Cal Newport's time management system
Cal Newport's time management system is summarized in The Time-Block Planner - Cal Newport. Combining the techniques discussed in this tiny pamphlet and his other books/podcasts, I compiled this blog post.
Core value of time management 💡
Cal Newport advocates his time management system in his books and youtube channel. It's both time-efficient, lightweight, and deliver the most important values of any time management system:
- Time management frees your mental stress on remembering all the todos & dues bouncing around your head.
- Time management has you articulately think about how can you complete your tasks in time. By doing this, you will soon realize that the task is more complicated than your expectation and you don't have so many allocable time, which boost motivation.
e.g. Think about PhD application. If you got 1 year to do it, it seems that you can do it in a leisure pace. However, if you think about the checkpoints of this task articulately, you may realize that you'd better launch your work this week!
Time blocking 🕰️
Two-column todo list
Every day has two column: tasks and ideas.
- When some random ideas come to you, don't distract from what you are doing at the moment - just drop them to the ideas column.
- At the beginning of each day, transfer the ideas to the tasks column of the day you'd like to address it.
- At the beginning of each day, schedule the tasks assigned to this day or transfer it to another day. Marks the specific time for each task.
Time blocks
The Time-block Planner - A Daily Method for Deep Work in a Distracted World
- Visualize the time arrangement of the tasks as time blocks.
- If plans are changed, draw it visually in the time block view.
Shutdown rituals
The Time-block Planner - A Daily Method for Deep Work in a Distracted World
At the end of working time, transfer all working memory (ideas, materials, and so on) to a file so that they won't be bouncing around the brain. Enjoys a good leisure time 🍸.
Metric tracking 📊
The Time-block Planner - A Daily Method for Deep Work in a Distracted World
Track down some critical metric, e.g. total time in the Deep Work mode, to boost productivity.
Hierarchical planning 🗓️
Cal Newport's Planning System (In Detail) - YouTube
The Time-block Planner - A Daily Method for Deep Work in a Distracted World
Weekly plan & quarterly plan.