Like others I've tried this before but it's just too much effort to use this approach as you spend a lot of time rejigging your calendar as it's so granular wit

Like others I've tried this before but it's just too much effort to use this approach as you spend a lot of time rejigging your calendar as it's so granular with the time dimension. Not to mention trying to coordinate it with meetings and your actual schedule. That said, I do like using a calendar approach for tasks. I've previously used TeuxDeux successfully - it's basically just a todo list per day and it makes it easy to plan things ahead of time and move them around as reality bites and you need to move it to a later date.