“If it isn’t scheduled it isn’t real”
If you are a professional time blocker then you'll know that out of all the productivity hacks Time Blocking has to be one of the most powerful!
Time blocking will help you make the best use of time, stay focused and achieve the big things you need to do to grow your business. You see we all have the same 24 hours, it's how we use that time that will be the determining factor in how successful we are.
So what is time blocking?
Time blocking is the practice of planning out every hour/minute of your day in advance and dedicating specific time “blocks” for certain tasks and responsibilities. While a to-do list tells you what you need to do, time blocking tells you when you're going to do it.
If you are someone who bills time, a solicitor, designer, consultant then this practice may well be a familiar one but for many of us this isn't a practice we use in our daily lives.
Most of us will block out a certain amount of time in our diaries for an appointments with a client, a friend, or a hair or dentist appointment. It's because we know we need to schedule this or we won't remember and miss the appointment if we don't and we need to block out this time because we can't do anything else while we are attending those appointments.
So how much more effective do you think we would be if we put the same amount of value on the things we need to do in our business as we do on our appointments with others? I mean any task that takes time whether it be creating content or making sales call.
Well doing this daily is the single most powerful time management hack there is. Time Blocking will not only help to make us more productive but also holds us accountable for the use of our time.
By actually blocking out the time in our calendar to do the important things we need to do to in our business, we are giving these tasks real meaning, importance and value. We are identifying these things as important and worthy. On the flip side when we schedule something that is not so important we can see clearly the value of our time being used for something that is well, really not so important.
It's easy to look at a whole day ahead and think we have more time than we do. But when we actually schedule our tasks it just shows how important it is to prioritise our schedules.
So time blocking is exactly what it says on the tin. it's simply blocking time in your diary for anything you need to do.
And you need to schedule everything!
Here is an example of time blocking. This was a busy week. There is no way I would have got all that done had I not planned it this way. I used MY PA Planner but you may prefer to use google calendar or similar. I find writing things down makes it more real for me .
Advantages of Time Blocking
So let's look at the advantages, and there are many.
Makes you prioritise the tasks you need to do to complete the projects you need to do.
Helps you organise your whole day or week ahead and takes all the worry out of wondering what needs to be done.
Helps you to see exactly what needs your attention and what can wait.
Gives a structure to your day.
Working to a deadline works. It's amazing how just giving ourselves a deadline can create that momentum to really get stuff done.
You will start valuing your time more and more and it will help you to start saying no to things that are not important and to people who want your time. We all know how people view people who work for themselves like it's some kind of all-day holiday! And we know that isn't true but it can still be hard to say no to that request for a meetup or a drop-in coffee but if we have scheduled our time we can say no more easily or we can say yes and schedule it into our break time.
It stops procrastination
Helps you to go back and review how you used your time and assess whether you made the best use of it. You may find you wasted time doing something when something else would have been more productive.
Helps you to be more realistic about the time you have. Makes you see how long things take.
Helps you to plan the best use of your time and resources. For example, it may be that you are more productive in the morning and therefore blocking out your calendar for your most challenging task first thing would be the best use of that time.
It allows you to see that everything takes time and helps you to be more disciplined. For example, engaging on social media. So many of us dip in and dip out all day but that is actually eating into valuable time. Imagine how much more effective it would be to just schedule 30 mins of engagement time at the end of the day.
Helps us to take valuable breaks and rest periods. It's good to be able to look forward to our breaks, be it coffee break, lunch of meditation break.
Helps us to see actually how long things take so we can be more and more accurate when allocating time to tasks. ( A really good idea to keep a Time Journal of how long things take so you can easily schedule correctly for the future)
Keeps up the momentum. If we don't schedule we may take longer than we need. Alternatively, we may not give ourselves enough time thinking we can get something completed more quickly than we think.
Last and certainly not least. It lets you see all the great things you have achieved when you look back over your week.
Remember it's always a work in progress and if you don't already time block it will take a while to get used to. It will take you a while to work out how long things take too. But as you get used to it you will see yourself making better and better use of your time, fitting more and more things in. But I promise you once you start you won't look back and you'll start to value your time more and more.
Lastly, don't forget to schedule some time to actually to do your time blocking! I do mine most Sunday evenings. The amount of time it takes will depend on whether you are time blocking for the day, the week or the month but make sure you schedule it.
So really interested to hear if you are already time-blocking or whether you think you may adopt this method. If you do give it a go would love to know how you are getting on in the comments or in a message.
If you would like to give it a go you can time download a time blocking template or a time blocking planner here