Time-Blocking and Creating the 'Ideal Calendar’
When you think about your schedule or calendar, what are some of the first feelings that come up for you? Do you immediately become anxious and uncomfortable? Or do you feel a sense of calm? Maybe you’re thinking, “What calendar?” It can become very difficult to keep track of every responsibility, task, activity or commitment that life and work demands of us if we don’t have a way of keeping track of it all. Starting and maintaining a schedule or calendar for yourself is essential to keeping your peace, and productivity on track. Why? When your day begins with intention and prioritization, you’ll find you accomplish more, and establish good time management habits for yourself.
It might be helpful for you to start by simply envisioning your ‘Ideal Calendar.’ Think of this as the blueprint for your day. How much time do you have in your day, and how much time do you want to allow for each task? This is a great point to start time-blocking. Create a rough outline that starts with when you wake up, and ends with your nighttime routine. In fact, one of the best ways to start your day is to start planning the night before. This helps you to organize your thoughts, your priorities, and plan for anything that might come up.
A sample of an ‘Ideal Calendar’ might look something like this, though keep in mind, this will look very different for everyone :
6:00am Morning routine
7:30am Breakfast
8:00am Process email and social media engagement
8:30am Priority tasks (Someday When Project)
10:00am Exercise
11:00am Rotate: sales outreach/marketing tasks/finance tasks
12:00pm Lunch
1:00pm Client meetings
3:00pm Process email and social media engagement
4:00pm Priority tasks (Someday When Project)
5:00pm Dinner
7:00pm Family time and activities
9:00pm Plan for tomorrow, log off devices
10:00pm Evening routine and sleep
This rough outline might just be a perfect template to get you going. And even if you can’t spend an entire hour or two on your priority tasks or Someday When projects, you can adjust to include 15 minute time blocks so you can at least start chipping away. Small, tangible steps are still steps moving you forward regardless of your pace.
Not sure which project you want to start on? Here’s some ideas to help you out. When you time-block your days, you also create space to make adjustments to your schedule and life. This action could help you expose where you need to manage your time better, or offload/outsource some of your tasks.
Whether you already have a schedule in place or this is something you’ve been neglecting, I hope you walk away with a better idea of how to begin. If not, let me know how I can help.
