so are you time blocking or you want to do time blocking better i've rounded up 10 tips
that i think will be helpful to improve your time blocking in today's video so there are
a lot of people who want to work deeper when they're at work they want to have a
period of time when they're actually focusing on something and actually getting something done in
their day and this is actually developed from a concept by cow newport which is called deep
work and it's really that intention to try and make your sessions more focused and undistracted
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the description for that okay so let's tuck into some time blocking tips my first one is day themes
now this is something that's actually promoted a lot by mike vardy who is a productivity expert
and what he recommends is to theme your days based on a certain type of activity for example a theme
that might be currently relevant to you so for example for me it might be to record one day and
get everything i'm doing related to recording done in one day and then maybe the next day writing
maybe the next day editing batch producing work now this is something you can actually
bake into your time blocking so for example if you wanted a set specific days you could set an
all-day event and do them on a recurring period of time so for example mondays could be your
recording day or mondays could be your writing day or mondays could be your outreach day if you're
in sales or marketing so being able to batch a certain activity can sometimes be beneficial
it won't work for everyone because some people like to have a bit of differentiation in their
day i know i'm more than that i work in two hour blocks um and i sort of do three to our blocks in
a day that are more intense however other people do like to have that just one focus for the day
and that can sometimes be the difference between a really successful day and not so day theming is
a great methodology to check out the second is blocking technologies and i'm not talking about
distraction blockers i'm talking about blocking technology which is time blocking technology
allowing you to essentially start implementing it inside of your application so obviously if you
have google calendar it's a great resource for being able to block time but there are
tools and technologies that can help you go even further apps like planner apps like sunsama friday
akiflo are all becoming more popular as ways to be able to correlate your tasks to your calendar and
being able to block that time out it's really cool to be able to have that technology but
they're also even advanced technologies like clockwise which can help you do it
automatically by analyzing your calendar and working out specific focus periods of time for
you there's also an app called focuser which does something similar as well but these technologies
are out there and we've reviewed a couple of them here on the channel if you want to check those out
that sort of attachment to technology can sometimes just enhance the way you're doing
time blocking number three is implementing weekly reviews now sometimes we get carried away with
the week of tasks but if you've blocked out a period of time every single week to do a week
review it's a great way to just zoom in and go what actually is working and what isn't working
killing off maybe some dead wood that doesn't work for you is probably a great way to continue to
improve on how you're working productively across a week so if you're not doing a certain time block
in a certain way or you were distracted or maybe even the day theme didn't work out a week review
actually using that time to go okay that i didn't do well with recording on a tuesday or i didn't
do well with writing on a wednesday that can help you to analyze what went wrong and improve on that
so blocking in a week review every single week is quite an important activity and it's really
underrated so number four is clear objectives now sometimes when we do time blocking we might
put something like writing and for some people that might be a great little incentive to start
cracking on with some writing but for others clear objectives can help them to determine
what their goal is for that session now you don't want to overload yourself you don't want to over
commit to doing too much like five videos in this period of time or maybe that will work for you
but what you want to do is maybe set yourself a good comfortable target that you know you're going
to reach for example if i was doing a two hour block of writing session two articles is pretty
reasonable for myself writing two articles on a specific platform might be a great way to set a
clear objective so i'd recommend using clear objectives inside of your time blocking just
to intensify your session number five is using extended meetings and time periods around that so
for example if you have meetings in your calendar and you've blocked out time blocking around it to
do a bit of focused work then it's important to leave a little bit of buffer sometimes meetings
can preparation can start earlier sometimes they can end later so it's important to leave yourself
15 to 20 minutes just to give yourself a bit of break time sort of like transition times between
tasks because sometimes you can burn out a lot faster if you're going from something
to another thing really really fast and sometimes you see time blocking techniques block out all
these periods of times and sometimes it's a bit intense so just make sure to protect
time around meetings number six is highlighting per day so there's actually a great concept
in a book called make time there's actually an app that comes along with it we've reviewed it
here on the chat channel it's called make time but it essentially focuses on one highlight per day
sometimes we see like i said just then time blocking calendars that look really intense that
are filled to the brim sometimes that's too much and being able to focus on one thing or one or
two or three things during your day can actually be a better sort of focus for the day and that
make time app is a great one to enhance at what highlight you want for that one thing you want
to do for the day and sometimes that can be the difference between getting one large thing done to
one small thing or three small things that don't really move the needle number seven is deep and
shallow work now we sometimes know that shallow work is something we do pretty routinely i know
for example when i do administration tasks it's shallow work i'm moving between small things that
maybe take 10 minutes and i'm not very focused on it because i'm switching things i'm maybe
stopping every now and then talking to someone or things like that but deeper work is actually
a better concept so a great tip that i recommend is checking out the book deep work by cal newport
it's a fantastic read and it overviews how you can utilize the concepts of working more intensely
on one thing versus multitude of things and how that can benefit but it also overviews what the
difference is between that and shallow work so number eight if you looked at tip number
two and you're going i don't need another app or technology that's absolutely fine
existing applications that you might already use like todoist asana and others may already have an
integration that works pretty well so for example i connect my to-do list with google calendar more
recently to be able to block out periods of time and it reciprocates it works together with the
application so every time i create something on my calendar it pops into my todoist and i can
populate what i need to get done in that period of time number nine is unfocused work environments
now i am very aware that it's not always is easy if you're in an office to be able to focus because
there's people around you that are distracting you but sometimes if you know of an environment
that you work with maybe you move yourself out of the office just to like their pot desking area or
you move yourself into a coffee shop or something else like that or at home in a certain room focus
time is really fundamental to improve the way that you're time-blocking because if you focus more
intensely during a two-hour time block it will probably save you more time across a week than an
interrupted a distracted session a good example particularly for me is when i go to do writing
tend to go to a coffee shop but i tend to choose the coffee shop where i don't know anyone in which
is a bit savage and i put in my headphones and i try and block out and maybe listen to some endle
or something like that to keep me really intensely focused and when i start the session after
they bring the coffee to me so there's nothing to interrupt me whereas if i was going for a
more admin staff i'd probably go to my favorite coffee shop where i'm more open to bumping into
people or things like that or picking up calls but being able to get that focused time is so
fundamental and number 10 a really underrated tip is to take breaks it's really simple but blocking
breaks if you do want them um or just take the breaks naturally because that flow um you need to
recharge sometimes and that flow of doing two big time blocking sessions in a day versus like five
can sometimes and having a break between them can sometimes be the difference between great work and
good work anyway guys i hope you enjoyed my time blocking tips and tricks feel free to subscribe if
you're brand new check out our medium if you want to learn more about our writing but a big thank
you for stopping by today and feel free to share the video if you think somebody else would benefit
from it but as normal thank you so much have a great week and keep productive cheers folks bye