How to turn time into your own private Idaho.
So Thanksgiving is over and you’re heading back to work. Let me ask you, did you plan on doing some take-home work this weekend? Did it get away from you? And are you wondering how you’re going to get it all done? If so, you’re not alone.
At it’s most basic, time blocking is the practice of blocking out chunks of time on your calendar to get your most important work done. In this basic approach, you decide what result you want and then block out time to achieve that. It’s different than saying I’ll work for two hours and see how far I’ll get. It’s more like saying, I’ll work for two hours and have a rough draft of my powerpoint at the end of that time. You block out that time and drive hard for one hundred twenty minutes, determined to deliver that draft to yourself.
If you’ve dragged work from last week into this one, I highly recommend you use this approach in the near term to get yourself some relief.
There’s a more elegant approach to time blocking that actually builds you a life framework you can use to keep the most important things in your life front and center.
Welcome to Time Blocking – 2.0
Last week we talked about energy and how you need to manage that along with time to figure out when you’ll actually do stuff.
This week, do the same exercise but this time, block out general times when you’ll be doing the same type of task on the regular. Your basic Monday through Friday, 9-5, is one giant time block. You always go to work during those hours and it’s the same every week unless you’re on vacation.
Our sleep schedule is another time block. 10 pm to 6 am, on the regular, if you’re lucky, is one big time block. We don’t have to decide every day if we’re going to sleep at noon and work at night because we have a set schedule.
I went from always in debt and hating working with money to debt-free by dedicating Monday evenings to money. It’s Money Monday at my house and I know that bills are paid on Monday, financial questions are answered then and financial planning occurs then too. I don’t take classes or plan to shop on Mondays. It doesn’t even occur to me, because Monday is for money. Tuesdays are for marketing my business and Thursday is grocery night. Friday night is for novel reading. You get it. Mornings are meditation, spiritual thought work, yoga, and dog walking.
I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do in these blocks but I know I’ll be doing that type of activity on that day, at that time.
The beauty of laying out a time map, using time blocks, is that you can see make sure that the things which are most important to you have a specific slot you can count on. I don’t worry about bills on Tuesday because I know they were all paid on Monday or will be paid next Monday. I don’t worry about having time for my dogs because I know I’ll be walking them in the morning.
Here’s how it works: Create a simple grid. 24 hours down the side, 7 days across the top – just like I had you do last week.
Using different colors, map out the things you have to do, and the things you want to make sure you fit in.
My only hint to you is to leave yourself some blank time each day; don’t book yourself for every minute.
I started mine with just sleep, work and money Monday. Once that was solid, I blocked in one more dedicated spot and so on. Compared to scheduling every minute of your day, it’s a much easier way to gently build up your ability to count on yourself to show up and get it done.
There’s an even better reason to do take up time blocking. When you see time as blocks of space in which to fit what matters to you, you’re less likely to wake up ten years from now and find that you missed out on the things that matter to you.
When you draw out your week in a grid, time becomes solid. You can see that it has limits and you can you see what your time overruns cost you. You start to put the right blocks in the right place and from there, you can build the life you want. One block at a time.
And that? Feels darn good.