leave a buffer block for whatever comes up. Plan tomorrow at the end of today.

60 to 90 minutes works for deep work; shorter blocks rarely let you settle in. Admin and email fit in 30-minute blocks. Leave 15 minutes between big blocks.

It won't, and that's fine. When a block runs over, re-plan the rest of the day in a minute rather than abandoning it. Comparing the plan with where the time actually went is where the lessons are.

Timecard tracks every app and website on your Mac and prints the day as a timecard every evening, so you can hold your time-blocked plan against what really happened.