How many of you feel like you sit down to work and before you know it an hour has gone by and you’ve done absolutely nothing productive or income producing?

Anybody?

Just me?

We all have the same 24 hours in a day. I find that the one I can get the things done that are going to push my business forward is using time blocking. So, for those of you that aren’t familiar with time blocking, here’s a little rundown….

What is time blocking…

There are thing that we have to do every day as business owners. Post on social media, check your email, write a blog post, make customer calls, etc. This type of organization requires that you divide your day into defined slots or chunks of time. Each block of time is dedicated to completing a specific task or group of tasks, and only those. This way, you work with a plan and a purpose for each block of time you have available during the day.

For example, you know that you can get through your emails in about a half hour. I suggest blocking two chunks for this (one in the morning and one in the afternoon.) Spend thirty minutes going through all of your emails and taking action on them, so that you are not wasting time going in and out of email multiple times daily. PRO TIP: If it will make your life easier, you might even have an auto reply on your email letting people know that you check emails at ten and four so they are not expecting an immediate response.

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Types of time blocking…

There are a few different ways to go about time blocking. You can theme your days. This is great for people have have a lot of different responsibilities that all require attention. (project planning, reporting, month end, etc.) Another great way is task batching, where you do all of the same type of activity at the same time. (planning and creating social media posts for the month, all of your customer follow up, etc.) The last type we will discuss here is time boxing in which you allot a finite amount of time for a certain activity that day. (30 mins. for email, 15 mins for responding to social posts, etc.)

In short…

Time blocking encourages you to remain focused on the important activities, combats perfectionism and procrastination as well as cutting down on “squirrel moments”. It allows you to become aware of where you are spending your time so you can focus on achieving your goals.

You CAN quit being the slave to the urgent and focus on the important. Time blocking is a great tool to help!

If you would like to dive more into this topic and other surrounding goals setting and productivity,
check out this event coming in January!