It is often considered rude to block people, even when it seems necessary at times. What is not rude to block, however, is your time. In fact, it comes highly recommended. Time-blocking is a time management strategy that requires a person to set aside specific time periods in a day (it can be hours or even minutes) to complete chosen tasks. Doing so allows a person to claim the entire 24 hours they have in a day by planning out what they will do with it. Plus, by setting aside a specific time to complete a task, the chances of procrastination are greatly reduced.

Time-blocking is kind of like accounting, where a person can keep track of all their finances to ensure that 1). nothing goes missing 2). you are able to stick to the budget or plan you set for yourself 3). you achieve the growth you want. So, while accounting protects and tracks your money, time-blocking does the same for your time. And this is an especially important tool for young adults, who typically have more time on their hands and are often able to schedule their days according to their individual needs and wants.

So, you might be asking yourself, “How can I start time-blocking?”. Well, it is quite simple: all you have to do is get a piece of paper and write down all the time slots you have in a day. You could do it in intervals of an hour or even 15 minutes (it is entirely up to you). Within those intervals, write down what you want to complete in each, even if it is something like “take a nap”, “play video games”, or “scroll through Instagram”. What matters is that you are making conscious decisions about what you want to do each day and setting aside time to do it. And if you want to even make time-blocking more impactful, use a digital calendar (like Google Calendar or Outlook for example) on your phone, computer, or another device to have notifications sent to you in order to remind you of what task you should be doing. This is actually how I was able to productively fit writing this blog into my schedule today. And remember that any “hack” or “tool” is only as useful as how committed you are to it. Follow intentions with actions and productivity will naturally follow.