Time-blocking mostly failed me. Two pieces of it saved my week anyway.

Last spring I opened the same draft six times before noon and never finished a single paragraph.

I'd open it, read the last line I wrote, get pinged on Slack, answer the ping, remember an unsent invoice, check email, close the tab, and start over forty minutes later. By lunch I'd been at my desk for four hours and produced nothing I'd want to show anyone. I was busy the entire time. That was the worst part.

I'd been reading about time-blocking for a while, mostly from developers and makers who talked about it like it had reorganized their brains. So I gave it a real shot for a month. Not a casual "I'll try to focus more" shot. A full, color-coded, plan-the-night-before shot.

Here's what happened, including the parts that didn't work.

The version I thought I wanted