Time Management Training Material - The “Block Method”
Denise Landers, author of Destination Organization recently published an article on the Website HealthyWealthyNWise.com. In it she made the analogy of building blocks (the block method) and how we need different granularities of time management.
To me this article was a solid piece of time management training material.
Large Blocks:
“Make your day’s foundation an uninterrupted block of time when you can focus on difficult, involved projects. The ideal length is an hour and a half, approximately twenty percent of an eight-hour day. If you cannot possibly find that length of time, try for an hour. Even with 45 minutes of uninterrupted time you can get a significant amount of work completed because you are not requiring twenty additional minutes after each interruption to get back into the “flow.” As you develop this routine, aim for the hour and a half each day.”
Medium Blocks:
“Group as many like activities as possible since you are four times more productive when you can focus on one type of task rather than switching back and forth among assorted tasks. Constant multi-tasking slows you down. Activities that can be grouped include returning non-urgent telephone calls, processing your email inbox, filing, and reading.”
and last but not least small blocks:
“New items and lower priority tasks can be worked on between the other blocks. These might include requests for help from a colleague, quick answers to questions, filling out forms, and other project components that did not fit into your major blocks, but that you still have time to work on.”
The big thing which jumped out at me from this article was the “four times more productive” element of medium block grouping. That’s a fantastic increase in productivity by anyone’s book. I’m not sure where this statistic is from but no doubt Denise has all her sources quoted in her book mentioned at the end of the article.
For the article in full, click here.
All the best,
Tom
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