How to Time Block for a More Productive Work Day
Hey Vibes, thanks so much for popping in.
Today I’m going to share with you how I maintain my work day sanity through the power of time blocking. This video is perfect for freelancers, solopreneuers, people that work from home and business babes with a super heavy work schedule. If you’re ready to start hitting the sack at a more decent hour, keep reading!
What is Time Blocking?
Time blocking is the process of blocking out parts of your schedule so that you can do a specific task for a pre-determined set of time. Time blocking is a great tool for those of you that have naturally unstructured schedules, maybe because you work alone and don’t have to coordinate with other people too much, maybe you travel a lot, or you’re just generally in a position where your work flow tends to look different from day to day, like a project manager, or someone who juggles lots of different clients and hard deadlines, that sort of thing.
Why is Time Blocking So Helpful?
When you harness the magic of the time blocked schedule, you can get way more down in your day because it’s number one function is to keep you from getting distracted from completing your most important tasks of the day, it allows you to feel way more productive, especially for those of us that work from home, and it helps out tremendously with maintaining a work/life balance. If you don’t work until midnight every night...you can actually have a life.
As a full time business owner, the line between my work life and my life life is usually non-existent, like it’s real blurry. So I actually start my time blocks from the time I wake up to the time that I plan to close out my work day so that I have enough time to include things outside of work-related tasks things that are important to me like my personal growth and development and my mental and physical health.
I stay in my scheduling game a lot of different ways:
I have alarms set in my phone for different parts of the day with reminders of what I plan to do at that time
I never start a break without making sure I have an alarm or timer set for when I need to be done, so that my break doesn’t turn into “I can do that tomorrow”
I have a cute little Task Notebook that I use to keep track of everything Im doing so that I can physically check them off (sidenote: It’s not just important to complete a task, it’s also important that your FEEL accomplished, hence the check boxes next to each task)
I check my calendar the night before so that I don’t have to get into “work mode” as soon as I open my eyes in the morning.
I have an alarm that tells me the best time to go to bed based on when I want to wake up and I try to adhere to it.
On Sundays, I map out what I’d like to get done for the next week which helps me visualize how much time I would need for each task. So I may want to get up at 6am and go to bed by 11pm every day, but if I’m traveling that week, I might lose out on some structured work time, so there might be some days where I have to get up earlier and do a little bit more that day to make up for my less-structured travel days.
Every day doesn’t have to be blocked off the exact same way so taking that 30 minutes to an hour on Sunday to really look at your week ahead is a great way to make sure you’re splitting up your time in a way that benefits your personal work/life balance the best for you.
For Example:
I also keep my schedule organizing by only allowing for certain types of tasks during times of the day that are best for me and my day to day work flow.So for example I only allow people to schedule calls or appts with me after 11:30 because before then I’m filming videos.
As you know, Im a photographer, so I schedule my outdoor photo sessions in the evening because the look and feel that I love the most so I don’t let people schedule me at any other time.
I don’t open up my schedule to clients on Monday or Friday so that I have a few days in the week where I know for sure I can schedule certain tasks back to back without having to stop what I’m doing and go meet up with somebody and kind of interrupt that mental zone I need to be in.
It really doesn’t matter how you decide to split up your time during the day, as long as you get done what you wanted to get done. The whole point of time blocking is to be more productive when you’re at your best, and being able to really chill when it’s time to chill and not be worried about all the stuff you have to do the next time you open your laptop.
If you need a little more help figuring out exactly how your day could look for the biggest productive impact, I do have a Time Blocking Workbook available for download right here on my website, So no more excuses! There are so many ways to help you structure your schedule and go to freakin bed on time! Maybe finally eat that lunch that everyone’s always talking about....
Kelley Raye | Branding Photographer + Creative Business Coach | Atlanta - Los Angeles