Stop Playing Tetris With Your Day!

A kinder way to plan that won’t crumble at the first surprise.

Hey, free readers!

Today, I’m lifting the hood on the planning system that finally stopped my schedule from crashing and burning.

If you stick around past the paywall, you’ll get the complete blueprint — templates, step-by-step setup, and three real-world makeovers you can copy line-for-line.

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The Challenge: My Calendar Keeps Punching Me in the Face

Early Monday, I stared at a masterpiece in Google Calendar: hour-by-hour blocks in multiple colors, each labeled with military precision.

08:00–10:00 Deep Work (green), 12:30–12:55 Lunch (yellow), 14:00–16:00 Quarterly Report (blue).

“Today,” I bragged to my colleague, “nothing will break me.” By 09:30, everything was on fire:

• A “quick” client call swallowed my deep-work slot.

• A hallway chat turned lunch into a forty-five-minute gossip buffet.

• Outlook’s notification stole my two-hour writing block to crumbs.

If you’ve ever built a flawless schedule only to watch reality run it over, you’re in good company.

Why Classic Calendar Blocking Implodes

1. Life never asks permission. Meetings pop up, software stalls, the toddler spills juice.

2. One miss triggers the doom loop. Blow a single block and the rest topple like Jenga.

3. Context-switching costs real brain fuel. Jumping from design to finance to Slack is mental whiplash.

4. No room for spontaneous genius. Your best ideas rarely RSVP for 2:10 PM.

“Rigid time blocking can feel like a straitjacket: structure at the cost of freedom.”
— Cal Newport

Meet Flex-Blocking — Structure That Breathes

After a decade of self-inflicted schedule carnage, I ditched rigidity for Flex-Blocking.

Think of it as calendar blocking’s easy-going sibling: disciplined enough to keep you focused, loose enough to survive Monday.

The Four Core Moves

1. Plan by energy, not clock. Put brain-heavy work where your mind naturally sparks; shove email into the 3 PM fog.

2. Work in ranges. “Late morning — 90–120 min for marketing deck” forgives spill-over.

3. Add buffers. Two half-hour “Overflow / Wildcard” blocks absorb chaos.

4. Chase a Daily Big 3. Nail those three outcomes and the day’s a win, no matter the timestamp carnage.

One of my project managers swapped 42 rigid blocks for Flex-Blocking. One month later: 19 % more tasks closed and stress dialed back from DEFCON 2 to “I can breathe.”

Want the Full Blueprint?

Below the paywall, you’ll find everything I use with coaching clients:

• A detailed Flex-Block Planner you can recreate in a notebook, Notion, or the back of a napkin.

• Three deep-dive case studies (startup founder, PhD researcher, stay-at-home parent) with exact calendar screenshots rewritten as plain text you can copy.

• An Interruptions Audit Worksheet that reclaimed six hours of my week.

• An Advanced Energy-Mapping Guide — figure out your peak windows without fancy gadgets.

• A rapid-fire 5-minute Setup Walkthrough you can follow tonight.

If you’re ready to stop your calendar from mugging you daily, hit the subscribe button and steal every trick.

✂️ PAYWALL BREAK ✂️

(The rest of this letter is for paid subscribers — thank you for keeping the lights (and coffee grinder) on!)