No single time management technique will work for every scenario. And no single time management technique will survive your entire career.

Time-blocking or not?

Notifications on or off?

Make yourself available for every request of your team or not?

As usual in entrepreneurship, there isn’t black or white. There is always a sensation or a distraction for an entrepreneur to attend to, so you will need to find a way to resist the temptation of all the distractions.

It’s good to be helpful for your team and your customers. At the same time, precious little gets done when you are constantly distracted by team members asking if you have a minute, or customers calling with something that could have waited for the next regular meeting.

What Can You Do?

As the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, I have experimented with multiple time planning techniques over the years.

The time-blockers amongst you will argue that time-blocking is a productivity technique that helps people get lots of stuff done. This is true in crisis — it helped me cope with an extremely intense period of time during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the other hand, time-blocking makes you inaccessible to your team.

You see, it’s not just about pro or contra time-blocking. As usual with reality, it’s a little more difficult.

Here is my latest approach to balancing the team and my work.

Beehive Days

I typically spend Monday to Wednesday in our Zurich office. Arriving early, holding regular meetings, having informal chats at the coffee maker, placing phone calls with customers and prospects, and getting lots of unforeseen tasks done. These are my beehive days, and I don’t even aspire to get any work done that requires clear thinking or full concentration.

I end my beehive days being dead tired, and it’s not uncommon for me to fall asleep earlier than the kids.

Concentration Days

On most Thursdays and Fridays, I work from home. Those days are quieter than the first half of the week, plus I have added an extra layer of security: I block my calendar so that Calendly doesn’t fill up my day. In this way, I can work on tasks that require clear thinking; for example, clearing to-do lists, preparing meetings, and cleaning up my mailbox.

Tech Blocker Days

For some tasks, my concentration days are not quiet enough. It’s those tasks that shape the future of our product: Writing specifications, working on the product roadmap, trialling new technologies.

As most of those tasks are not urgent, I cluster them in what I call tech blocker days: Once a month, I block off three working days with no meetings. I usually hide in the mountains just by myself, working on large tech tasks. It’s not uncommon for me to forget the time and work from dawn to dusk.

It’s incredible how far you get in three days when you can work completely undisturbed. But at the end of every tech blocker session, I eagerly look forward to seeing my team and my family again.

Conclusion

Don’t believe the management gurus. No single time planning technique will work for every scenario. And no single time planning technique will survive your entire career.

I have been continually adapting my time planning techniques over time, mixing different approaches and also having the courage to let go of obsolete techniques.

Just like your business probably doesn’t look and work the same as it did 10 years ago.