Benjamin Franklin Was Time Blocking Before it Was Cool

Source: Wikimedia/The Atlantic

Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule in all of its nerdy splendor. It’s useful for those of us trying to get stuff done to see that people have been trying to do time-blocking for a long time.

The morning and evening journaling prompts may be my favorite piece of this. These could be as helpful today as they were a couple hundred years ago. I’ll keep banging the drum for journaling; it helps people figure stuff out.

My role as a stay-at-home dad doesn’t allow for as much time blocking, although I’ve done it at work. At my last job, I had a lot of meetings that I was invited to (and required to attend), but I made an effort to keep Monday and Friday as free of them as possible so I could start and end the week by moving the departmental needle. Wednesday was the day that I set meetings and one-on-ones. Every day I had an hour in the morning to work on reviews and team member feedback and an hour in the afternoon dedicated to hiring and reviewing job applications. On my most successful days, I went through a shutdown routine where I cleaned up email, tidied up my task list, and reviewed the next day’s calendar and tasks.

There’s value in this kind of planning, although I’ve learned that the plan doesn’t always work out. Sometimes, life has a plan or, perhaps more appropriately, doesn’t, and you just have to ride it out. Be your best friend about this, don’t beat yourself up. So much is beyond your control; remember that.