Time Blocking Planner Review | Cal Newport Deep Work - Will it work for you?

Hey Muses! Welcome back to my channel.

Are you curious about Cal Newport's new Time-Block Planner? Well here it is!

I've been using it for about a week and I am ready to give you a full review. By the end of this video you'll know if the new Time-Block Planner is right for you, because I am going to talk about the physical quality of it, how functional the planning pages are, and also how well it as a time-management system fit into my existing planning and organizational system. Because as Cal Newport says in the instructions at the beginning of this book, this is supposed to be a supplement to one's existing system as opposed to a replacement for it.

Watch the video below or read on for the full transcript.

Time Blocking Planner Review | Cal Newport Deep Work - Will it work for me? // Curious about Cal Newport's brand new Time-Block Planner? I purchased one and ...

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I have an entire coaching membership dedicated to helping people get organized, be productive, and more importantly stay consistent with their productivity so they can actually reach their goals without overworking themselves. You might say I am a little obsessed with organization planning and time-management. But you know, I've... I've come to terms with it.

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But that's why I'm making this video today. Because I think this planner in particular meets a really unique need. So let's get right on into the review.

So here's the Time-Block Planner itself. As you can see it is a lovely shade of blue, has a really simple blocky design (I'm here for puns, so I approve of it), has the name Time-Block Planner. The cover itself as you can see is a rather thin material. It's sturdy but it's delicate enough that I would be afraid of it getting banged up if I were to throw it haphazardly into a bag. But like I mentioned before the fact that it's not beautiful and bougie and perfect actually helps me use it more so I'm cool with that. It does however have this single ribbon bookmark which is a gorgeous orange color. I'm not one for orange but damn, nice choice! And then when you open it up to the beginning you get the cover page, "The Time-Block Planner a daily method for deep work in a distracted world Cal Newport" and there's actually a really nice in-depth chapter on time blocking itself and how to use this planner well.

And I wanted to share a couple of my favorite quotes. "This critical shift from managing tasks to managing time can massively increase the amount of useful work you accomplish. It also provides an anxiety reducing sense of control over your schedule." I can 100 attest to that.

And then it goes on to tell you about the two planning spreads that you have inside the book and what to do with them.

Here's another quote that I really like. "The planning may take time up front, but it will return much greater productivity for the entire week that follows." This is something that I believe heartily, that the more you plan the less you work later, and that is a huge cornerstone of my entire coaching philosophy (and especially my coaching membership where I help my members every Friday review the week that came before and plan for the week that's coming). Planning is so important and to have the accountability to actually follow through on that makes it so much easier to maintain, and then over time it's a snowball effect where you find yourself being more and more productive and experiencing more and more fulfillment, especially if you're working towards things that are meaningful to you.

Now let's look at the two planning spreads that exist in this book. (And yes, there are only two.) The first one is this two page spread at the beginning of every week, and it's simply the week ahead. Again, like he says and teaches at the beginning of this and also in his book "Deep Work," you want to be holding on to all of your tasks and your appointments somewhere else. This isn't where they live, this is not their home, this is not their permanent home. This is instead where they come out to play.

And so this is just a really simple blank two pages that you can use however your brain needs to use them that week, and that's something that I really appreciate. Because the way I need to plan is dynamic and changes based on what's on my plate any given week. So one week it might be just a really simple list of priorities, another week it might be a full journaling to figure out how to wrap my head around everything that's on my plate that week (and then spit out some priorities), it might be me mind-mapping, I might end up using this for Anytime Pages actually if I don't have my other notebook with me. It's just really simple, really straightforward.

Then the other planning page is - this the actual time blocking magic - and there are two pages for each individual day. And yes, there are seven days per week. I was a little concerned when I was originally reading the opening chapters because Cal Newport very much focuses on getting your work done at work (aka your Monday through Friday, nine to five that you can leave it at work). So I was a little afraid there weren't going to be days six and seven, but there are, there are seven days for each week, plus the two weekly planning pages at the beginning of each week.

Let's ignore this side for now and just look at this. This is the time block part. You would put in the date, and then for every darker horizontal line you would put a time over here.

Because of my invisible disabilities I'm a late riser, so my first hour tends to be either 10 or 11 am and then I just count on from there. If I have a really complex four hours I might actually have an hour be four rows instead of just two, so that way it's divided up into 15 minute increments instead of 30 minute increments.

After you've put in the time, you start actually drawing blocks. Let's go to his example of what that looks like. He has his time over here and then he's drawn circles (*squares) around blocks of time and put inside what he'll actually be spending that time on.

For example, if one of the sections is really small but a lot happens, he just puts a number and then over here he writes a short list of what goes into that time. You do all of that at the beginning of the day, and then as the day goes on you will likely encounter challenges and you'll have to redo your plan.

So in this example he was able to get from 9 to 11 on plan, but then something came up, something changed, and he just exed out the rest of the plan for that day and put the revision to the side. And then you can rinse and repeat. So that's why on this page there are four columns, it's so you can have four different iterations as you go. I'll talk about that a little bit more when we're done with the flip through, but the idea of iterating and revising as you go is really helpful and I highly encourage you to engage with that process.

Now over here we have really simple daily metrics. So if there are habits you're wanting to track, if you're trying to keep track of how many hours of deep work you do every day, you can track that in there. It's basically a blank space to track whatever you want.

And then down here, these are columns that you fill while you're working. You do not put things in here at the beginning of the day when you block out your time. This is supposed to be a place where you can catch ideas and tasks and other things that may come to you while you're engaging in the work that you've planned over here. So for example, if I have a time block right here which is an hour editing this video for example, and I am actually in this period of time and I am editing my video, but let's say 15 minutes in I realize, "Oh! I need to call so and so because xyz." I could technically drop what I'm doing, drop the editing and make that c,all but that would be unhelpful on a number of levels. It would break my flow, I would end up not spending my full time block on the editing, and it would make it harder to come back to the editing after the phone call because of task switching. So instead of making the call right then and there, you write it down over here and then you get back to your work. Same thing with ideas. This is a safe place to catch things that come up throughout the day so you won't forget them and you don't have to worry about it, so you can go back to what you were doing and then at the end of the day (and this is what this checkbox is for, his shutdown, and he describes this at length earlier in the tutorial portion of this planner - but the shutdown process is about literally shutting down for the day so you have nothing left on your plate until you come back to work the next day) so that is when you would actually process anything you've written here into your permanent home system.

So for me that's my Notion planner. But that way they get logged in a more permanent home at the end of the day instead of during the day as they come up, and that allows you to spend more time in actual deep work working on the things that you planned.

So the last thing I want to mention in this flip-through is that this book only has 13 weeks in it. It is not a full year. It's about three months, which is something to keep in mind if this is something you like, because you would end up buying about four a year. If you find it that valuable, it's definitely worth the investment, I just wanted to make sure that information was included in this review so you could make a more informed decision and not expect this to carry you through a whole year. It's only three months.

And then at the end, I actually haven't noticed this, there's a final three pages which I'm gonna look forward to reading later.

I don't know if y'all care about these kind of aesthetics, but this price label is a part of the cover. It's not a sticker. It's actually a part of the cover, which makes the back rather ugly because it's very... It sticks out. It's an eyesore, but oh well.

So that is the flip-through of the Time-Block Planner.

Let's start with the physical quality of Cal Newport's Time-Block Planner. Is it gorgeous? No. Is it super high quality? Also no. But is it functional? Definitely.

While on the one hand I'm a paper junkie and I love buying gorgeous notebooks and journals, do I write in them? No. I don't. Because they're too pretty. I have recently discovered that the simpler a notebook is, the plainer it is, the more likely I am to actually write in it and use it.

So take my notebook that I've been using for Anytime Pages recently. (If you're not familiar with Anytime Pages, I did a whole video on them here, so you can check that out later.) This is the notebook I've been using recently. Super plain. Super simple. Kind of wibbly wobbly. I don't care if I spill water on it.

The thing about having a plain notebook is it allows your perfectionism monster to take a nap, which allows me to be a messy human being with messy thoughts on the page. Because really, so much of writing (when it's not final form writing that you're going to share with other people) writing is just about you engaging with your thoughts outside of your head. It's basically, all it is... And the majority of that process is messy AF, so if it's easier for you to write on something really plain that you don't feel precious about, it can be so much easier.

Even though the Time-Block Planner isn't like super bougie and luxurious, I actually prefer that because it makes it more likely for me to use it, and to not be afraid of being messy in it.

Because the whole point is it's a tool. It needs to not be something that's precious that I am curating. It needs to serve me, not the other way around.

Whereas I feel like if it were something super luxurious and high quality, my perfectionism monster would not let me write anything less than Shakespeare on its pages, and that is so unhelpful, especially when you're just trying to manage your time.

So am I a little disappointed with the aesthetic of the notebook? Sure. But at the end of the day that really doesn't matter. I actually feel like I am more inclined to use it because my perfectionism monster takes a nap when I open it up to write in it.

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Comment below and tell me if you're also someone who finds it easier to use a really plain and simple notebook. If so, write "Keep it simple" in the comments.

So now that we've done a quick flip through of the Time-Block Planner itself, I want to tell you a little bit about my experience that I've had using it this past week.

First of all, I absolutely love it. I honestly wasn't expecting it to be as helpful as it was. Because as you know from these two videos (Video 1, Video 2) I have a pretty extensive planning system inside Notion and I love it. I am obsessed with it. And part of me was a little concerned that I was ultimately just gonna waste money paying for the Time-Block Planner. I was really curious about it. I wanted to see it. I want to play with it. I wanted to use it so I could review it for you guys and also my coaching clients. But I really didn't expect it to be something that I would fold into my system, but it totally is, because it's designed to really just help you manage your time. You're supposed to keep track of all of your tasks and your appointments elsewhere. The Time-Block Planner is explicitly a tool to manage your time every day, and I have found that incredibly helpful.

I have been more productive this past week than I have in the previous months, and that's saying something because I'm a pretty darn productive human being (in spite of my invisible disabilities and mental health issues).

So some things that I learned over this week that I have found really helpful and makes my use of the Time-Block Planner more effective is first of all, when I start the day, I put in not only my existing appointments for the day that are already on my calendar - I put those into my Time-Block Planner - but I also put in my big rocks (which are the deep work sessions I want to do that day), but I also - and this is particularly important because of my invisible disabilities - I put in blocks for rest and recuperation.

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Unlike a perfectly healthy individual, I maybe have four to six usable hours a day, and that can be really frustrating when I want to do more, but I end up being more effective in the long run the more rest I take. So prioritizing that as one of the first three things that I block into my time for that day has been really really helpful, and it also helps me stay accountable to having those rest breaks. And actually, this was a side effect I didn't expect, it made it easier for me to task switch into rest when those times came. Whereas before, when I wasn't using the Time-Block Planner, I'd be like, "Yeah I'll take a break in the next hour or so," but I would be absorbed in a task and even if I'd set a timer for it, which is kind of one of my things, I would get in the zone and I would keep going until I had reached a certain natural stopping point. I would still have a really hard time letting myself take a break afterwards, even though I would be like out in the living room having lunch, maybe watching some dumb YouTube videos, just relax. My brain would still be back in the project I was working on before. Whereas now, with this discrete pre-planned time block for the day, when it's rest time it's like I have already in advance given my brain permission to rest and it's amazing. So that's been really cool and helpful.

Another thing I discovered which was really interesting is I started out the week by having fuzzier time block plans for the day, and I soon realized that that was my perfectionist trying to control me. Because I had the subconscious goal to not edit my plan at all that day, and it would only be in the left column. No edits to the right. As if that matters. I'm not getting a gold star for that. It just stresses me out. So now I am actually throwing myself into imperfection, being like, "Okay here's version one of today's plan. Let's see what actually happens later." And I have actually come to really enjoy revising my plan as I go.

So if you end up getting this planner, please take my advice: completely block out your full day like Cal Newport suggests, and then just revise it as you go. It's fine. It doesn't need to be perfect. There's no gold star at the end of a day where you never revised it. Just chill.

And then the last big thing that I noticed which was really interesting: as I went through the week, and I was able to see what versions of time blocking was really effective for me, and then when it changed was that I appear to have a capacity for deep work that is separate from my four to six usable hours a day. For example, on Monday Tuesday last week I had big deep work blocks at the beginning of each day, and then I did more minor tasks to wrap up in the second half of the day, but then when Wednesday came around (even though I hadn't necessarily gone over my four or six usable hours in the previous two days) I was just like... I was dead. It was not good. It was bad. And I felt guilty for it. But what I came to understand was that I had never really focused that much on deep work on a daily level before, and all it took was two days to wipe me out. As I go forward, I am going to experiment with also thinking about time blocking my week in a specific way. So that way, every third day, I'm doing much less cognitively intense tasks to help my brain rest and recuperate (even while I'm continuing to get stuff done). So that's what I'm gonna play with this coming week. I hope it goes well. If you are curious to hear about that, how it goes, let me know in the comments and I'll get back to you.

So what are my final thoughts on Cal Newport's Time-Block Planner? I really like it and I am going to continue using it which, like I said before, I did not expect that happening., I thought I was going to use it for a week do a review, and then it was just going to be a nice blue thing on my shelf for a long time. But no, I'm going to use it. I really enjoy it.

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I think the only thing that I wish could happen was I would love to be able to time block in Notion, because that's where the rest of my everything is right now. But the way Notion currently works, there isn't a really handy way to time block. (And for those of you screaming at me through the screen, I know I could time block in Google Calendar. But here's the thing, there's too much friction between me and completing that task, whereas with this messy notebook I can be messy in here. Messiness is helpful. And that whole feeling precious about it? I have that same problem with my calendar. And also if there's too much going on in my calendar, I will lose track of super important things - like my business meeting every Tuesday with my dance teaching partner. It's kind of important. I like my calendar only having actual appointments and really important reminders in it. So it's not an effective time blocking tool for me. It might be great for you. Go for it.) But I would love to have some sort of time blocking thing digitally, and I'm gonna try to figure it out because I want it in my life but until then I am definitely gonna keep using this paper planner because I have really enjoyed it this past week. It has been really helpful. And if you're anything like me, you might find it really helpful too.

So that's my review of Cal Newport's new Time-Block Planner. I hope you found it helpful. If you have any questions about the planner, don't hesitate to leave them for me in the comments. I respond to each comment personally.

If you're someone who gets really excited about planning and organizing and time blocking, but by the time you are done with all that organizing, planning, and time blocking and the time has come to do the work in one of your time blocks, and you're like... Crickets. If you struggle at all to actually get started when the time has come to do the actual work that you've been planning for, I highly recommend checking out my Masterclass that I call Butt In Chair Time. It is my super weapon against procrastination and resistance, and it is the perfect complement to time blocking (and if you take the Masterclass, you'll understand why). It's a combination of three pivotal mindset shifts and one really simple three-step system to help you overcome procrastination and resistance consistently, so you can finally start making real progress towards your goals. You can get access to this Masterclass for free, all you have to do is go to this link and sign up.

If you liked this video, please hit that like button and subscribe, and please share it with your friends.

I'll be back next Tuesday with another video. I'll see you then. Bye.

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OUTTAKES: Time block pat... It begins already. Be product... Why can't I enunciate? Meets a... Fills? What verb is better there? It's too late to choose verbs apparently. Meets? Fits? Meets? Fills? But you know I've, I've come to terms with it. So that's why it's a part of my business. Check it out... Geez louise. I can't words. Okay. Than... Awful. [SING SONGY: Awful!] Invisible disability... Why are there so many vehicles? that would really help me a lot. I need to stop begging for subscribers. But I want more.