Time Tiering

First of all, sorry for talking about productivity all the time.

A few months ago I wrote about the Time Blocking Experiment that I tried out. It's been alright! But there are a few key issues that have made themselves apparent to me since I wrote those thoughts:

Cascading

Adhering so strictly to a schedule can be good to get my butt in gear, but the problem is that if I end up lagging behind even a little bit - because I took a longer break that I needed, or found myself in a good flow-state on what I was working on - then I would fall behind, the stuff I wanted to do piling up like dirty laundry pressing against my closet door. It's very bad for morale, and makes me want to tune out for the rest of the day.

Quantity vs Quality

Probably obvious to people whose brains aren't broken^[1], but I ended up thinking that getting a lot done in a day was the most important thing. But it's not! Doing stuff that I'm proud of is most important, and I lost sight of that in my pursuit of getting my ADHD-addled ass to do get up and do anything.

The Vibes Were Off

Sometimes I'd block out my next day and go to bed with the idea that I'd get up and start kicking ass. Then I'd wake up and feel slow and sluggish, or a meeting would go longer than I expected, and now I didn't have the energy to actually work on stuff. That energy can fluctuate depending on the day, the time, whether I worked out the day previous, even the season. And all of it would have an impact on my blocking.

Time Tiering

After thinking about these issues for a while, I realized a few things:

1. My ability to do stuff is dependent entirely on my energy
2. It's more important for me to work on things based on how much effort I think they'll take
3. That said, I still need to time myself because my ADHD likes to wander off into the forest if I don't reign it in

So now I have a new system I've started drafting up that I've dubbed Time Tiering.

The basic idea is this: I first tracked my feelings and energy for a week. I took note of when I was feeling like I could be most productive, and what I did that led to that energy. What I found is that, thanks to things like my ADHD medication and workouts, I tend to have the most energy to do stuff in two blocks of time:

• 9:30 - 12:00: this is when the meds kick in, lmfao.
• 1:00 - 3:00: this is when I walk on my standing treadmill after lunch, and end up feeling very energized.

In contrast, 3:00 - 4:30 is when I tend to peter out. I don't include the last 30 minutes of a work day because who the fuck does work in that timespan LOL.

With that in mind, I ended up creating 3 calendar events:

Each block of time represents when I want to do tasks of a particular level of effort or difficulty. Tier 1 being most difficult, and Tier 3 being the easiest or least time-consuming.

With that done, I then tag each of the things I'd like to get done this week with one of these three tiers. Then throughout the day I peruse through the list, find one that I want to work on, whether due to a deadline or an urge, pop a Pomodoro and get started.

I've been trying this new system out for a few weeks now and it's been a great improvement on the blocking I was originally doing. I can work on something for as long or as little as I want, get 3 things done, get one big thing done, and still make time for breaks throughout the day. It has a lot of the structure that Time Blocking does, but with more flexibility. Maybe give it a shot if you're looking for similar structure!