Time Blocking is a useful technique when you find the urgent is overwhelming the important. It’s based on the concept that you give every hour of your work day a specific task. Here’s how to do it.
- Make a list of the most important things you want to work on – these are tasks, not goals. That means if you were focusing on sales, you’d put down “Make 5 phone calls to prospects” not “Sell $10,000 more.” If you’re doing content marketing you’d list “Write a blog post” not “Get 10 new followers”
- Next to each item on the list make a note of how often you should do it and what is the ideal sized time block. Some things you can do in an hour-long chunk. Some take a half day.
- Get out your calendar – the one with all your normal appointments and regular meetings. Find blocks of time of the appropriate length for each item on the list. If you need to, rearrange your appointments and meetings.
- Block in time on your calendar for each item on the list. It’s like making an appointment with yourself. After all, aren’t you the most important person you need to meet with?
Tips & Tricks
Don’t fill up your entire day. Leave some white space. Stuff happens and if you don’t have buffer time to take care of that stuff, it will screw up your whole schedule. If some of your blocks need to be a day long, you can fill that day, but leave some buffer in the days before or after.
Let everyone know you are not to be disturbed during these times unless there’s fire or blood. Just like if you were having a meeting with your most important client or best employee.
You yourself must treat these blocks with that same respect. Don’t reschedule them when stuff comes up. After all the reason they made it on the list in the first place is you consider them the most important things for you to do.
