You may have heard about block scheduling when it comes to middle or high school schedules, or experienced it yourself. It has to do with longer class times, but less days of a specific class per week. For example, an A/B block schedule means a student might take Math, History, and Biology on “A” days, and English, Art, and Spanish on “B” days. Proponents in favor of block schedules in the secondary levels say that it can boost productivity for both students and faculty, give more time to dedicate to learning, and reduce stress and anxiety due to having fewer subjects to manage each night with homework — if at all. Many students find they don’t have as much homework each night, as they’re able to complete most work in class with the teacher present to assist with questions or direction.
So how does this translate into adulthood?
Well, colleges essentially run on block schedules, so the shock value for students isn’t there, as they come up through their education with it for about 8 years prior to attending college. But it goes deeper than that once “real life” hits.
In case you’ve never heard of this productivity hack, “time blocking” is a scheduling format that boosts productivity by cutting up your day into specific chunks of time.
Each block represents a section of time that is dedicated to completing a specific task or type of task. For example, email. For many, you may have been taught to constantly be checking your email for updates and such, but really, it often ends up being a time-suck. You get lost reading subscription emails for things that have little or nothing to benefit you within them.