I started 2021 off overwhelmed with the amount of projects I was trying to tackle. As a highly anxious person, in the past, I’ve regularly ended my workdays, had dinner then thought, “Have I actually done enough on X project? What about Z project?” and found myself jumping back on my computer and digging in further.
The reality was, I had spent enough time that day on all my projects but I was working off a to-do list and project switching as I made my way down the list through the day.
With one of my big “resolutions” for 2021 to manage my time better, I stumbled across the concept of timeblocking when one of my clients was trying to work it into her daily life and I was intrigued and decided to try it for myself.
What is time blocking and how has it completely transformed my workday?
With one of my big “resolutions” for 2021 to manage my time better, I stumbled across the concept of time blocking when one of my clients was trying to work it into her daily life and I was intrigued and decided to try it for myself.
For me this made a huge difference because instead of having that feeling after dinner, I can now look back at my schedule and see, I spent 2 hours on X project today and worked on the most pressing things that I could possibly get accomplished today during that time.
I’ve noticed I’ve been able to truly relax at the end of the day and surprisingly fall asleep faster. I used to spend the moments I first laid down to go to sleep nervously checking my email inbox and to do list to make sure I didn’t miss anything from that day. That’s something I have totally stopped doing and it was such a surprise benefit of doing this!
Alright so, now let me show you how I timeblock my day and how you can timeblock yours.
I set up default hours everyday of my work week and set it to repeat.
Self care is really huge for me and I want to make sure I don’t miss my essential daily self care like walking, journaling and relaxing time so I also timeblock that into my everyday of workweek.
My week isn’t always super predictable, I am juggling multiple clients and projects with shifting meeting times each week so on Sunday nights I review my week ahead and make changes as needed.
Tweak as needed
Your first week of doing this I recommend testing out if it works best for you to have alerts set up when you switch from one task to another, if you need to change the length of timeblocks, and to take note of tasks that you are doing that are no longer beneficial to your end goal. I guarantee that as you start to pay closer attention to where your time is going during the day, you’ll also start to notice certain activities that are not quite as important for you to do as you thought. You might even notice some things you only need to do every other day, once a week, month, or quarter. What I’m saying is, don’t just set it and stick rigidly to it – pay attention to how close you are actually following your time block schedule and tweak it as needed until it is a great fit for you.
Want more details about Time Blocking? Check out my YouTube video:
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