Blocks of Time

I came across a YouTube video conveying an idea, I really like, which led to an interesting article, that led to action taken on the idea. How did I end up here?

Let me back up. My wife’s birthday is coming up and she is a hardcore paper journal, day keeper. I have tried to pull her into the electronic age of time apps and Google Calendars. But alas, it is not so. We were looking at some pretty journals within Office Depot.

This led me to review them online over the weekend. Man. Journals are expensive and the choices expansive. With my ADD and OCD, I found my way over to YouTube, watching reviews. Following the rabbit trail led me to the video, “Passion Planner Overview by a Dude.”

Blake laid out a really good overview of the planner. I like the concept of mixing work/personal into one platform. My life seems splintered between the two, and many times one bleeds over to the other (mostly work into personal). He gave props to Matt Ragland, another YouTuber heavily into bullet journaling.

Now, I have attempted to use a bullet journal in the past, but it just didn’t take. I felt like I was ‘making’ the journal more than ‘using it to do stuff’.

This led me to this particular video by Matt Ragland (below), showing a grid of 15 minute blocks. The purpose was to find where your time goes.

Matt incorporated this from Tim Urban’s article, “100 blocks a day.” Tim devised a grid using 10 minute blocks, creating 100 blocks a day. Matt took that idea and made 15 minute blocks.

I like the 15 minute block idea, because I tend to use 15 minutes on tasks.

Now the reality is I have around 9 hours blocked by work, Monday through Friday. No, not counting commute. Literally 9 hours daily. I rarely leave. I am literally in front of a computer, and already utilize One Note, Outlook, Word, Excel and a host of other applications for work stuff. I cannot see myself marking my work tasks in a bullet journal or planner. This is one of the issues I kept coming across, when attempting to bullet journal. Hence the contrast I run into between work and personal life.

However, I am rethinking to try to journaling again. This may give me clarity of my time and refocus on prioritizing. Ryan Holiday speaks a lot on the benefits of journaling. Read my article, “How ‘An Act of Vengeance’ led me to Stoicism“, where I mention Ryan.

I am really curious if any other’s out there bullet journal or utilize a planner?

#KnowledgeShare | Matt Cole | #infobyMattCole