My weird calendar trick that actually cut my admin time in half

I was super skeptical when a buddy told me to color code my calendar blocks by task type, blue for billing, green for actual work, yellow for emails. Tried it for a week back in March and honestly it felt like busywork at first. But after 3 weeks I realized I was spending way less time bouncing between tabs and more time in the flow zone. Anyone else find a dumb simple system that somehow works way better than you expected?

3 comments

3 Comments

ray_burns7d ago

Victor's right about the visual processing part, but the real trick is that color coding forces you to actually plan your day instead of just reacting to whatever pops up next. It makes your brain pre-sort tasks before you even look at the details, so you know exactly what kind of energy each block needs. Once you train yourself to see yellow as "shallow work," you stop trying to cram deep focus into email time.

nathan_kim7d ago

Feel you @ray_burns, that yellow=shallow work trick really does rewire your thinking.

victorhernandez7d ago

I read somewhere that color coding taps into how your brain processes visual info faster than text.