My obsession with time blocking
Riffing off last week’s email on month-end workflow
I’m a ruthless, semi-obsessed time blocker.
It actually started about 10 years ago when I was still in my corporate job. I couldn’t stand meetings being scheduled with 30 minutes noticed. I couldn’t stand someone scheduling time on my calendar when I was supposed to eat lunch. I couldn’t stand a last minute meeting during the time I was planning to get through a deliverable.
So I started blocking out my lunch every day…and my deliverable time…and so on.
I haven’t given it up since.
Almost everything I do now shows up on my work calendar (see below). Everything that you saw in the workflow template last week is either pre-scheduled on my calendar or I manually add during my 30 minute planning time on Thursday afternoon.
This allows me to, basically, show up like a robot on Monday morning and be bossed around by my calendar - in the best way. I don’t have to make any decisions, I just do what my calendar says to do. And I trust my calendar because Last Thursday Erica put thought into laying out a really nice plan for Monday Morning Erica.
Monday Morning Erica loves Last Thursday Erica, because Monday Morning Erica (actually Every Morning Erica) is easily rattled by decision fatigue and overwhelm. #knowthyself
So every meeting, every reconciliation, every report, will eventually take up space on my calendar.
Couple Highlights:
Email - I have 30-45 minutes every morning to go through my email. Client emails take priority, but this is usually enough time to get through everything. If someone emails me after this time block, I’ll read it the next day (unless I’m waiting on a response)
Personal items - everything in my head lives in this one calendar (lunch, rolling out the trashcan, the cat needs his de-wormer, lunch date with Ben, etc). I have one brain full of stuff, so I need one calendar to see it all in. Once it exists in this calendar, my anxiety decreases because I’m not trying to constantly remember to not forget something
Planning - this only works because I have a dedicated 30 minute time slot to do this as my last thing every week. In reality, it usually takes me 10-15 minutes, but I like to be conservative.
Time blocking is not for everyone, I get it. But if you’re the type of person who likes to know the plan ahead of time, it might suit you.
Try it for a week and see what happens. Adjust as needed. Who knows :o)
Talk soon,
Erica
Behind-the-scenes in my business this week:
It’s “Week 2” in my workflow, which means I met with my top-tier clients (some rougher meetings with the current economic tide) and I’m wrapping up reporting for my middle-tier clients.
I also scheduled a time block at the end of yesterday for some “fun” work stuff. I submitted my “Anatomy of a $200K…firm” for talk proposal at Intuit Connect in October, played around with ChatGPT and also dug into a new retirement planning software I’m trying out. It probably looked unproductive from the outside looking in, but it was really nice to have some work-leisure time to do whatever I felt like.
I’m glad I scheduled that for myself.
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