Timeslotting my week

Andre Biel
Sep 4, 2018 · 4 min read

I’m currently working as a freelancer based in Hamburg, Germany. During the past months I searched for a good way to structure my week. Therefore I spent a lot of time testing apps, reading articles and drawing on my whiteboard.
The solution I came up with is kind of slot driven and currently fits best for me.

Why a calendar is not enough

Of course the first idea which comes in mind is using a calendar — that’s what I do. In my opinion the calendar is for real appointments. Records going in are doctor appointments, meetups with friends or match dates of my favorite soccer club for example. Basically things, which I want to be reminded of when they are coming up. But that’s only one piece of the cake.
Everyone of us has a lot more to do during a week. I personally like to do a sport session at least twice a week, get a bit of paperwork done, want to read, want to codelab (my word for experimenting with new techniques, frameworks, …) and maybe want to spend some time with my girlfriend. In addition to that I also have contract based stuff to deal with. For example getting around 40 hours of client work done, maintaining some older client projects or investing some time to teach/pair with my brother.

Usually I find myself having a look at the upcoming week during sunday afternoons or evenings. I want to be able to get an overview of free time available, work overloads or simply because it gives me a better feeling.
The calendar entries are not my primary focus. They are not my everyday business and I want to be reminded. My weekly/daily tasks are quite different. They are more awareable than remindeable.

The idea of slotting my week

Lets have a look at a normal 24 hours:

  • Sleep around 7 hours — 17 hours left
  • Clientwork (usually at the clients office) 8 hours — 9 hours left
  • Transfer to/off the office 1 hour — 8 hours left

Two more hours flying away automatically (eating, shopping, …) every day.
As a result I have about six hours left. It’s on me to fill this free time with whatever I want to do.
Based on my personal experience I decided to go with two hour sprints. 120 Minutes are enough to focus and finish a task. If the task is to big, then it’s a good indicator for having a short break in between.
Of course I also can make it six slots of one hour, but I try to never let one slot go beyond the two hour mark.

Example slots for one normal weekday

In the example above you can see a pretty managable day I would say. Of course some days are a bit more lazy. On some other days there is no way my planned automatic two hours fit my needs. For me, that doesn’t matter. It’s okay to shrink some slots. If I take my baddest day, I would end up doing nothing. By slotting them, I have a slight chance to be productive for at least half an hour.
In my opinion the goal should be to get a rhythm. Everyone can go 18 hours sporting, working meeting friends on a fully motivated day. If you get this unstoppable feeling in your body there simply is no way someone stops you.

As always you plan for the ‘not 100% days’. The most important part for me is the awareness that I could also have a non 100 percenter on a pretty packed day. There are many reasons for not so good days. I sometimes just wake up in the morning and miss some energy. Maybe some alcohol the night before, a dispute with my girlfriend or some completely stupid stuff like I ‘failed’ at bench pressing. In this situation the slot system gives me the option to say

It’s a bad day. I have three slots filled for today. There is no time on them. I just mark them as ‘checked’ at the minimum I could do.

Usually this ends up in starting without any expectations. Only having the 120 minutes of the actual slot in mind. In most cases I’m slowly working into my tasks and get at least some of them done.
Of course you could achieve this by using any other motivation/scheduling technique. The feeling of low numbers (“only three slots”, “only 120 minutes”) just ends up in the best results for me.

All in all timeslotting my week helps me generating a limited focus before and after a main working slot during a day. I can easyly shrink or split a slot. As a result I can get my mind working a bit better into the desired direction.

I would like to mention that I’m not redefining the wheel here. There are many ways out there, which aim for a better time management. I just wanted to add my two cent and combine them with my working day as a freelancer!

Have a good week!

Andre Biel

Written by

Full-Stack Web-Dev from Hamburg, Germany.

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