Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this time blocking blueprint, you're going to learn everything you need to know
to get up and running with time blocking.
So you can get more done, in your day and I'll be showing you how I use Google calendar
to stay on top of my time and almost get all my stuff done, right?
There's always one or two tasks at the end of the day.
That always seem to linger, but we'll get as close as possible with time blocking.
So timestamp table of contents and the description along with some other helpful productivity
videos, including how we organize our Google drive.
Now, before we get into my simple five step system for time blocking your day, let's go
and talk about the three keys to success.
That's going to allow you to get the biggest benefit out of time blocking.
Because I think there are a couple of misconceptions.
Now all time blocking is intentionally planning out your day saying what types of tasks are
going to work on at what time.
So, it's not spreading out your to do list over the day.
It's saying at what specific times you're going to be doing what specific type of tasks,
that will make a whole lot more sense, especially when we start getting into the different types
of time blocks, you should be setting up.
Now the first key to success when it comes to time blocking, is treating your time blocks
as an appointment and as unchangeable, when they actually happen or occur.
So this doesn't mean that when you do a time block, you say that you're going to work on
this in the morning and then, you know, maybe your house is burning nearly.
“No, I said I was going to do it” Like there are times where you want to change it,
but when you're in the middle of your time block, it needs to be treated as you would
treat an actual appointment or an interview.
So just think about it for a second.
Irrespective of how busy your life is, if you walk into an interview or you're having
a meeting with a potential client, even if you're bored out of your mind, you're not
going to pick up Instagram and start scrolling through it.
You're not going to start tweeting.
You're not going to start watching another YouTube video.
And you're certainly not going to take a call.
As boring as it is, or as like nails on a chalkboard, as it might feel, you'll stick
it out and till the end interview's over until the conversation's over.
And then we would go on with your day because it's an appointment.
And that's the same level of the commitment that you need to bring to your time blocks,
even if you're [unintelligible 00:02:06], or you just have this inability to focus for
long periods of time, it's a skill that you're going to have to learn.
Now, the second key to success when it comes to time blocking, is to aim for larger time
blocks.
Personally, I've worked my way up to four and five hour time blocks.
And it's simply because you're able to tap into a much greater capacity of your brain
for processing when you're focused on one thing for an extended period of time.
That's really where the power of time blocking comes in.
Because if you're just blocking out your day 30 minutes at a time, that's not really time
blocking.
That's just having a really hectic schedule and you can lose up to 20% of your brain's
processing power by simply picking up your phone and looking at it or multitasking switching
between tasks.
So if you really want to get the benefit out of time blocking, it needs to be large chunks
of time.
You don't have to start with four hours.
I certainly did it.
Didn't start with 60 to 90 minute chunks and then work your way up to three, four.
That's ultimately how time blocking is going to be most successful for you.
Now, the third key to success, this is specifically when it comes to starting time blocking, is
to not time block your entire week or month all at one go.
So when you're just getting started work by time blocking one aspect of your schedule
or life.
So, if you have a full time job, something that I did, is I started time blocking just
on the weekends. or I would time block when I got home or I would wake up at the crack
of dawn and time blocked before I got to work.
So you either want to choose one day a week that you're going to start with, this is the
day of the week that I'm going to time block or start time blocking a specific part of
your day.
So, say you're going to wake up.
And between 8 and 12, that's when you're going to time block.
And then after 12 o'clock, the world can go crazy.
Who knows what happens, but at least you committed to your time blocks in the morning.
So it was very hard to start with time blocking the entire day.
Now the very first step to getting started with time blocking is time blocking your one
thing time.
And this comes out of the book, “The one thing” by Gary Keller who built Keller Williams,
one of the largest real estate companies in the world.
So he knows a thing or two about how to use his time.
And one of the things he really focuses on, is finding what is that one project?
What it that one thing that you can do with your time, that by doing it?
Everything else is going to become easier.
So, if we jump into my Google calendar right now, you can see it's about 9.00 a.m. in the
morning when I'm recording this.
And you can see, that before that I wrote two videos and I've already recorded another
video.
And as you can see, there are time blocks for recording videos between 5:00 a.m and
around 9.30 or 10:00 a.m. every single day.
If we go back to the previous week, you could see it was the same.
Friday, I ran out of videos to make.
So I wound up doing something else with my time.
And if we skip a week forward, you can see that I've already blocked out that time.
And this is my one thing time.
So, I know, if I only got one thing done today, what would it be?
Record the videos, that I need to record.
In this case, it's one, my one thing is, is two videos, but whatever it is for you, it
doesn't have to be at 5:00 a.m in the morning, but whatever it is for you, two or three hours
should be the very first time block that you set up for whatever the one thing is for you.
For me, it's recording videos.
For you, it could be something else, but that's really the core and power of where time blocking
should start.
And if you're a night owl, the time block it at night, if you only have time on the
weekends, I that's how I started, time block it on your weekends, right?
If you're doing your side hustle.
So wherever it is, you need to time block that one thing first, because that's the most
important thing.
And then everything else you can find time to fit in anywhere.
And this is just really important because you want to make sure that you get your most
important thing done, even if it's not urgent.
There might be other urgent things.
There's always things much more urgent than making a video, but making a video for my
long-term goals is the most important thing.
Now, the second type of time blocks, you should be setting up, are talking blocks or communication
blocks.
And this is where you go from, “Oh, I'm in deep work mode and I'm just working on
this one thing too.
Hello world.
You can talk to me now”.
And this is where you'll have your client calls, your team calls, whatever, you know,
whatever calls you need.
You're going to be checking your email.
This is where you can open yourself up to team chats.
And so, this is where you have a particular time in the day, where you get all of the
inputs, right?
Because your outputs or whatever your work actually is.
And then the inputs is all of the feedback and questions and comments and concerns you
get from clients, customers, team members what have you.
And so you want to open yourself up for, strategic points in the day where you can get that information
and then that can actually wind up adjusting what you do with your time blocks for the
rest of the day.
Now, as you can see here with my Google calendar, I'm in a ideal workweek here, that hasn't
happened yet.
You can see my team check-ins are from 10 to 11:00 a.m every single day.
And so I actually make it a point not to have any calls before 11:00 a.m, unless it is an
absolute emergency.
And you know what?
It took a little while for us to get used to Jason, not being available for the first
like four or five hours of the day, but life moves on, right?
And people adjusted to it.
And so now between 10 and 11, I go through our Asana tasks.
I go and check my email.
I sometimes reply to YouTube comments, if I run out of internal stuff to do.
And if a client needs a meeting or a call I'll, that's when I'll schedule it, of course,
I use a calendar so that people can just schedule appointments with me in the afternoon.
And then that way, after that hour, I can close myself off again and go back to work.
And so you might need two or three hours to check your email.
It's not about judging yourself for how much time you need for communication.
It's more about planning and saying, “You know what, I know at this time, I'm going
to check my email.
I'm going to check my phone”.
And that gives you the freedom to be very focused.
And in a just cone of silence, while you're working on your actual projects and tasks.
Now the third type of time block, I recommend you set up is your planning time.
And this is the time where you're going to be planning out your time blocks.
You're going to be reviewing how your time blocks went, which we'll get to in step number
five.
And then of course also just making sure that the way you're spending your time is still
in line with whatever your goals are.
So for me, this is typically two to three hours a week.
You can have a day plan.
So if you have a more fluid schedule, where you're constantly booking appointments, or,
you know, you're not in charge of the whole schedule of when you go to work or when you
have work off, then you can actually do something, what I used to do is create a planning time
in the morning.
So, I had an hour block, where I would time block the next day or the next two or three
days, depending upon what client requests I had or what my boss told me that I should
or should not do.
So, time blocking, definitely is something that be used, even if you don't have a hundred
percent control over your time.
And this planning time will just ensure that your time blocks don't go too crazy.
For me personally, looking at my calendar, I've set up an hour or two of planning on
Sunday afternoon.
So I can plan out the week and be ready to go.
Now, the next type of time block I recommend you use is a buffer block.
And this is really actually the last type of time block that I recommend you actually
put into your planner or put onto your calendar.
There's a link in the description to the aspire notebook, where you can actually download,
if you don't want to use Google calendar, download a Excel sheet and PDF that you can
use for your time blocking.
And what you want to put on there, is a open block or buffer block.
And this is because life happens, right?
You can't perfectly plan your time as much as we would like to, there's always things
that come up there's always things that get in the way.
And so, what you want to do, is have at least an hour or two, what I used to do in the past
too, or maybe just have your entire Friday afternoon open.
So, that when things come up, you don't go crazy going, “Oh my gosh, I packed every
single minute of my week in.
I have, I don't even have five minutes to respond to this person or fix this thing”.
So you do want buffers in your schedule.
For me, I have an hour at the end of the day that I call the day close, that you can see
here from about two to three O'clock where I do final team check-ins, I look at email
and I look at how the day went and then I just make sure that everything is closed off.
So that by the time I go to have dinner with the family, I'm not thinking about, “Oh,
you know, what about this?
Or what about that?
Or what about this?
Or what about that?”
And it also, it helps you, especially if you're an entrepreneur, agency owner, freelancer,
it helps you turn off for the day.
Because when it's--, whether you're full time, part time just doing a side hustle, it's very
hard to turn off and having that day close time, is very critical to making sure that
everything is closed down.
If you want to keep working after that, hey, by all means, if you have the energy, you
feel like it.
Great.
I sometimes do that too, but you want to make sure that there's a definite end to your day,
or if you already have a definite end of your day, don't have that problem.
Then you have some sort of time block throughout the week where you say, “You know what,
that's my three or four hours, that I know if something comes up or I need extra time,
I have it there.”
So, there's plenty of slack in your schedule.
Now the final step to time blocking step number five, isn't actually a time block, but it's
making sure that you actually adjust just how your week actually went, how your day
actually went.
So we jumped into my Google calendar.
I'll go back a week here and you can see that none of the times were spot on.
In fact, Tuesday and Friday, I had some personal stuff that came up.
That's on a different calendar.
That's why nothing's showing there, that wound up kind of just derailing the entire day.
And that's, that's normal.
That's sometimes what happens, but then you can go back.
You can look at it and say, “Okay, was this a derailment that there was no way for me
to see?”
Or “Was it a derailment that, yeah, if I had done this, this and that, I could probably
prevent it the next time.”
So it gives you a good sense of how well you're doing your time blocks and how well you're
scheduling your time.
Because one of the biggest pitfalls with time blocking is when you schedule something for
30 minutes and it winds up taking two hours and then it just pushes everything else off.
And so with this, when you keep track of how long things take, you'll become much better
at your time blocking moving forward.
And so this is my time blocking schedule.
This is all there is to it, to creating your time blocking plan for yourself.
So, thank you so much for watching.
I sincerely hope you got some value out of this video.
If you did, go and hit that like button and subscribe for more productivity and time blocking
strategies, just like the ones covered in this video, over on my channel, I'm actually
documenting the process of what it takes to be successful, building an online business.
So go ahead and hit that like button subscribe, comment with your time blocking questions,
and as always keep building the business you love.