Block scheduling doesn’t just keep me focused to get more important things done, but is also important to saving my mental health. So much less stress!
Pre-covid, my system was much like Mike’s: fancy-pants fountain pen with a fancy-pants custom disc-bound notebook. But instead of starting from blank each day, I used a pre-printed version of David Seah’s Emergent Task Planner. His designs make paper tools a joy to use.
Post-covid, I have now gone mostly digital: shortcuts and drafts control calendar and text files to keep me on track. Unlike Sparky I do have routine stuff on preset recurring appointments. Many of them are set to recur on Sunday when I do my planning. Then I drag them to wherever on the week I need them. Yes, it means an extra click to move them around (occasionally I screw it up), but I can customize their info (duration, notes, location, etc.) which is worth the tradeoff. All routine stuff has “#routine” in the note field so I can quickly sort them with shortcuts.
My task list (Obsidian/Kanban) consists of “This Week” “This Month” and “Someday.” In my weekly review, I decide what do I want to try to accomplish this week, (and what don’t I) then schedule it and work off my calendar each day not my task list. For bigger projects, my plan is often just to chip away for a specified length of time (eg an hour), then stop.
The amount of stress not having a daily task list removes is astonishing and yet I still get everything done! What about emergencies that popup during the day/week? Surprisingly, the unexpected ones don’t really happen that often once you have this mindset.
What I don’t do, but probably should, is keep track of how long something actually took. (I used to do a bit of this when I was analog)