In this episode, I give you practical tips to help you master time blocking as a crucial tool for business owners to manage time, prioritize tasks, and reduce stress. I address common issues entrepreneurs have with time blocking, such as distractions and unrealistic expectations. I also outline a three-step process for effective time blocking aligned with your business growth strategies. This episode will help you enhance your time management skills and achieve sustainable business growth without added stress.
And if you're ready to double your business without adding more work to your schedule, let's talk. Book a free consultation with me here.
In this episode, I give you practical tips to help you master time blocking as a crucial tool for business owners to manage time, prioritize tasks, and reduce stress. I address common issues entrepreneurs have with time blocking, such as distractions and unrealistic expectations. I also outline a three-step process for effective time blocking aligned with your business growth strategies. This episode will help you enhance your time management skills and achieve sustainable business growth without added stress.
And if you're ready to double your business without adding more work to your schedule, let's talk. Book a free consultation with me here.
Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - Your business exists because you had the idea to start it. Everything begins in our minds. That's why your business results cannot outgrow your current level of thinking. Do you want to serve more clients, make more money without working more, or burning yourself out? Grow yourself first as a leader of your business because that's who you are a leader. Even if you're the only person in your business right now. When you lead yourself first, the business results will always follow. My name is Maggie Barton. I'm an international business and leadership coach, an expert in business mindset, strategy and high performance. I created the Diamond Effect podcast to help you elevate your thinking, expand your perspective, and through it, grow your business without overwhelm. So let's get started. Hello, hello, my wonderful diamond effect listeners, business leaders, welcome to podcast episode 142. Today I want to talk about time blocking. And especially if you're a person who tried it and it didn't work for you. And I want to help you change it and make it work for you.
Speaker 1 (00:01:22) - And why am I talking about it as a business development and leadership coach? Of course I'm all about strategy and we always start with strategy, right? How am I going to win in the market? And I will talk about it a little bit later on. However, this strategy is not going to create the results. It's the execution of the strategy that does. And it's so happens that I am just brilliant at strategy and execution. And that's why my clients get amazing results, because I help them with both. So when you execute the strategy, it's all about taking the right action and having the right tools in your pocket, in the way you take the action, but also technology systems and so on to implement that strategy successfully. And one of those tools is definitely time blocking. It helps you get organized. It helps you ensure that you do the important things from the strategy that might not be urgent and so on. But when you don't use it properly, it doesn't work. And what I see business owners do sometimes they blame the time blocking and they say, oh, that doesn't work for me.
Speaker 1 (00:02:33) - And then they still struggle with their never ending to do list, overwhelmed and so on. Time blocking works when you do it right, when you don't use it as a bandaid solution, but as a tool in your strategy implementation. So we'll talk about that. I will give you some practical tips, and hopefully you will be able to turn it around and really use it to your benefit. Let's get started. So let's first start with the common problems that I'm seeing that even my clients do in the beginning. As I coach them, I just help them get out of those problems when they try. Time blocking. Time blocking doesn't work for you when, for example, you'll let you loose, you scheduled something in your schedule. Write your time block for something, but then you let something else overtake it. So let's say you schedule time to work on the project, and then let's say you pick up a phone call during that time, right? You allow that phone call to distract you, and then whatever the phone call is, you deal with that and then the time passes.
Speaker 1 (00:03:38) - You don't do it. Or of course, it won't work if you sit there and procrastinate during the time overwhelmed because you try to jam too much in that hour, let's say, don't you block to yourself. You try to jam, let's say all your to do list there, and your brain just naturally resists because your brain is saying you're trying to set me up for failure. You're trying for me to do something in an hour that probably requires 4 or 5. Okay, so then it won't work. If you're not realistic about how many things you can do within each time block. It also won't work if, let's say, your time block sort of on your paper calendar, but then you don't block your digital calendar, that it's somewhere out there for people to use and book meetings with you, and then you plan to do something, but then a client booked a meeting with you, or somebody booked a one on one or supplier potential client and you're like, oh, they didn't work. Now I have a meeting, right? Or it won't work.
Speaker 1 (00:04:48) - If you just try it for a week and you complete it, let's say one time block out of the five you booked for yourself like five time blocks, one each day and you completed one. And the four you didn't. Because of some of the reasons I'm sharing. And then you just decide, oh, it doesn't work for me because I wasn't 100% perfect on the first, second or fifth try. Okay. And then of course, it won't work for you if you're taking your whole unfiltered to do list without a strategy. And let's say you try to push it in in one week, you're like, yay! I discovered this new tool time blocking. Let me just jam everything in one week and try to see if that new tool will be the new fix for my problems. But then you're using time blocking as a Band-Aid solution without addressing a root cause of why they have a never ending to do list, right? Time blocking is not going to fix that root cause there for us too. It's not going to work because you're not addressing the problem, just a symptom, right? Think about it.
Speaker 1 (00:05:51) - If you had a flu or some sort of oh, let's say if you are allergic right to something, let's say to pollens and. And you have a runny nose all spring. If you just deal with the runny nose well, it will just keep running because you're not addressing the fact that you're allergic and how maybe potentially eliminate that, right? You can do it through a natural path. I know my husband lately has been feeling so good because he's using a natural path services to address his allergies, so you can address that. Anyhow, that's beyond the points. That was just to illustrate, the tissue is not going to solve the root cause. You get to address the root cause and then the, you know, runny nose will go away. Or you can use a tissue occasionally and will actually help you. Okay. I wanted to start with, just so you understand that time blocking is a tool, but not the panacea for all the problems in your business. It's just when you have certain things in place that serve you, then time blocking can be very powerful.
Speaker 1 (00:06:54) - First, before I give you tips, let's just talk about what it won't do for you right? So let's just set expectation what the tool is not going to do and what it can do for you. So what it's not going to do. It's not going to replace your strategy. Right. It's the strategy that helps you make informed decision on how are you going to achieve your short term goals and long term goals. And from there you will know what type of actions, few actions you need to take, and then time block that will create the results you want. And you need to decide that first what's important and needs to be prioritized. What can wait? What do you need to drop and not do at all? Because that eliminates the never ending list and you can just focus on those few key things. Now, if you want to explore more of that topic through this podcast, I invite you to listen to the episodes from last week. So 141 on Strategic Constraint and also I did record an episode on business growth strategy.
Speaker 1 (00:08:06) - It's episode 99. Listen to it, learn more about how to do less through having a strategy and being strategic about how you grow your business, and that will help you. Another thing, the time blocking is not going to do for you is magically expand the time that you allocated for the tasks. And what I always tell my clients is truly, our brain tends to underestimate the amount of time and effort it takes us to accomplish things we want to accomplish. And it will especially do that when you've never done time blocking before, when you really don't have that self-awareness of how things will take, or it's just a brand new thing you've never done before and you just don't know until you do it. So the tip I give to my clients, it's a pro tip I'm going to share with you here, is usually double or triple the time that you think something is going to take the first time you schedule it. So if you're thinking, okay, I'm going to do this project where I'm going to follow up with some clients, or I'm going to enter some things in my client management system, or I'm going to write this blog and I'm going to do this.
Speaker 1 (00:09:23) - If you're thinking, let's say the task is going to take you 30 minutes, book an hour and a half. If you're thinking that maybe the task will take you an hour. Book two it doesn't hurt to have more time than less. You can always, if you finish sooner. Bonus you have extra time. You can do something else if it takes you two hours, but you think it could take you less than the second time, you can manage that, right? But it's what you don't want to do is underestimated so much that you never accomplish the full task that you thought. Then you're like, time blocking doesn't work right. I can never finish and it's not the time blocking. It's your ability to estimate how long things will take. Another thing that time blocking will not do for you is it won't solve your lack of commitment, of doing the things you decided to do in your on that time block, or you not treating that thing with an equal importance to something else that might be happening in your business.
Speaker 1 (00:10:29) - Okay, the decision to do it, the commitment to do it has to come first from you. You need to understand why you want to do these tasks. Why is it important? Why would you spend time on it and wants to commit then to time? Blocking is a tool to ensure you have time and space for it, right? That you don't forget. Like we're all busy. If I didn't time block and schedule through my things, I would forget to do them because I'm busy. I have a lot of things going on, so I need to. Create time and space for it. So that's what the tool, what this tool is for. It will also not ensure that you get 100% of everything you planned for, done every week till the end of times that you'll be perfect. Life is not perfect. What you want to strive for is 80 over 20. Okay, if I complete 80% of the things that I planned for the week, it's amazing. I'm proud of myself. It's great the 2010 or 5% that I don't.
Speaker 1 (00:11:29) - Just because things happen in our business, we can't predict everything, right? That's normal. I can move it to the next week or the following week, because if I know how to prioritize, I will, of course, complete things that are the most urgent or the most important first. And I'll leave the 5 or 10% that I don't complete to later because those things don't have deadlines and so on. Right? But I also ensure that I will get it done next week or whatever. So you need to have that mindset first, the commitment mindset, and also that not trying to be perfect all the time first and then time blocking will work for you. So let's move on to what time blocking can actually do for you and help you with the first thing it will do when you apply it. And you stay consistent and you stay aware and tweak and improve it. That's what we do with my clients, is you grow awareness of knowing how long it takes you to complete certain tasks. Okay, you grow self-awareness.
Speaker 1 (00:12:38) - So the more you do it, the more accurately you can predict and plan and time block in the beginning. You're not going to be accurate if you've never done this before. And that's okay. But when you do it intentionally and then you review when you realize, okay, well, I booked 30 minutes for this, I need an hour or I booked an hour for this task, but I actually need 30 minutes. Such self-awareness is priceless, because then you will be able to utilize the time that you want to spend and work in your business very effectively. Of course, it will help you get organized and not miss things. Double book yourself when you're doing it right. When when your time block in the actual calendar that is out there for people to use, and so on. It will also create space for you to do the important things, and it will allow you to get them done. The important things that are not urgent, but the ones that ensure that you consistently grow your business, and the ones that will at some point compound and speed up your business growth.
Speaker 1 (00:13:45) - And it's so easy not to do them when you get overtaken by serving your clients and, you know, responding to emails and doing all the things, I always coach my clients and remind them as they grow their businesses, especially when your service provider and you're the one delivering the service before, maybe you hire people to do it for you as you grow your business, then you get busier, right? Your time fills up with client service delivery, with the projects that you sign that you need to deliver, and the common mistakes that most entrepreneurs do because it's just natural. How we operate is they stop marketing and selling because they have a lot of work this moment, right? They just focus all their time on service delivery. And let's say it takes them a month or 2 or 3 and then projects finish and they're like, oh, I don't have any more clients. What am I going to do now? And then they start frantically marketing and selling. But by the time they sign another client, that might be a month where they have a low income month or no income whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (00:14:54) - With the time blocking and focusing on important things and making sure that you always do those important things, no matter what, I teach my clients how to always market and sell, even if it's to a lower capacity when they're fuller with clients. So they don't go through those client routes, right? So they always have a steady flow of clients, and then I just teach them how to properly schedule them and set expectations and so on. So if they're a fool not to take on too much, but always have not overwork, right? But just have a steady flow of project and clients. What also time blocking does. It reduces stress in overwhelm and I can't stress how powerful that is that I truly, from my experience, it was mind blowing to me. When I started time blocking many, many years ago, I was still in one of my corporate leadership jobs and before I started, of course, I've never done that before. I was just, you know, relying on my calendar for the meetings I was invited to and then I was trying to fill in.
Speaker 1 (00:15:59) - The time that was left, which wasn't a lot with my never ending to do list, and I was overwhelmed by the fact that usually from the to do list, if I accomplish one thing or two things or three things in a week, I added five more. So it was just this constant hamster wheel, right? So when I started prioritizing and going through the process that I'll share with you in a second, in time blocking and sort of weekly planning, I was amazed not only how much I actually accomplished during the week, but also how much my list of two things stopped growing because by being proactive, I eliminated a lot of emergencies that I was creating by not being proactive. And with that, how much my stress came down and overwhelm. Especially when I did weekly planning and I knew what I was my the decisions of who I was going to do a week ahead was done for me on a Friday or Saturday, whatever that was. It was just amazing, okay? It kept me calm and grounded and so on.
Speaker 1 (00:17:06) - So I just can't stress enough the benefit of time blocking when you do it in this aspect, it also what it does. It makes it easier to set and respect boundaries and say no to things. I don't know how psychologically it works. I can't explain it, but it just works because again, it's for me as well. If you have something scheduled on your calendar or even if it's an appointment with you, let's say it's a project that you're doing that's important for you in your business and you committed to it, right? You made that decision. If somebody comes by and asks you to do something for them during that time, it's so much easier to say, no, sorry, I have another commitment or I have something planned. Then when you don't have that in your calendar and it's somewhere scribbled on your to do list, and then it's so much harder to say no because you have this opening in your calendar and you're like, well, I guess I'm free. Meantime, it's not true because you have all that work to do.
Speaker 1 (00:18:08) - But somehow, psychologically, this works. So I highly recommend it's powerful. Okay, so three step process of how to make time blocking really work for you. This is what I do with my clients. If we're coaching together this is what we would do. The first and foremost, I can't stress this enough. You need a business growth strategy. I do it with my clients through my top SEO framework, and I call it the winning strategy. And this is a set of decisions, our theory of how each and every one of my clients, those strategies are individual. I help them develop for their business, their vision, what they want to accomplish, how they're going to accomplish that. Once you have that, then from there you prioritize and you choose 1 to 3. Not more key focus areas per quarter. Ideally, you could do it monthly depending on your business, but per quarter. So you know, okay, these are three areas that I focus on this quarter. Some of them could be areas that every quarter will be your focus, like for example client service delivery or marketing and sales.
Speaker 1 (00:19:20) - But some of them could be more of a project related. Right. Maybe you want to create a tool or implement a tool, or maybe you want to hire help, or maybe you want to create some training, whatever that is. Certain processes right from those key areas, you decide on the actions you're going to be taking daily, weekly or monthly, whatever that is. And then your time block those actions. That's what you do. Not taking your current to do list. That is a mix and match of things from the way you run your business now and try to fit it. You know you got to go really logically and strategically about it. Strategy first. Then you decide on your priorities. Then from those priorities, you derive the actions and then your time log those actions. Okay. And if you want my help with this, so then you can double your business without adding more work or overwhelm. I'm happy to help schedule a sales call with me. I'll leave it in the show notes.
Speaker 1 (00:20:22) - All right, have a fantastic week, everybody. Bye. Thank you for listening today. If this podcast resonated with you, please come back. Also, you can leave a review on whatever platform you're listening, and if you have a suggestion, question or a topic you would like me to talk about, let's get in touch via email. Email me at. Maggie at Stairway to leadership.com. See you in the next episode.