Time blocking for software engineers who get interrupted
A time blocking system that survives standups, code review, and incidents: maker blocks, an interrupt budget, and honest estimates. Template included.
Updated · 3 min read
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The short answer
Time blocking works for software engineers only if it plans for interruption instead of pretending it away. The version that survives: two protected maker blocks of 90 to 120 minutes for real engineering, standup and meetings batched against lunch so they cannot split a morning, an explicit daily interrupt budget of about an hour for review requests and questions, and estimates multiplied by 1.5 because engineering estimates are famously optimistic. Paul Graham's maker's schedule essay explains the core truth: a single meeting placed mid-morning costs the whole morning.
A day that survives contact with Slack
| Time | Block | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 to 9:15 | Plan + triage | Pick today's one meaty task. Skim, do not answer, the overnight pings. |
| 9:15 to 11:15 | Maker block 1 | The hard thing. Slack closed, not snoozed, closed. |
| 11:15 to 12:00 | Interrupt budget | Code reviews, questions, unblocking teammates. Bounded, so it cannot eat the day. |
| 12:00 to 13:30 | Lunch + standup + meetings | Meetings batched against lunch split nothing. |
| 13:30 to 15:00 | Maker block 2 | Second push, or finishing block 1 honestly. |
| 15:00 to 16:30 | Shallow work | Email, tickets, PR comments, docs, small fixes. |
| 16:30 to 17:00 | Shutdown | Push the branch, write tomorrow's first task down, close the laptop on purpose. |
The rules behind the template
- Protect mornings, concede afternoons. Deep engineering quality tracks the first clean 2-hour block. Fight for one; be generous with the rest.
- Budget interruptions instead of banning them. "No interruptions" fails in any real team and makes you the blocker. A bounded window keeps you a good teammate at a fixed price.
- Estimates get the 1.5x tax. The task that feels like an afternoon is two days. Write the honest number and the plan stops lying; our planning fallacy guide has the research.
- One meaty task per day. Shipping one hard thing daily is a phenomenal pace. Three half-touched hard things is a bad week wearing a busy costume.
Running this in Kairo: the maker blocks are recurring tasks with planned times and estimates, captured once. Mid-flow discoveries, "that retry logic needs a fix too", go in through one-sentence capture without leaving the editor, and the focus timer keeps the block honest. The general version of this system is our time blocking app guide.
Frequently asked questions
How do I time block with daily standups?
Anchor standup against another boundary, start of day, end of lunch, so it fences a block instead of splitting one. A 10:30 standup in the middle of the morning costs far more than its fifteen minutes.
What about on-call and incidents?
On-call days are not maker days; plan them as pure interrupt budget and shallow work, and protect zero blocks. Pretending an on-call day is normal is how both the plan and the incident response go badly.
Do I need my calendar to enforce blocks?
Public calendar blocks help in meeting-heavy orgs. The private plan matters more: knowing today's one meaty task beats any colored rectangle.
Block tomorrow's maker morning
Kairo is free for 7 days, no card. Capture your maker blocks once and let them recur.