Get Everything Done

I've used the technique of scheduling blocks of work into my calendar on and off for years - with varying degrees of success. Sometimes you need to make a commitment to yourself to do something as a coherent thing, which scheduling achieves. It also has the advantage (for me at least) of making my unavailability during that period visible to other people - and also prevents others booking blocks of time which overlaps, which given what I do is a major hazard to actually getting work done. Far too easy to sleepwalk into a week of meetings leaving no time for actual work!

I find this approach particularly useful when workloads get really heavy, and especially when dealing with tasks which require focused concentration. An example - I need to review many, many documents and booking a block of time for each large document or group of small documents allows me to also see when I might be able to actually finish the job. Otherwise interruptions tend to interrupt, and deadlines slip. For the kind of documents I'm reviewing (requirements, technical specifications, test plans) I need to focus and build a mental model of what the document describes so I can find holes in it, which means interruptions are particularly destructive.

Of course it's not completely foolproof - sometimes finding the necessary focus at the appointed time can be difficult, or life intervenes. But it's another widget in the toolbox.