Hey everyone,

This week's issue of Riki's Reflections is about time blocking your work and how time blocking can ultimately help you achieve what matters to you. Time blocking is when you schedule specific times in your calendar to complete tasks, similar to treating these time slots as appointments, but instead of meeting someone else, you are essentially creating an appointment for yourself to accomplish a task.

When I read "Getting Things Done" by David Allen last year, which is often referred to as the bible of productivity, I made a focused effort to stick to its principles because I firmly believe that when I learn something new, like from a book, I should try to apply it to my life. If I try and it doesn't work, I know I've given it a shot and can give it up. So, when I read "Getting Things Done," I aimed to implement its strategies as much as possible, and I genuinely believe that the GTD methodology approach has transformed my life by making me significantly more productive and providing an insane amount of clarity regarding my goals, projects, and tasks. So, if you haven't, I highly recommend reading "Getting Things Done."

However, one challenge I encountered with the GTD methodology is that David Allen says that your calendar should only be used for tasks that absolutely must be completed at that time. For example, when you book a doctor's appointment, you place it in your calendar. Like appointments and meetings, the only items that should appear in your calendar are those that absolutely need to be completed on a specific date or time. I followed this guideline for a while, but in the past few months, I've started to time block activities that do not need to get done at a specific time and date, such as working on The Deep Sleep Blueprint.

Ironically, over the past few months, as I began to time block my activities, I've been able to get so much more done. I find that the GTD way of choosing what to do (which involves sorting by 1. context, 2. time available, 3. energy available, then 4. priority) takes too long and creates too much friction to doing what you want to do.

In an ideal world, I would follow these four steps to identify the perfect task to complete at that moment. Unfortunately, we often don't have the luxury of taking 15 minutes to find the perfect task, when you could use that 15 minutes to do something more meaningful.

Essentially, time blocking can be an effective way to commit yourself to completing a task at a designated time, thereby increasing the likelihood of getting it done.

How can this approach benefit you? Try time blocking the tasks that matter to you, placing them in your calendar, and genuinely committing to them. For instance, in my calendar, I currently have two hours of deep work scheduled as the first task of my day, followed by an hour dedicated to my health, which is my other goal for this quarter. Before I started time blocking, these tasks would not have appeared in my calendar because, according to David Allen, these tasks don't need to be completed at a specific time or day.

While you can time block any task, I've found it to be best to set aside time in your calendar for tasks that move you towards your goals. That could be reading a book, studying a language, or working on a side hustle. But by using your calendar as a way to set aside time to work on things that matter to me, I've been able to make way more progress on my goals than I have in the past.

What are your thoughts on this? Give it a try, hit reply, and let me know!

Until next week,

Riki

Things I'm loving this week

• I recently went to see the show of this comedian named Takashi Wakasugi. He's a Japanese person living in Australia, and his jokes were super funny and relatable, especially if you've been to Japan or are Japanese. If you're into comedy, you should check his stuff out.

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