Timeblocking and Bread Making

Around our home, we try to lean into a little more self-reliance and self-sufficiency whenever we can.

Part of that comes from how we like to live. We love camping, hiking, and wandering off to places where the wifi bars disappear and the nearest grocery store isn’t five minutes away. When you spend time in those kinds of places, you start thinking differently about everyday things. Bread. Coffee. Food in the fridge. The simple routines that make a house run.

Amazon deliveries and quick grocery runs aren’t always part of that picture.

Lately I’ve also fallen down the rabbit hole of something called the Personal Curriculum, and I have to say, I’m loving it.

If you haven’t heard of it, the idea is simple. Instead of constantly consuming content online, you intentionally choose a few things you want to learn or practice and treat them like your own personal education. Skills. Projects. Curiosity-driven things.

For me, in this season of trying to spend more time offline and leaning into analog hobbies, bread making felt like the perfect place to start.

This week alone, I’ve made four attempts.

Attempt one was… not great.

Attempt two was slightly less embarrassing.

Attempt three was close.

And today, attempt four finally started to look like actual bread.

I’m writing this on the same day I made attempts three and four, and something interesting happened in the process.

Between mixing dough, stretch and folds, oven preheats, and bake time, I had long stretches where the bread simply needed to sit and do its thing.

Which meant I had time.

Instead of wandering off into email, social media, or the usual digital distractions, I worked in time blocks.

And it turns out, it’s pretty amazing what you can accomplish between stretch and folds.

While the dough rested, I culled and color-corrected a gallery of newborn photographs for my "real job."

During the oven preheat, I crafted wedding day timelines for one of my clients.

While the bread baked, I wrapped up another task that had been sitting on my list.

No doom scrolling.
No bouncing between tabs.
No constant ping of notifications pulling my attention away.

Just a timer, a loaf of bread in progress, and a few focused work blocks.

I even pulled out my timer cube and started running short productivity sprints. It kept me moving without feeling glued to my desk all afternoon.

By the time the bread came out of the oven, I realized something.

I actually do have plenty of time in my day for both creative hobbies and my client work.

The difference wasn’t the amount of time I had.

It was how I was using the small pockets of time that naturally exist throughout the day.

Bread making just happened to show me that.

If you’re curious, the recipe I used today can be found here.

And if this loaf turns out as good as it looks, there will probably be a fifth attempt tomorrow.