2026 is the year I return to rigorous planning
2026 is the year I return to some rigorous planning and productivity habits I’ve let slip over the years. Specifically, time-block planning (à la Cal Newport) and full-task capture (à la Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen). The motivation for this change is that I anticipate this will be an unusually busy year for me at work, at home, and in my communities. I want to make sure I make the most of the opportunities. The motivation for this post is twofold. First, for a bit of documentation and musing on how I have specifically implemented these ideas this time around. Second, for a little bit of self-accountability. Who knows, maybe this will also motivate someone else to reevaluate their productivity habits. While we’re only a week into this year, this is a system I have used extensively since early high school—just less so recently. Consequently, I already know that it is an effective catalyst for my own productivity. I’ll refer you to the links at the top of this post for more thorough exploration on what these systems mean. However, for the purpose of this post, I want to briefly describe these two methods. Time-block planning is a intentional method for planning your days—hopefully a method that leads to being able to do deep work , which I, in agreement with Newport, believe is vitally important in our modern distracted world. This is particularly well-suited to knowledge workers, and it also served me well when I was a student. Many knowledge workers spend their day reacting . Reacting to messages, emails, changing priorities, changing requirements, meetings, etc. This often leads to anxiety, overload, a lack of clarity, a feeling of chaos, and often impedes progress on things that require deep, focused effort. Time-blocking is all about proactive intention . Each day you fill out your calendar with time blocks representing a preliminary plan that gives every minute a purpose. If you get knocked off this schedule, you simply update it the next time you have a chance. This sounds simple. You can get things done in a chaotic environment . This probably isn’t the right term in a GTD context, but it conveys the methodology I find useful. The idea here is that you should capture everything that has your attention (tasks, ideas, etc.) into an external system so that you can free your mind from lingering unproductively and unreliably on them. This capture should be both complete and as immediate as possible, and should go into a single designated spot (e.g., an “inbox”). Then, you can process this list later with intention, either scheduling things, stashing things for later, or intentionally discarding things. If you’re the type of person who frequently has things “fall through the cracks” or finds yourself up at night repeatedly looping through things you need to do, you might find this technique refreshingly freeing. So, now that you have the basic ideas, I want to share my current implementation. Implementation is a highly personal choice. Some people prefer pen and paper (like Newport does). To go further, some people might implement these ideas in the context of notebook-specific systems, like bullet journaling , or a Hobonichi Techo . Others might use special, purpose-built apps on their computer or phone. Others might use intentionally basic apps or systems like todo.txt . Others might use a big whiteboard in their office. While those who know me know I love stationery, I’ve found that the single most important factor for success with these systems is low friction. If I remember a task in the middle of the night, and that means I need to go find a pen and my notebook, it’s not happening. But I can always find my phone for a quick note. So, I use Google Calendar and Google Tasks. They are already on my phone. They are easily accessible on both phone and computer. They have sufficient features to implement the systems. A good work week usually looks something like this. Note I have several Google accounts, so they all feed into a master view on my phone that includes time blocking before and after work hours. While the image above shows a fully-populated week, I actually only time-block one day ahead. That is, during the “shutdown ritual” of the day, I review the tasks and ideas I may have captured within the context of my current task lists, then time-block the next day based on those tasks. One exception here is recurring events are scheduled as recurring, and thus are already populated on their respective days. While the screenshot above doesn’t show this well, it’s also important to have some empty buffer time to absorb unexpected events, or variance in how long things take. This is another advantage of digital over paper: I can easily schedule events far into the future and not lose the information. With a paper planner, it’s hard to schedule someone’s wedding in a year. As the day proceeds, if things do not go according to plan, I adjust the blocks on the calendar to reflect reality. This is a valuable exercise both as an artifact to review where I actually spent my time on a given day and as useful feedback to improve my time estimations. For example, you may notice I spent about three full days testing in the screenshot above. I had initially anticipated that would take a single day. The act of making things reflect reality is a good way to calibrate myself on how long to expect for similar work. It goes the other way too: sometimes things take much less time than expected. When it comes to deep work, it feels good to see those larger, uninterrupted blocks of time. If those blocks were short and highly interrupted, I’d take it as a signal to make adjustments that allow me to do deeper, more meaningful work with less context switching. You can see how time-block planning would work effectively in a knowledge worker’s or student’s life, but likely not in the life of an emergency room nurse. The last time I used Google Tasks was a few years ago, and they’ve made some nice improvements since. For the purpose of full task capture, I keep a relatively simple system. Not quite as simple as a , but still minimal while offering nice organization features like recurring tasks, scheduled tasks, and sub-tasks. I organize Google Tasks somewhat Kanban-style. Google Tasks has a default list you cannot delete. I use that as my “inbox”, but I title it “Maybe?”. All quick notes go into here for later processing if I don’t have time to put it in the right list immediately. If I decide to do it, it goes into the appropriate list. If I don’t, it gets deleted from here. I sort this with “My order” sorting so I can arbitrarily sort it with highest priority at the top. On the left, I have my “Not now” list. These are things I want to do at some point, but they aren’t urgent. I just don’t want to lose them, so this is much like a backlog. This is also sorted “My order”, with highest priority at the top. In the middle, I have “In progress”, which could also be named “To do”. These are things I’m actively working on. Everything in this list has a date indicating when I intend to work on it. I might add deadlines if relevant. I sort this list by “Date” so that the things I need to do today are always up top, and I can quickly see what I need to do next. This is the only list that I mark things as “complete” from! Conveniently, these also show up in Google Calendar as you do them, providing a useful artifact of tasks you completed that day. Next, I have “On hold”. These are things I was working on, but are now blocked for some reason. A holding area. When they become unblocked, they will go back to “In progress” with the appropriate dates. Sorted in “My order”, with highest priority at the top. Finally, “Ideas”. This is just a list of ideas sorted in “My order” with most interesting at the top. I also find it handy to jot down things like gift ideas for people in the moment I discover them. When I was a student, this was a superpower; I still give the advice today . As a student, I would start each semester by inputting all coursework dates from every class syllabus. I always knew what was due, which weeks would be heavy, and which would be light. Another common question from fellow knowledge workers is how this fits in with other task tracking systems you might have at work (e.g., Linear, Jira, etc.). The answer there is that this is far more lightweight. I’m not writing lengthy descriptions or logging progress and notes on these items. These are written as “just enough” context to know what they refer to clearly. This is a personal system that complements the systems your teams might be using. I should never have stopped doing this! When you develop a productivity system that works for you personally, it feels like a bandwidth multiplier. There is also much more to discuss about setting goals, having a vision for your career , and other high-level planning that ultimately feeds your day-to-day work, but those are out of scope for this particular post. This is all about the nitty-gritty of day-to-day productivity. This system might not work for you, but I hope it has sparked some ideas as you work on your own systems.
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