Hello everyone walk back to another video it is your host Francesco D'Alessio here and welcome back to the Keep Productive YouTube channel
So guys today what we're going to be doing is talking a little bit about calendar blocking
now calendar blocking also referred to as time blocking sometimes is a common technique used by
millions of people every single day to
Organize their own calendar and essentially their task list - now
What I want to do in this video is outline how you can use calendar blocking at home
What we're going to do is jump over to the Mac
We're gonna dive into the calendar blocking technique and show you exactly how you can get started and also show you a few
Beneficial techniques and processes that you can use there will also be an article below outlining everything
So if you have a lot time for this video or you want to come back to this video?
There will be a link there in description. Okay guys, just before we dive into today's feature
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Let's jump over to the bank and dive into calendar blocking and techniques to you to get started
So here we are with Apple Calendar. I'm going to be using Apple calendar for this demonstration
mainly because I want to have a clean slate in front of me even though
What I do with my calendar is slightly different. I wanted to give you an outline on a fresh space
So what we're gonna be doing is working this from the get-go
If you want to skip ahead with an element of this feel free to do this
You can use the time stamps below to maybe skip ahead to the routine adding part or talking about themes etc
And everything will be there. So let's dive in this is obviously Apple calendar
My own personal setup is slightly different from this
I use Google Calendar and I only tend to include events that are to some extent detailed
Like for example, I show you here actually
so if I click this one, you can see that I've actually got events that are only really
Time-based so there were gonna be like meeting people driving lesson Jim
obviously Jim's
technical routine tasks
But we're actually going to show you from scratch how to use calendar blocking if you want to go away from this video
There'll be an article below but when I further adieu guys, let's dive in
so the first things first is I would like to create different areas and for the
different sections
I think it's important to colorize out
Everything so that you have a clear outline of what things aren't just by looking
So we're going to add a few calendars just before we get started
So here we are with the different calendars and I made obviously created them on iCloud which I'm using right now
I've created personal health routine and freelance and essentially now
what I can do is when I'm actually
plotting these tasks out in the calendar blocking I can assign them to their so the first thing I'd recommend doing is
Adding start and end dates to your day or week ahead and you can set this is recurring
Based on all of the days of the week. So let's demonstrate that
So there we are
It's really simple to add that
Introductory sort of start of the day the wake up and run and obviously have that between 7:00 and 7:30
Generally the times I wake up during the work week
If you notice there and what I did is I actually set the time to repeat on a weekday
basis
because at times at all I add to these in a second will be slightly different because I'll wake up later on the weekend and
the same thing down here is this is the
Regular time I go to bed and it's quite a nice way to see your full outline of the day
Oh as you can see there you can set a different time for the weekends if that suits you
Wake up later and go to bed a bit later, too
So the next thing to do I think is really to add routine tasks now
This could be anything from gym to regular study sessions or regular events that you go to. I think this is important
So I'm going to add a few of the ones that I participate in
Okay, so as you can see I've added a range of different things
Let's just give you a sort of overview of what I've added
So most days I'll head to my coffee shop in the morning
And as you can see, I've added this one coffee shops called Prime and I've also added it with a 15 minutes travel time
Which you can do on most calendar applications now, this is quite handy
It gives you a little bit of a buffer to walk there
And sort of my best guess gives you an indication of how long you'd be there
what I've done here is I've added a gym time for example boxing which I intend to do on Monday Wednesdays and
Fridays although this definitely changes and that's something that will mention near at the end is if your calendar adapts and
Cooking and eating lunch for days of the week walking home and even having dinner across all of those days
So that tends to give me a strong outline
So now this sort of important part
I guess this is adding in the bulk of your day the bulk of your activities. And what I recommend doing is
You could do it on two different wavelengths
I think the first is theming it which I will be doing theming it is essentially giving it a
Generalized idea of what you will be doing. This is good
If you're open to new activities being there, for example, let's say in the morning
I block out in an area for writing now that's clearly going to be could be any form of writing
But maybe you work best in the morning for that and like I work best between 9:00 and 11:00
For example, you can have therefore admin editing
Designing whatever you do
This could be a good time and even for students studying and you can block out that time
Now this will obviously take you a little bit of time and change and you can also have it in a secondary way
Which is tasks?
so for example
Let's say you're doing this for the week ahead and you want to plot in when you're going to spend specific time on tasks
So you're going to do that through whatever your work methods are
So for example, you could be doing that for your side project or you could be doing it for your regular work day
I know some people and just 9:00 to 5:00 for their work and keep it pretty simple
But again is totally up to you to how your routine is
So I'm going to add a few of the ones that I relate to most
Okay, so there we are I've added my own
Freelancing efforts there. So for example, I will
Do mostly in the mornings writing or admin work? I'm keeping this quite loose for this video as you can see Monday, Tuesday Wednesday
Thursday Friday writing as a start of the day an admin on Wednesday because I don't necessarily want to go in on Wednesdays
I'll work from home
And as you can see middle of today will be creating time and the majority of the afternoons on
Most of the days will be client work
I've put a de today's in cases of video that I do need to do quickly and then to finalize my day
There's engagement which we'll be communicating
with people in the community and also
Necessarily it could be emails or something like that. Just engaging with other people online
Occasionally I'll have calls in the evening or during the day but I'll tend to spot them in specifically
In my own calendar again in this example if this was a specific day of the week
And I had a call during that day. I would particularly block it out
and even for example, let's say something came up on Friday, which I believe I might actually have
Only for this event. I'm gonna drag it open here and add some personal time
to actually do
So as you can see, it's fairly flexible
And you can sort of modify that based on different areas. So this is a
calendar blocking
Eyeful example here. Now. What a lot of people like doing is adding particular events
So for example, I mentioned I have a drawing lesson a couple things like that
I'm going to add a few of those for this week
And then also add in some social events too, which hopefully will bulk this out
So there we are I added
Few particular events and modifying a few things around
I think that's helpful for to do that more at the last minute because you know that sort of stuff and of course if I
Go to the next week
I should be able to see the majority of the stuff in place ready to manipulate and remember whenever you want to delete
So, for example, I had a lunch out here. You want to delete a certain item?
It does ask you whether you want to delete all events or only just this event, which is quite helpful
So as you can that's that routine, um, you will start to sort of plot out
What works best for you for that week now there is a way as well in adding all-day events
So for example, if you're staying it's particular things
Then you can use the all-day section at the top to drag across and this is really the case for most calendar application
So here we are I'm just
Then I've also added
Something that you should all consider adding is a routine period of time that you will focus on adding the week ahead
Blocking out time for everything and and particularly I recommend that's Thursday or Friday or even Saturday or Sunday
So that you can walk into the week with everything ready. Now, the majority of the barebone stuff will be ready pretty
Much to go. But again, if you're looking to fully block all of your time up
Then you can do that now again for many people if they're like ok
I want to see this in day view your day view is going to be very specific now you can see exactly where you are
In the day and that's quite useful. So for example, let's jump over to today
I can see here that I'm partially in my creating time which sounds about right?
I'll be then eating and cooking lunch and then working on client work walking home
And it looks like I'm going for pizza with Liam Robb and Steve and so it's actually quite a particular way of doing it
but again
What I particularly like is the color
Coding of everything now a few recommendations that have picked up from other youtubers
and again
I'm going to include some useful videos the likes of Thomas Frank I believe is maybe a fantastic video on how he
Organizes his calendar, which I'll include below but also the fact that what you can do after
Each of the days is actually write down
Exactly how your day went now? Maybe you need to spend five 10 minutes sat down with your calendar. Just tweaking certain stuff
I find this particularly helpful
If I was to do this that is if my day had dramatically changed
So for example, let's say I did more different bits of work across my day and it dramatically changed
I spent more time in the gym. Maybe I'm I spent more time on client work
my pizza was cancelled and I had to go for a
Random haircut, you know that provides you actually an insight into what your day was actually like and that can be quite useful
Um, I know that let's take the haircut
for example
I know that every time that I go for a haircut I check when the last time I went for a haircut was
just so I'm not going for two regular haircuts if that's
Too bad because you can then see exactly when you had your last appointment
and so it's good and
Healthy to always do that and always check in and sometimes it's good for just reflecting on the day going
Oh, I actually did pretty well
And this you know, I did a solid gym workout today
So guys that was a full outline on calendar blocking
Hopefully it gave you a nice insight into how to get started with calendar blocking time blocking again
I'll probably bring in a couple of experts on this and that's pretty much my routine set up on the counter design of stuff
Hopefully it gave you some really nice insight again
I could probably go into more details fill up all the lovely spaces there, but hopefully you can get started with this one now
So guys a big big. Thank you for stopping by today
Remember, you can check out the article which should be available in description below
I do remember there are now deals inside the description section so you can go away and get
discounts on some of your favorite brands in the productivity software space
So make sure to check that out and some of them are exclusive some of the nice giveaways
So do feel free to enter below but guys, I will see you in a future feature. Thank you very much
Make sure have a great week. Keep it up dude, and I'll see you guys very very soon Cheers