Why Your School Timetable Will Save You From Procrastinating

Other than your crush who always ghosted you, school had one thing going for it: its timetable. That thing is the ultimate productivity hack!

Why did it work?

A timetable is a simple system. You do the work listed for a specific time and nothing else. You don’t have the flexibility to procrastinate, nor do you have to waste energy deciding what you should do for the next hour while scrolling reels instead.

You see where I’m going with this?

The rigid workflow it provides is simple, yet flexible enough to let the math teacher steal your games time.

How to use it for productivity?

I used to use Google Tasks. I’d capture all my tasks, write down every detail, and then I’d scroll Reddit until I was too tired to do anything.

One day, while reading a book (I forgot which one), I read about how timetables force you into doing your work. They called it Time Blocking.

It’s exactly as it sounds: you block out time beforehand for specific tasks, which makes you feel obligated to perform them. As a bonus, it takes away the mental load of thinking about what to do next, because you’ve already cleared that hurdle when you created the timetable.

Now, you don’t have to make one timetable and follow it all year. That’s not the point. Each day can have a new schedule. The main goal here is just to get your butt out of bed.

Here’s how you can use this for yourself:

1. Digitally with a tasks and calendar app, or
2. On paper

Both are good, but stick to paper if your device is a literal social media black hole. I’ll be writing on how to make your devices a tool rather than a productivity trap soon, so stay tuned.

Get Tasks Out of Your Head

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, take the time to capture any task that comes to mind. Don’t worry about categorizing just yet; just add it to a general list.

The list can be a notebook or an app like Google Tasks.

Create the Timetable (Prefereably the night before)

When you are ready to create your timetable, pick out the top 3 priority tasks you wish to perform and add them to your schedule. Either create a timetable on paper with time on one axis, or use a calendar app like Google Calendar.

Don’t worry if you don’t know exactly how much time it takes to do a particular task, just give it an approximate block.

This is because, unlike your school’s timetable, you have to update this one as the day goes according to what you actually performed.

Example: I gave 1 hour to my “bug fixing” task but it ended up taking 2.5 hours. I’ll update the timetable by making that block bigger and moving down the upcoming ones. If any task has a strict start or end time, I’ll borrow or reduce time from other tasks accordingly.

“But Ayush, I have to do 100 things in one day!” No, you don’t. Do the heavy-hitting tasks first, and 3 is usually enough. You can put more than 3 tasks in your calendar, but they should be smaller ones, and only if you have the energy for them.

A constraint

Don’t have blocks for the whole day. Not from 12 AM to 12 AM.

Time blocking should be like school timings: a start time and an end time. This leaves you free to do anything you want/like and spend time with people after your productive day is over.

Have a strict end time in your calendar. If you wish to do any tasks after that, it’s up to you and your energy, but it shouldn’t be a requirement in your calendar.

Do As the Timetable Says

The next day when you wake up, after all the necessary “morning stuff,” all you need to do is keep your timetable in your line of sight. You read what the first task is, and you start.

Uh oh

You will run into this problem eventually: “I know I have to do this task, but I just don’t feel like it.” I was there myself just a few hours ago.

The Fix

Momentum is real. You can get into a task so deeply that you forget time. But as good as that is, it also creates a problem: switching tasks.

See, switching is hard because you just got off one task, and now you have:

1. Zero momentum
2. Less energy
3. A massive urge to procrastinate

Take a break. Have breaks in your calendar. I am not kidding when I say add everything: tasks, chores, breaks. Everything you need to do between your start and end time.

Even after a break, if you aren’t willing to start the next task, just read the task description. Think about what you need to do, find the minimum amount of action you need to perform, and start there.

I recently had a task: “Update LinkedIn.” Really? Who would want to do that when I can see the sweet end time getting closer?
Here’s what I did to start:

• Opened LinkedIn. That was the bare minimum.
• Browsed around, saw profiles, and compared them to mine (which had nothing in it).

Those two things were enough to motivate me to improve it and get started.

Another example if you’re still not with me:
“Refactor project.” Huge task, very high friction. Here’s what I did:

• Read through the code.
• Passed out for a bit reading the atrocity.
• Woke up and started.

When you have high friction (like not knowing what to do or fearing the energy cost) your brain tries to bail out just by imagining the effort.

In reality, you suffer more in your imagination than in reality. Just dip your toes into the task you feel like running away from, and you’ll have a good time.

Try this out for yourself for a few weeks, and I hope it works out for you!