Thinking through time

I don't know any productivity or life enthusiast who isn't obsessed with time management.

Time management is about being super intentional with your attention at any given moment.

You might be in between a super-doer who has everything scheduled and a more unstructured person. The extremes lend to either a robotic or unfulfilling existence.

"How you spend your time is a spiritual consideration" - Tom Bilyeu, entrepreneur

I am in between, intuitive about how to best spend my time and looking to fine tune it.

Time management is heavily written about in the productivity space because it is like what Ray Dalio terms as a first principle, something just so fundamental to reality you cannot alter it. And being intentional about time is harder in the moments where there seems to be nothing pressing to do.

In The 12 Week Year, authors advocate for three kinds of time blocks: strategic, buffer, and breakout.

Strategic blocks are where you get real work done. You accept no interruptions. Their benchmark is around 3 hours a day.

The buffer time block is where you can tolerate some interruptions. Their benchmark is around 1-2 hours a day.

And there is the breakout block - a period of time that preserves sanity.  

My personal favorite time management guru is Laura Vanderkam.

She is a strong advocate for really thinking through family time. The birth of children means you will always being doing something. But if you don't think through those moments, you will end up doing nothing valuable.

Because of the way time is perceived, Vanderkam argues for thinking through any free time as an opportunity to make a memory. If you plan a mini-adventure for your child, not only does it leave a neuronal impression on the child, but also augments your perception of time as well. You start to feel more balanced because the time was spent in a way that was meaningful (e.g. memory creation) and you start to feel more time abundant.