Time Blocking
Time Blocking means you assign a dedicated timeframe in your day to work on a task. This helps you to keep the balance between staying focused and spending too much time on a task by getting into a "rabbit hole" = working too long on a task.
NotePlan supports Time Blocking by creating visually blocks of time in your timeline on the right, which hosts normally your events and reminders.
How to create a Time Block?
You can define a time block by adding a start and optional end time to various types of paragraphs in your daily notes. Here are some examples:
* Meditate at 8am
(Tasks)
- Reply to emails at 9am - 12pm
(Bullets)
1. Get lunch at 12:15pm
(Numbered Lists)
# 13:00 - 15:00 Team Planning
(Headings)
Note: As of version 3.3.1 time blocks are not sent to your calendar, they are only visually available in the calendar sidebar of NotePlan. However, there are plugins that can help with that. See below in this article.
If you are using tasks for time blocking this specific block will have a lower opacity in the sidebar after completing the task:
Why bullets, lists, and headings in addition to tasks?
Headings
## 09:00 - 11:00 Communications * Reply to emails * Reply to messages * Check to tweets
Lists and Bullets
- 09:00 - 11:00 Communications * Reply to emails * Check tweets
Daily Notes vs Regular Notes
* Reply to emails at 5pm >2022-01-10
Community Plugins
- With the plugin "Event Helpers" you can create calendar events from your Time Blocks (with the
/time blocks to calendar
command) - Using "Event Automations" you can create Time Blocks from tasks which are scheduled to today using the
>today
tag (with the/atb
command).
Themes

"timeblocks": { "regex": "((?:\\d{4}-[01]\\d{1}-\\d{2})?(?:(at|from)\\s*([0-2]?\\d|noon|midnight)(:[0-5]\\d)?(\\s?(AM?|PM?|am?|pm?)?)|\\h+([0-2]?\\d)(:[0-5]\\d)?(\\s?(AM?|PM?|am?|pm?)|(?=\\s*(\\-|\\–|\\~|\\〜|to|\\?)))|\\h+([0-2]?\\d|noon|midnight)(:[0-5]\\d)\\s?(AM?|PM?|am?|pm?)?)(?:\\s*(\\-|\\–|\\~|\\〜|to|\\?)\\s*([0-2]?\\d|noon|midnight)(:[0-5]\\d)?(\\s?(AM?|PM?|am?|pm?)?))?(?=\\h|$))", "matchPosition": 1, "color": "#005BF0", "font": "Menlo-Regular", "size": 15 },
(Thanks to Jonathan, @jgclark on Discord, for coming up with the regular expression)
Additionally, you can change the color of the Time Blocks in the right calendar sidebar by adding the following attribute to "editor":
"timeBlockColor": "#d87001",