I didn't mean to start procrastinating at work but falling down an internet rabbit hole while supposed to be producing my latest assignment was increasingly becoming a problem. On top of this, since becoming a full time freelance journalist, working from home all day, those little screen breaks have grown into long stints away from my desk, encroaching on my productivity with every passing week. Never has my flat been so clean, my garden so well tended and the cat been stroked and played with so much that even she's had enough. But I don't get paid to do any of these things. I get paid to write.

So last month, while listening to a podcast when I should really have been developing story ideas, I came across Nir Eyal and his idea of scheduling the day in order to stop getting distracted. Knowing how ill-disciplined I'd become, I decided to take this one step further and introduce my old school timetable into my working life.

It's pretty similar to the sheet of paper I was handed as a bewildered 11-year-old when I first stepped through the doors of my high school. After five years it was so ingrained in my brain that I can recite it to this day. Now in the form of a bespoke Excel spreadsheet, it is structured exactly the same with an half an hour break in the morning and one in the afternoon, plus an hour for lunch so I have time to both eat and get some fresh air.

But while the structure is almost identical, the lessons have changed. Instead of every day starting with registration with my form tutor, it is now checking emails, social media and reading new articles that have come online in the past 12 hours. I spend an hour doing exactly the same thing at the end of the day. Not only does this ensure that I'm up to speed on everything, it reduces the temptation to waste time surfing the web when you have work to do. And instead of the dreaded double maths, I now have double interviews which are usually far more interesting and easy to understand than algebra ever was.

Maths was not the only subject that I didn't really look forward to at school. The only real bright spot on my school timetable was triple Design on a Thursday morning. It was a time when you sat at your drawing board and created your coursework in a very relaxed, non-school-like atmosphere.

My working equivalent is Golden Time, a concept introduced to me by career coach Garret Keogh and something Eyal subscribes to as well. This is the period during the day where you are most productive and do your best work. Between 10:30am and 12:30am each day I close down my emails and put my mobile on silent and the cogs of the sparkling copy machine whir into life. Then I produce my best work, whether it be my latest feature, a copywriting assignment that I've been commissioned to do or even this blog. This is the time where I hit my creative peak during the day. I've even coloured it dark yellow on my timetable to remind me that this time is sacred and not to be sacrificed.

Other tasks that need focus but not as much creative energy, such as co-ordinating speakers for the events I produce or sending out requests to potential feature interviewees, take place between lunch and the afternoon break. After this, when my energy levels are beginning to fade, comes any research I need to do and those administrative tasks that you need to get done in order to keep the business running smoothly and successfully.

By discarding a lengthy to-do list in favour of a weekly timetable, I can also organise myself better and group similar tasks or subject matters together. For example, it makes more sense to do all my social care writing and tasks on the same day. I can then focus on my environment or investigative journalism on different days time without constantly having to swap subject matter or discipline.

But I have learned some lessons since bringing my timetable back to life, mainly around not packing everything into my working day so it becomes near impossible to complete. As well I now leave at least a morning and/or an afternoon free for those last minute requests from clients. If they don't materialise, you have some bonus time to plan or get out of the house and do some exercise (I'm always tempted to put this down as PE on the timetable). And at the end of the week, it is a helpful document to review where you have progressed, where you are spending too much or too little time and whether a sustainable work/life balance has been achieved.

In the two months I've embraced timetable culture, productivity levels have sky-rocketed, with new business and opportunities gained as a result. It seems I did learn something valuable at school after all. Maybe I should invest in a bell next?