Get Everything Done

I have read Cal Newport's book "Deep Work", and I think he mentions scheduling the whole day on a regular basis. I don't think for many people this would helpful, as it could lead to perfectionism, and guilt for not be able to follow through.
In the book he suggests different ways of scheduling time for deep work.
I am beginning to think that the search for the perfect time management system will not be found. No one system can handle the complexities of life, and if it tries to, the system itself is too complex to understand, and we get bogged down in the overhead of maintaining it.
Life is made up of balancing two sides of the spectrum. Following only one system for a long time has the danger of becoming unbalanced. So I am not sure that abandoning or switching systems is a bad thing. It could be heatlhy because one side of life has been neglected too long.
Your systems sound good. It might be good to allow time each day for each of them. A tool kit has more than a hammer, and we can bring out some method to slay the dragon, and if one doesn't work, we can try another.

You can schedule time for each method. Time block some of the day with big projects. Time block for the 6 most important things. Time block for one of Mark Forster's methods. Then leave some unscheduled time.

The trouble I have with scheduling every hour of every day is that sometimes one doesn't know how long something will take until one starts doing it. One could schedule one hour for a task when it is only worth one minute. One could schedule one whole day for deep work, but end up obsessing over something of little value. Cal Newport probably does work where he needs it, but others don't have the personality for it. They can't handle all that alone time.

Another danger with time management systems is that one can become fascinated with the system itself, and designing the system or understanding it so much that it gets in the way of actually getting things done. This is what I found with GTD by David Allen. It doesn't seem to leave anything out and trying to understand it as an intellectual exercise can be very satisfying, but I have always found that when I try to implement the whole system, I get bogged down in the process, and processing the data becomes an end in itself, and gets in the way of living life.

It seems that you have thought of how these methods balance each other. I think that it is good idea to do. One could have one method that is regular, every day, and then have others that one does on the spur of the moment, or when one thinks it would help.
Using several methods regularly is likely to be balanced then one method alone, which might only emphasize one side of the spectrum, or fit one type of personality.
If the method is simple, and can done without a flowchart, and one has several of them to choose from - combining these might be better.

I was going to respond to Aaron, but Mark H. beat me to it. I've been leaning in on trying new methods with the same ol' items, to try to get to the feel I have when I use multiple systems in a day but staying with the same system. Yesterday I tried 10 tasks, thinking the reorganization of tasks into groups of 10 after every pass would be like using multiple systems, but I did not like it at all. Today I am doing Cal Newport time blocking, with a few appointments some "deep work" sessions (can't say they are truly deep, and some AF1 sessions. So far so good...

I suppose some of this really answers the other thread about finding the perfect system or constantly switching. Perhaps it is better to give some thought to several methods as Aaron has done, and then combine them and use concurrently. Maybe one as the core, and several others as peripheral.
However, there is a point of diminishing returns in trying to make a grand scheme that fits everyone , one size fits all, and covers all of life. No doubt there are individuals that need to do this, and it can be helpful intellectually. It seems the larger the task, the more structure and planning need to be done. So there is project management software, but only companies need this, it is too much for an individual. I am a piano teacher, and I have books that describe the physical mechanism of playing the piano, in very technical terms. But for the most part, for most people, they don't need to know this, and it would be very difficult to play the piano if one were constantly thinking about it. And so books about time management might accurately describe the process, but many people are not consciously aware how. Trying to find the one perfect way of doing something, and having a grand scheme might lead to analysis paralysis. It might be good to think and analyze methods, but on the other hand just trying several methods that have worked in the past might be all that's needed without knowing why, and if they don't work, then you try to figure out why. You give as much thought as needed as the process is unfolding.

I've read some more of the other thread now. I use the Simple Scanning a lot, but I have some of the same concerns. I do get decision fatigue, and I don't spend enough time on longer tasks.
I think it is good to use several techniques, methods, tools, to balance out whatever limitations one tool has. I think that the three methods that Aaron in his original post suggested has a good balance. Time blocking one or two or projects, and then dealing with six items, and then many items from a long list. Very likely most things would get considered. But still, it is likely some things will not, and I don't know if it is realistic to expect any system to do that for us, that covers everything in our life. We could schedule every hour of every day, but do we want to live like that? Where is the room for spontaneity, for going with the mood of the moment. I am reading in a book called "The Persistent Pianist" where the author after recommending schedules and time tables and diaries of practicing also recommends dispensing with them when your mood screams out for emotional satisfaction. Better to play pieces one feels like and give oneself a cathartic concert. "We must reconcile the puritan and voluptuary within ourselves."
Juliet said to Romeo "You kiss by the book" but I doubt there would be more to the story if he was reading while he was doing it. However, I have had that feeling when trying to follow step by step GTD. It takes the pleasure out when you have to follow a flowchart in order to get the littlest thing done.

Avrum: are you still using notability approach with urban sketching?saw your post on effective remote work from a few years back. Intriguing!

Avrum - v cool set up and great blend of tasks and daily notes! Is Notability used for the sketching mainly ? 😀

Love that idea Avrum of viewing from a higher perspective - seeing the whole picture whilst executing on tasks day to day. Food for thought

I was browsing in a bookstore today and found Cal Newport's Timeblocking Planner and his new book "A World without Email".
I am listening to some of his podcast, and he does have good things to say.
He talks about the benefits of analog work on deep topics using a notebook, addresses criticisms of productivity, discusses when to use digital tools.
He is very articulate and does come across as being super intelligent.
He has a podcast where he is contrasts timeboxing vs. list-making. But I didn't listen to it.

Regarding Seraphim's post:
<<But I know people who live at those levels (like my wife) who have no discernible "time management system" -- generally they have a very clear focus for their life which is supported by a solid, consistent schedule, but have little interest in the kinds of systems we discuss here.>>

I think this must be a matter of personality type. I am not sure, but I suspect that on the Myers-Briggs personality types, the INTJ is the most interested in time management.

<<So it makes me wonder sometimes. What is the real bottleneck for achieving a "level 4" kind of life? Are "time management systems" and "personal productivity systems" central to that? Or are they only "necessary conditions"? Or are they really only ancillary supports that themselves become an obstacle when they are given too much centrality in our lives?>>

These are all good questions. I can think of times recently where my time management was confining. I did the Randomizer for 4 hours, and really fighting it after a while. Sometimes in the morning I start with short times of 1 minute, 2 minutes, or 5 minutes. But I think sometimes I go on too long when I would be better to drop the timer entirely. Doing one mental process for too long can get fatiguing and is better to switch to some other method or go unstructured. Perhaps some of these techniques are better treated as scaffolding that is removed when no longer needed, or as a crutch, or a warmup, to prime the pump, to get started and when the flow comes to be given up.
It seems that sometimes the system can run your life. But a system cannot substitute for one's own judgment or reasoning. It is a tool for the brain but doesn't replace it. Although a time management system need several components, at some point to continue to add more components could be counterproductive. It seems it as just as important to know when to ignore your system otherwise you can become a slave to it, and forget to listen your emotions and intuition.

Regarding the questions in the OP:


At some point people started to call GTD a "methodology" and so they also call Ivy Lee's advice his "method" even though he himself never did. I find that somewhat cringy.

There are two essential differences between what Ivy Lee did back then and what is now called his "method."

First, we have the fact that every of these office workers had received the method as an order from above, possibly presented as new, innovative insight from a specialist. I think it makes a difference when your boss orders you to do something and all your colleagues know it. And Mr. Lee knew that, when he gave that advice.

Second, there certainly was a social dynamic going on there. Probably competition. Maybe shame, if you wouldn't use the method without success. Even the fear of loosing one's job? I don't know. Or more positively, the office group now had a new game, new banter.

This comes back to the other thread with the "marketing" topic. We also see this with things like Trello that promises to give you the magic of Kanban. When people believe they are working according to some stupendous secret sauce, it will effect their behaviour.

The number of six tasks is probably chosen in relation to the number of lines these index card had. That's just a guess, however.

The tongue-in-cheek blog post by Merlin Mann, that was then received as the invention of the HipsterPDA wanted to make a point about the advantages of using "retro" technologies. Accordingly I would say that it is necessary to use an index card, including a ritual of it's destruction after use, in order to experience the "method" fully.

The method proposes that there is a perfect or at least optimal sequence to work through all tasks and that sequence remains stable enough to plan at least one day worth of work. It provides you with a daily goal of how far you want to advance into that sequence.

The best way to work the method is probably to use the New Question to generate the six tasks.

I used similar methods in the distant past and I realized after a while that I would reenter the same tasks day after day plus the two exceptional "deep work" tasks or so. This undermined my believe in todo lists. Then I encountered GTD and took it on happily because there was no daily todo list.

Discretionary time doesn't stop to be discretionary just because I made an agreement with myself on how I want to use it.

The advantage of time blocking the way Cal Newport proposes over a list of tasks for the day, is that you will by time in point when you have worked on a tasks sufficiently. Because you have added a layer to your structure, namely start and end times, you reap the benefits of a clear success definition. A specific amount of invested time is the generic currency for goal setting, always available in absence of another presumably better fitted metric.

Instead of having a goal of advancement trough a sequence, as per Ivy Lee's advice, with Newport's blocks our goal becomes two-dimensional. Advancement again and each block as the specific along the other dimension.

Newport's blocks worked very well for me, the feeling was one of being very focused as opposed to daily lists were I experienced constant anxiety in regard to being able to finishing the list.

Being focused on the task at hand is also a constant for me, when working with Mark's line of Autofocus systems. All versions of FVP always worked very well for me. Autofocus does not provide a fixed goal for the day. It's promise is that of optimal use of discretionary time (over time trough list maturing), by providing a mechanism for choosing tasks, that uses your intuition and your "thinking" brain, and in real time.

Hence, procrastination works differently for each of the systems.

With Ivy Lee you take your time with some tasks in order to avoid the end of the list, where you have conveniently parked to tasks to procrastinate on. With Autofocus you just skip the tasks you don't want to do and provide alternatives with list overload. With Newport's blocks you just wander off-list during a block, only to return to "class" soon enough to work enough on the task to create the illusion you were working on it for the whole block of time.

As stated by Mark in a prior comment, the problem with the Ivy Lee method is that you end up neglecting the minor routine tasks which leads to the downfall of civilization.

Both, Newport's blocks and Autofocus, are able to handle that. I have found that Autofocus does a much better job at it. But blocking out time for inbox clearance etc works as well. It's just not as satisfying as crossing things off a long list.

Dealing with the mundane however is the springboard to higher productivity in the "deep" realms. While Newport's blocks, GTD and Autofocus all clear "the runway", Autofocus does so in a more integrated way that helps at taking the "upswing" with you when entering those higher realms.

If that makes for even better productivity, I don't know. It surely feels more relaxed and fun. With GTD the fun is in the organizing, with Autofocus you actually have to do something in order to receive fun.

I really like everyone's analysis, but I'd like to play the devil's advocate a bit. I have a theory that in the end, from a "completeness" standpoint, all of these methods are equivalent in their technical capability to handle the major issues of productivity and goal setting and so forth. The difference comes in the psychology that they engender and the potential effect that this might have on your skill development.

I think people forget that we can develop skills sometimes, and while personality definitely has something to do with productivity, there are some personality traits that are associated/correlated with strong success and others that are typically not (in academic and workplace environments at least). These are all traits that have to do with either intelligence (hard to change) or conscientiousness, grit, or the like, which is our ability to take action. Each of the above systems is training us to take a certain type of action, so I think it's worth it to consider whether the fully developed skills that are trained by a given system are the ones that we want. It might also be the case that we need to evolve our systems over time as we are trained to optimize for things that we might not have been able to train before because of a lack in some more foundational skill.

I'd like to first play devil's advocate with the concept of Importance. I think today, in the productivity space, we are so well trained with regards to the Covey/Eisenhower matrix that we tend to only think of Importance in terms of the Importance/Urgency scale. So we get complaints like Mark's about getting important stuff done while neglecting the little stuff. But another concept of importance that might have been more relevant to the Ivy Lee method is the concept that there are things that need to get done, and then there are things that, given a choice between two items, don't need to get done as much. I find that I can almost always order my work this way if pressed to it. Usually there's something I'm willing to give up if I could only do one thing. That might not be the thing that is "highest leverage" in the long term. It might be something that I need to do to avoid short term negative consequences.

I think there's a strong argument for making sure that the things you are doing are high leverage, in that they move you forward in some important way, but that doesn't mean that "take out the garbage" is not a high leverage activity if it needs doing. If we approach the Ivy Lee method in this way, I think it demonstrates that it's capable of handling all of these tasks.

I do think that people using Ivy Lee have a tendency to not want to put "trivial" tasks on the list, even though they are important, such as Seraphim points out. Moreover, people often forget that the six things on the list are not the only things you are going to do in the day. Finally, it's always possible to "little and often" an Ivy Lee list by saying to work a little on some thing. It's possible that "working a little on backlog" is more important than Project X but "clear backlog" is less important than Project X. I think that's a subtlety of defining your list that isn't clear in Ivy Lee without more exposure to other systems. I'll also point out that there are a lot of similarities between 5/2 and other no list systems that work in order and Ivy Lee, depending on how you use them.

And what about time blocking or time-boxing? I've always found that time boxing was appealing to me, but I've also been traditionally terrible at following a time based schedule. One thing that Ivy Lee has on this is that I can essentially come up with a linear schedule to follow that isn't based on a strict time schedule.

But Cal Newport has another interesting take on time blocking with the way that he arranges his time blocks. Unlike someone like Brendon Burchard or others, who tends to want to stay pretty strictly to time blocks, Cal invites flexibility in handling them explicitly in his system, such that he actually writes his blocks down in a way that is designed to anticipate and accept when your schedule doesn't work. At a given point after you "break your schedule" you simply reschedule the parts you have left and record the other stuff that interfered. This is a pretty strong technique against the perfectionist tendency, I think, because it allows for people to not feel bad about a missed schedule, but also allows for them to have the intention of a schedule. Newport also addresses other techniques that can be used to manage time blocking, so that it is more likely to succeed.

Newport also explicitly incorporates tasks and allows for there to be shallow time for working on shallow tasks that just need to get done, as well as enabling open ended collection and organization of tasks that come up. This avoids the situation where we tend to over-schedule ourselves into the future. This also makes time blocking much more flexible.

And now I'll take the opportunity to poke some holes at Mark's systems, since I think it's a useful exercise. Two of the biggest principles in Mark's systems are "little and often" and "standing out". They also rely heavily on incorporating the goal-setting and intention setting features that are often handled out of band in other systems in-band during the processing of the list. The idea is to allow for goals to emerge.

However, a lot of psychological research would tend to put this into question, particularly the gamification that encourages increasing the "task count" rather than focusing on metrics like "time spent." There's the principle of temporal discounting, which suggests that our ability to make good long term decisions is severely hampered in the moment. Then there's the research on task switching which suggests that task switching is extremely expensive. The research on attention and concentration and flow point to the concept of attention residue, which Mark actually tries to take advantage of, but which threatens in the little and often modality to hamper the efficiency of all tasks. Newport's approach to this is to incorporate fixed-schedule productivity in which there are explicit downtime spaces every day, consistently, so that the time has a chance to work over things, but without that working over having the chance of interfering with other important work.

Now, someone might argue that Mark's systems are designed to put you into the flow of working your system, checking of tasks and getting into things. They might also suggest that Mark's systems help to focus your attention onto things and draw you into executing on them. I think the argument could be made that if one has a lot of little tasks that are hard to get moving, but which do not require significant cognitive load, then that might be the most effective use of brain power to help overcome procrastination. But I think you could also make the case that as you progress towards a more and more optimized system, the goal would probably be longer sessions on more deep work and less task switching and less attention being placed on working the system. That is, we might also consider every move back to our lists as counter productive, and thus, the goal should be to minimize the need to return to our system so long as we remain focused and attentive on doing the right things.

It seems to me that we could criticize Mark's system on the whole for encouraging too much shallow work and not promoting or incentivizing deep work, which is arguably the work that people should focus on (that's up for debate). The counter-argument made by GTD and Mark and others is that you want your landscape to be clear before you are able to work on that deep stuff. That's true enough, but it's not a good thing if your system continues to encourage you to work on shallow things beyond what is necessary for you to effectively engage with your deep work that is higher leverage.

Mark has said before that often in those cases, it's often better to schedule (aka, time block) the deep and important work rather than work on it from a list. That statement itself has pretty big ramifications. One could argue, if the whole point is to make sure that you are spending enough time on deep work, and you accomplish this through scheduling that time, then isn't time blocking responsible for this, and the lists largely ancillary and "irrelevant" in some sense? This would mean that the primary driver for value-driven productivity could still be laid at the feet of time blocking even within Mark's world.

Finally, there's another aspect of importance that comes up. Mark has said, "If I spend all my time doing the most important stuff, when does the unimportant stuff get done?" What if the correct answer is, "It doesn't"? There's an aspect of Mark's systems that has always had the undercurrent of "How do I get all the stuff done?" Now, in truth, this has been refined over time significantly, and the modern standing out systems are more about finding the right things that you really want to be done, rather than trying to do everything on your list. That means that the list is the options list rather than the to do list. But there's still been this sense of "don't forget the little stuff!"

But maybe the answer to the little stuff really is to let it go. There are certainly some things that are important enough to get done, no matter what, but those, despite their mundane nature, probably aren't really little. Things like eating and sleeping are mundane, but probably rank as truly important. But there are a lot of other things that maybe, if we asked ourselves truly whether or not they were worth doing if some other thing was to be neglected, we don't really want to do after all, or at least shouldn't do.

The research on successful people has expanded, and multiple researchers have observed that many of the most successful people have achieved what they have by spending significant amounts of time (60% or more in some estimations) doing the things and producing the things that make them uniquely valuable and productive. In other words, these are the things that are the true value offering and the things that differentiate their lives from others. In some sense, many of the most successful are ruthless in figuring out how to remove anything that isn't part of that value proposition, whether in their family life, work life, or elsewhere. For most people, that means more time on deep work, especially these days, though for some people, it's more about their ability to make decisions, rather than their deep work ability (CEOs, for instance). (c.f. -- Brendon Burchard, Cal Newport, James Clear, Robert Mauer, Covey, David Marquet, Jordan Peterson's Big Five personality research, &c.)

Mark has said before that he's very interested in how people became successful and what they did to get there, rather than what they do once they are already successful. But I think there is a lot of research into that, and there are patterns that emerge.

Thus, maybe the answer is to make the time for the things that matter, and let the rest of it go. Mark has pointed this out himself on more than one occasion. And it's possible that Mark's systems are uniquely tuned to allowing for an intuitive dismissal process over time to let things go, but does that come at too high a psychological cost in the moment for those things that *do* matter?

If we look at Little and Often and Ivy Lee, we can see something of the opposite skills development. Ivy Lee's method is essentially a training ground for extreme doggedness, to focus on the completion of a thing to the exclusion of all else. Successfully learning how to use this means that you have to learn how to attenuate your task sizes to just the right levels, so that you aren't doggedly working at something much longer than you should, and that you switch to another task at the right time. But Little and Often encourages taking little bites of things at a time. This means that you're probably going to have an initial burst of encourage progress on a number of things that you were afraid to start because of their size, and that can help you to progressively refine your goals and understanding of your landscape.

However, is the little and often/standing out gamification going to work when you have to spend 5 hours a day on a single large, big project? Even in the case where you can break the project down into smaller units that might only take 1 hour at a time to complete, the ratio of "big important" tasks that you complete to the small minor ones might not be very high. If that's the case, when you get that hit of "you're doing good" dopamine for crossing off a finished task, you have one of two choices for the big task, take it in lots of little small bits, thus incurring the psychological penalties of task switching and attention residue and mental decision fatigue, to say nothing of the difficulty of caching back in the work you were working on (which can be significant, taking as much as 30 minutes to get back), but increasing your task counter on "big things" to the detriment of effectiveness on that big task, or spending a single large time chunk on that big task (maybe with small breaks), but then incurring the negative reinforcement of other smaller tasks being much more rewarding inside of the system?

It seems to me that there could be a danger in the little and often/standing out model centered around this issue, where the skill you could be developing and the method itself might be training you to prefer keeping up on small tasks, rewarding you for either shallow work on a deep task or shallow tasks in general. That is, could Mark's little and often have the negative side effect of encouraging shallow work rather than deep work?

The time blocking method I think falls somewhere in the middle between Ivy Lee and Mark's systems with regards to little and often. Whereas Mark encourages a dynamic little and often, and Ivy Lee has an "all at once" model, the time blocking method encourages an upfront plan or intention of blocks of time spent on things, which for some items might be more than enough to complete them in one go, but for the big things that are more traditionally associated with procrastination, it amounts to a careful and regular application of little and often at a scheduled time.

Mark has repeatedly said that little and often is relative. That's true, but if you have a few relatively small tasks and one relatively large task, the "little" of the large task might still be large enough that it is negatively incentivized inside of the system relative to the other small tasks. Mark's systems give you a reward for completely and crossing off tasks, not for spending lots of time doing deep work and thinking (which inherently means being out of the system in some sense, wrapped up in the specific project/task). Thus, Mark's systems might work really well to help you get control of your overall life if you are overwhelmed with little things and with too many commitments, but if you've managed to get all your commitments under control, and you are no longer overwhelmed, but just need to take lots of deep work and action on the main things that you care about, while occasionally handling some small stuff, are Mark's systems up to that challenge in terms of incentivizing the correct behavior?

As an extreme example, Newport gives the example of Donald Knuth, who famously does not accept email (only snail mail) and who spends all of his time doing a few very important, limited things, while batching his contact with the outside world in large intervals (months) so that he can spend most of his time working on his big tasks. Essentially he's largely reduced or eliminated almost all of his shallow work to protect that deep work.

In such a case, a routine and schedule is traditionally regarded as highly important, but your task list is pretty small, and often very linear. This is the way that a lot of authors work, with regularly scheduled time for deep work. It's often very clear what the next step is in a writing process, even if there are many of them. This makes any lists of actions more like a plan and less like a to do list.

And at some point, if we think about Mark's lists, or Ivy Lee, or Newport-style time blocking, that's what you get. Newport explicitly has a schedule or plan. Ivy Lee is basically a linear plan of action, but more flexible on time, however, as an Ivy Lee list matures, it's probably also more sensitive to time as the user matures in their ability to predict the size of tasks and manage them appropriately. As a Mark style long list system matures, the list becomes more and more ordered, and if you get your stuff under control, and you get on top of your work, and you begin pruning your commitments, and you begin to really attune to your day and figure out when the right time to do what is, that long list starts to become much closer to a schedule or plan of time blocks than it does an arbitrary to do list. If one learns how to appropriately manage and control interruptions, and create spaces of freedom for more discretionary time, then it's likely that you gain more and more routines and habits surrounding that list, until the list is pretty stable.

At some point, a suitably pruned and controlled long list actioned in a mature environment that protects one's discretionary time, might as well become a time block schedule, just written another way. The same could be said in the other direction: a time block schedule that must endure lots of interruptions and changes in routine and habits, constantly being readjusted, eventually becomes a list of actioned items much list a Mark style long list, just written another way. Thus, in some sense, a long list becomes a time block and a time block can become a long list.

My final little "devil's advocate" here is that, maybe, yes, I do want one system to rule them all, at least in my own life. Sure, I could try to manage expert execution competency in more than one system and try to figure out when best to use which one and for what reasons, and then try to dynamically hop between them, but that doesn't seem like a very satisfactory solution to me, and it's not likely one that I would take well to. If I derive my chief value of my time from managing my big work tasks with time blocking, it's unlikely that I'm then going to add enough value in the rest of my time by switching to a long list system for the other times. I'd rather just get good at time blocking everything in some fashion, and execute to do lists with something simpler. Likewise, if I'm going to use a long list system, I don't really want to have to time block myself to get value from it, or start doing Ivy Lee type stuff. I want that long list to manage my time. that means that it should help me get my deep work done in the right amounts and in the right quantities, and it should take care of the shallow stuff, too. Otherwise, if I'm taking things outside of the long list, then I'm also taking it outside of all the good stuff I should get from a long list, such as goal-setting and dismissal. And the same goes for Ivy Lee. If I'm focusing so hard on getting the most important things done first, then I should be able to relax and have some freedom of behavior outside of that, not have to run another system.

In reality, it's not that simple, but I think it might be better to find the system that delivers the highest value, and then figure out how to really use it well, potentially mitigating any weak points, rather than trying to mix and match to such a degree that you only kind of use the systems well and none of them to their full potential.

I have read Aaron's last post.
I have read Cal Newport's book "Deep Work". I looked at his Timeblocking planner, and saw his short video on it, and listened to portions of his podcasts, and listened to portions of interviews on Youtube.
He seems to advocate timeblocking your work schedule, but having a cutoff point. I seem to remember that he advocated timeblocking your whole day, 24 hours. It might be in Deep Work, or it might be some other book that referenced Newport and ran with it.
In a podcast, he answered someone's question about Bullet Journal vs. his planner. He admitted that one could do the same thing in a Bullet Journal.
I saw a few reviews on Youtube of his Timeblocking Planner. Some like it. Others went back to their Bullet Journal. I noticed when they showed what they did for timeblocking - some had not filled out all of the hours, but had left gaps. It looked more like a schedule for the day.
I think there's a distinction between timeboxing and timeblocking. Timeboxing is assigning a certain time limit to something, say 15 minutes. Timeblocking is assigning a certain time, say 3 pm, with maybe a time limit, from 3 pm to 4 pm. I know that Mark Forster advocates timeboxing; it is mentioned in his Get Everything Done. I use timeboxing regularly, sometimes using some tip he advocates. I don't think Mark Forster advocates timeblocking, but he can certainly his own opinion about it. The subject of assigning tasks to your calendar has come before in the forum. You might find it if you search for it. I know that one time management system recommends assigning to a time any tasks taking 30 minutes or more. There are numerous videos on Youtube about timeblocking, and people use it differently and don't necessarily mean the same thing. Some just mean a general schedule.
I have tried in the past scheduling the whole day. Depending on how many hours, it takes more will power and discipline to work for longer periods of time and in a certain sequence. It also takes more upfront planning. I tried the Pomodoro technique, which advocates focusing on 25 minutes and breaking for 5 minutes. I have kept up the 5 minute break idea. But I found the first day I accomplished a lot, but by the third day I was tiring from mental fatigue and effort it took. However, if I worked up to it gradually, incrementally it might have worked.
Unfortunately, some failure is not the method, but trying to make a major change all at once, and implement a whole system without having developed the skill for it.
Ultimately, the best time management system is the one you can stick with. The only saying I can think at the moment is with all the Bible versions out there, the best Bible is the one you read.
Little and often doesn't cover everything. There is a place for deep work.
An example of mixing and matching-
let's say 2 hours of deep work, 2 hours working from Ivy Lee list, and the rest working from a long list, each assigned a certain time of the day.

One thing of importance, besides the question of an entire productivity/time management system, is what one uses to determine what one does for a day and for the moment. It could be your boss or parent or teacher tells you what to do. Or today one's email.
I suppose many people throughout history otherwise have used their brain or memory, or what they felt like doing. They might have a mental schedule or list in their head. Hamlet mentions a tablet, and in book Hamlet's Blackberry, the author tells what this was, it was portable, and one could write down a few things on it, and erase it, and start over again. Once people could start to have their own notebooks, they kept commonplace books where they kept notes, often in categories. They kept diaries or journals, where they wrote a day's schedule or what they did for that day.
It seems that writing things down is done as a tool for aiding the process of thinking, and the paper is a tool or an extension of the brain. The thought process is complicated enough that one need to see the items to juggle it in your mind to plan or to execute.
However, if this is the case, one could say that one's brain is primary mode, and paper is secondary. But, with computers, many have to use more mental tools. But still, often times it is some form of a list. Timeblocking uses a list. In Cal Newport's planner there is a column for tasks, and a page to write down the week ahead, and he advises drawing your timeblock for the day from these lists. The timeblock is a list in chronological order.
One could work from one long list. One could have a master list and daily draw from it to make a daily list.
Once you have the list, you could make sub-lists.
This might be a list of things to be done, or thoughts.
It seems with the type of work that Cal Newport does, deep work, intellectual work, if he is writing, and needs to develop complex computer systems or writing books, he is not writing for the most part actionable items, but writing down systems of thought which he is cogitating about. He might need to juggle these ideas in his head for an hour or more, or otherwise lose his train of thought or connecting the dots. If one is doing this most of the day, then working from a long list might not be necessary. I assume that Cal Newport does programming, so programming one's tasks in a time block, and sequencing them in chronological order might be using a mental process he is exceptionally good at to begin with, and enjoys doing it.
The longer the list the more organization is required, and you need some way to do it. The type of work and one's personality has to determine much of this.

Regarding the Pomodoro technique. I think focusing on one thing for 25 minutes can be a good thing. Taking 5 minute breaks regularly is a good thing.
I am not working from a long list at the moment, but I have done it. Right now I am making a new list daily, sometimes consulting other lists. I have kept from Pomodoro working in 25 minutes slot, and maybe making a list of things I want to do in that time frame.
I could use more structure in day, so timeblocking an hour each day on one item for a while might be good for me. It might be enough. Or working on a list of must-do-today items for an hour.
What I found about Pomodoro is that working in these 30 minute time frames, when you must focus on one thing or what you planned to do for 25 minutes, for hours every day is fatiguing, almost like working in a factory. Focus is good, but we all have limits of mental power, and will power. More of a good thing is not necessarily better. Timeblocking is good, but is timeblocking the whole day better? It seems to me that working for let's say 8 hours with a sequence of tasks all for a certain length of time, 5 days a week, is putting a lot on one's will power to execute. Your executive part of your self has become the factory foreman, and if your personality or mental limits was not consulted, another part of you will rebel.
There are certain personalities that can do this, who are self-disciplined and thrive on structure. Others would be better off structuring some of the day, and leaving portions unplanned and unstructured.
"Flow" often comes after you start and get involved with the task. It seems it's better if you become aware that you are in the flow state, to go with it, and abandon your plan, abandon your time limit. Your insight might not come again. Your motivation is high - take advantage of it. Highly structured time management systems often don't allow for this, and make one feel guilty when you depart from it, when departing from it for now might actually make you more productive.

I remember seeing a book called "The One Thing" which recommends that if you spend 4 hours a day doing one thing you will get extraordinary results. The book references writers who do this, or CEOs. This is the one piece of advice in this book. However, for many people this is impractical. They don't have schedules that allow for this, or jobs, the ability to do something for that long a period of time. It would be counterproductive to attempt this and get fired, or handed divorce papers, or become a crackpot, or go insane. One hour a day doing one thing might get extraordinary results and that might be enough.
We should meet these kinds of claims with some degree of skepticism. It is unlikely that anyone who does not know you can give you the system that you need to run your life. No matter how good the system, your inner gremlin will find away to get around it. No system is going to protect one from failure, or the messiness of life. Life is unpredictable. If your system works 75% of the time, that might be good enough. Managing one's life is a skill. One can only learn so much ahead of time. Much of it can only learned by doing it. At some time, one has trust one's own self that one will find the right way, which is suited to you and no one else, in the doing. Even Cal Newport on his blog references the scene in Star Wars where Luke is told to trust his feelings.

‘Turn off your computer, turn off your machine and do it yourself, follow your feelings, trust your feelings

https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2021/05/17/luke-skywalker-digital-minimalist/

I visited the local bookstore after some time away during this pandemic, and found this book "The One Thing". I checked and the book does recommend spending 4 hours every day on the one thing, and time block into your schedule. The earlier the better, let's say from 8 am to noon. the book references Stephen King the writer, who did this.
I didn't find in browsing the book what the one thing is. It seems it is left up to the individual.
You pick the one thing that is most important. The principle is that if you narrow your focus to one thing, you can achieve extraordinary results.
The important sentences have been underlined. There are diagrams illustrating the principles. One diagram shows the work/life balance out of balance. Instead of recommending work/life balance, the book actually says that to have it out of balance is good thing.
The books suffers from a lack of specificity. Some extraordinary individuals might have done this at some point in their career, maybe Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Concert pianists might typically practice 4 hours a day, or writers write for 4 hours a day. I don't find anything in the book to indicate what the one thing is. Is it an activity? A principle? A goal?
It is a short book and easy to read if you look at the underlined sentences.
I have a suspicion that there is some deep truth here, that only needs to be fleshed out, but the book didn't. Is it there should be one overarching principle that should govern all our actions, or one skill that defines who we are, that unifies all the jobs we've had, or one character trait that defines our calling, or is it one activity that we spend 10,000 hours on until we become expert at it? (I suspect the author is thinking the last). How to deal with the many things in life to think about and do, and bring order and simplicity to it all, and choose -there might be value somewhere in the book, yet if taken unwisely, could be dangerous. There is danger in trying to go great things and narrowly focus on one to the detriment of the rest of your life.
I remember someone told me years ago, that a man said to a guru, "I want to save the world". And the guru replied, "What the world needs is to be saved from people like you."

I have a novelist friend whose writing schedule is 7-1030pm Mondays and Tuesdays. His agreement with himself is that he will sit in front of the computer during those hours and do NOTHING ELSE. Even if he's too tired to lift a finger, he will sit and stare at the screen if nothing is coming out.

I like that discipline. It's all too easy to want to check email when the work isn't flowing.

An amusing contrarian view from the good Dr Johnson himself: "Idleness is often covered by turbulence and hurry."

- https://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/johnsons/idler/chap31.htm

What an interesting thread. Great to read that there are others out there in the world that think about this stuff as much as I do. So many times while reading this I've thought "Yes! That's me!"...

— I've tried Pomodoro technique several times. It has it's pros, but man it is hard to maintain. Couldn't keep it up for more than a day.
— Tried scheduling every minute. Can never ever keep to it. I've recently considered logging any on-the-fly adjustments, so the past is a log, and the future is the plan in real time.
— Tried scheduling big tasks but leaving gaps between. It actually worked quite well in keeping me focused. Dan Charnas has a pretty good method (though I couldn't keep to it) in Work Clean (Everything in Its Place on Kindle). He also discusses "finishing tasks" and has some really grounded advice on strategies for finishing.
— Tried "The One Big Thing". The author took what should've been a blog post and expanded it into a book: "What's the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?" For me, it would be to sell all my stuff and be an extreme minimalist...75% of my to-list is related to things and stuff—fix this, buy this, paint that, clean that. Not practical with a family.
— Tried time boxing. I do like this method, but don't use it very often anymore. I even own 15, 30, and 60 minute sand timers that I used to use religiously. Tried the book "Get it done in 10 minutes a day". Actually a remarkably useful idea for one or two long-term projects like cleaning the garage.
— Tried all of Covey's stuff.

Some thoughts:
— Whether we like it or not, we all time-block when somebody sets a meeting with us—the dentist, work meetings, etc. They may take more or less time than planned, but it is usually a best estimate by the one setting it.
— My current philosophy of what I really need for tasks are: 1) A list. 2) A Calendar. 3) The flexibility to "do it now if it needs to be done now". Permeating all three of these is the principle to rest as needed, usually by quietly sitting, lying, or walking.
— With the list, the simpler the better. One list (whether long or no-list) has proved more effective than contexts for me. But I do use one for work and a separate one for home. Simple Scanning has been the algorithm of choice for me, but one day I'll get up the courage to try AF1 or AF4.
— With the calendar, keep the freedom to time block as much or as little as needed. Whatever I schedule, keep to it. If I finish early fine. If I don't finish in time, tidy it up for resumption later (i.e. put stuff away). If I want to time block something for 4 hours, great. If I need to take physical breaks during this 4 hours, great. No need to treat it like a prison sentence. Stay on the task for that long, but physically rest with walks, chats, or stretching as needed. Forcing myself to stick to it makes me more honest with scheduling in the future. It provides feedback, and usually results in my wanting to schedule shorter sessions.

So, this is my current master system based on years of failing and flailing. As for things that aren't actionable (documents) simply have a place for everything and put everything it it's place, and clean/tidy assiduously while working (put the file away now, wipe down the counter right after it gets messy) works for this category.

I'm by no means perfect at this, but I think this is what works best for me currently...until I come up with something new next week.

Aaron, have you read "The Now Habit?" His system is one of scheduling everything (meals, playtime, meetings) except work, then you work on your priority in 30 minute time boxes that aren't scheduled. Mark them on your calendar after you finish a complete session. Keep repeating the 30 minute time box through the day between meetings, and administrative work, and by the end of the day you may have 7 or 8 of these 30-minute chunks for a total of 3-4 hours a day. I think this is similar to what Mark is saying that "little and often" can be as short as 1 minute or 4 hours. The Now Habit just says that little is "30 minutes" and often is "whenever you can squeeze one in between all of your other stuff".