June 22, 2026
The deal-breaker with time-blocking
A few readers who find time-blocking useful sent in screenshots of their calendars to illustrate how they do it.
(Imagine a week view where every day is almost completely full and has between six and fifteen color-coded entries ranging from 15 minutes to a few hours.)
I’m glad this approach works for some people, but it definitely doesn’t work for me LOL!
In the past, when I have tried to plan out my week like this, the same things always happened:
- I’d waste a ton of time futzing with the categorization and color coding
- I’d rarely respect the fake “appointment with myself” entries that I could move without impacting someone else’s schedule
- I’d get frustrated moving entries around because a typical calendar interface is not great for rearranging things in bulk (e.g., “push all my appointments for today back 90 minutes”)
All of these things annoyed me, but the real deal-breaker was this:
When I had a to-do in my calendar that I didn’t do when I thought I would, and then forgot to move it to the next day, it disappeared into the past.
There’s no telling how many of my to-dos fell through the cracks because of this.
Even if I wanted to check and see how many times it happened, I couldn’t.
Why?
Because when I look back at past weeks, there’s no indication of whether a to-do was completed or skipped and forgotten.
I’d have to just remember if I did it.
And a productivity/time-management system based on remembering isn’t a system.
Yours,
—J