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time blocking

Productivity Tip #3: Time Blocking Is Essential

Time blocking is a technique where you pencil off a period of time to get things done – not for an appointment, however. I talked about something similar in an earlier blog post and you can read it here.

Time is of the essence where your life, business, career, relationships and anything else is concerned. Everything needs time, so you’ve got to make time for everything.

Balance is important

If you’re focussing too much on one aspect and neglecting the other aspects of your life, you’re piling things up in those areas. And as the pile gets higher, you find it hard to balance it any longer and the pile comes tumbling down.

You need to implement some time blocking on your calendar at this point.  This will help you clean up that pile you created.

Pretend for a minute that you have been working long hours of late.  You haven’t had time to be home for dinner with your family. It’s a challenge to leave work early because the nature of your job expects you to meet with clients until late into the evening.

Create an “appointment” on your calendar around dinner time so your assistant doesn’t book you into a client meeting. You can always take an appointment earlier in the day or after dinner to make up for it.

Time blocking for self care

Do this for every thing in your life that you have been neglecting – including time for self care. C-level executives or business owners are mostly overworked and stressed. The way they stay on top of their games is by time blocking. They carve out some time for the most important things in their lives. That includes time for family.

Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In and the COO of Facebook, makes time to be home for dinner with her family every evening. She makes it her priority to block off the time on her calendar, which makes this possible.

If she can do this, we all can!

List your priorities

Make a list of all the things you’ve been neglecting so far. Get out your calendar or agenda, whatever you use, and create time blocks. Make sure you schedule enough time for each of these items. You will have adequate time to finish what you start.

If you have any other time blocking techniques, I’d love to hear about it!

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