One of the most valuable habits I’ve started lately is tracking my time.

Work blocks are a concept that I was introduced to in Cal Newport’s book Deep Work. Essentially, you schedule your activities in a day down to the hour, or in extreme cases, the minute.

Over the last few months, I’ve started using this system and it’s been a game changer. With a schedule as chaotic as mine, I need to schedule things. More importantly, I need to have them end. When my time for design work is over, it’s over. I close the related apps and move on.

But what has been most beneficial, and something I’ve only started in the last week, is tracking the accuracy of the blocks.

I estimate how long a certain task will take — say half an hour for grocery shopping. I’m terrible at estimating timelines. I always have been. This is because I tend to focus on the task itself and not all of the micro tasks associated with it.

30 minutes might be ample time for grocery shopping. But what about the commute, time in the elevator, a stop at the gas station on the way home…

These things add up. And the half hour that I estimated might turn into an hour or more by the time I return home and unpack everything.

Comparing my estimates to reality is an incredible lesson in time management that I wish I’d discovered years ago — especially on such a detailed and specific scale.

Understanding the reality of timelines will help me schedule things much better as I move forward. And this rescheduling will ultimately tame the often-rushed chaos of my life into a manageable calm.