Blocks of Time
Gregg Blanchard •
For a long time I’d tried to carve out an hour here or 30 minutes there to work on SendView. Lately, however, I’ve spent those hours and minutes on other things and set aside multi-hour chunks instead.
I’ve been amazed at the difference it’s made.
Instead of only feeling comfortable cranking out a quick feature or bug fix because I don’t want to leave it half finished for a couple days and have to start over mentally when I return, I can get really deep into the code and build more complex things all at once.
For example, I’ve been wanted to build an advanced search functionality into the Inbox. And with one of these blocks of time I not only did it, but had time to do it right and fix a few lingering bugs along the way.
I guess I’ve always known this to some degree. I try to block out big chunks of time at the day job for more creative work. Otherwise, I never really get into the groove.
But this was a timely reminder that 3 one hour chunks of time do not each 1 three hour chunk, even if those individual hours are distraction-free.