The Art of Time Blocking and Managing Your Schedule
The nature of procrastination is not only very stressful but it negatively impacts our self-esteem. When we consistently let ourselves down by not doing what we said we would, our self-confidence and belief in our capabilities diminishes over time and our dreams get smaller. As Nelson Mandela once said, “There is no passion to be found in playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
Whilst time management isn’t always easy, especially for those of us who feel pulled in many different directions, organizing and managing your schedule doesn’t have to feel rigid or overwhelming. Consider it a stress management tool that will help you confront your priorities and honor your potential. By simply taking control of your daily schedule, you will be amazed by how this simple act produces calmness, clarity, and order in all areas of your life. Time blocking is a productivity method that makes you aware of how you spend your time. Achieving a sustainable life balance between all life areas is one of the underlying themes of The Astral Planner and one of the foremost ways to accomplish this is by effectively managing your schedule.
Below are our tips to effectively manage your schedule, keep a solid focus, and curate purpose, clarity, and joy in your life.
I. Create a Balanced Template for the Day
Creating a template for your day doesn’t mean time blocking your work responsibilities and leaving the rest of your day in free fall or at the whim of other people’s needs. To avoid burnout and to protect your health, you also need to schedule non-negotiable personal time that will let you tend to your daily needs. Realistically, we all have additional responsibilities outside of our work hours—whether it’s raising children, taking care of companion animals, caring for a sick spouse or parent, managing a household, or building a business outside of a 9 to 5, the reality is it’s much harder to pursue our goals, feel satisfied in life, and function optimally when we are physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally depleted. Going through life in this manner puts us on auto-pilot, may build up cynicism or resentment, and can be harmful to our nervous system from being in “survival mode” for a long time. Think about what self-care habits or rituals you can realistically incorporate into your schedule every day. Once you’ve determined what will bring you joy and escapism, whilst maintaining your physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional well-being, you can begin by creating your personal time blocks alongside your professional time blocks.
Founder’s Tip: Utilize the Morning & Evening Routine and Nutrition & Fitness sections on the Daily Pages of The Astral Planner to curate habits and activities that will help you feel recharged, grateful, and motivated for tomorrow.
II. Create a Weekly Focus
Understanding what your priority is for the week is a helpful time-management strategy to ensure you are maintaining focus and consistently making progress towards important deadlines, events, or major milestones.
Founder’s Tip: In the forthcoming 2023 Edition of The Astral Planner, each Monday will feature a designated space where you can write your focus and affirmation for the week.
III. Day Theming
For those who have many responsibilities competing for their time and attention, day theming is another time blocking method that can be extremely effective. For example, if you’re self-employed or an entrepreneur, rather than splitting your day across many different departments (and switching back and forth between various different hats), you choose a specific theme to focus on such as, finance, marketing, design, production, business operations, etc. and you dedicate a full day to those particular tasks. One of the perks of this time blocking method is it will help you achieve extreme focus, which is necessary to perform deep work.
If you want to tap into cosmic energy, refer to the “Planetary Influences on the Days of the Week” section in The Astral Planner. For example, Wednesday is rooted in Germanic mythology and named after Woden, the Anglo-Saxon god of wisdom. The Romans connected Woden to Mercury because they both represent our communication and thought process. Wednesday is ruled by Mercury, the planet of day-to-day expressions and relationships. This is an excellent day for communication-based projects such as writing, recording, blogging, presenting, or reading.
Founder’s Tip: I know that my energy is lowest by the end of the week so Friday is usually reserved for administrative tasks that require less mental stamina on my end.
IV. Utilize a Daily Top Priority List
Developing the skill to prioritize tasks that need to get done vs. tasks that you want to do is a great professional skill to hone in order to work effectively, as well as, a great personal skill to nurture to build up discipline. Knowing your high-level priorities for the day is going to decide what makes it onto your schedule, takes up your attention, and determines how you time block your day.
Founder’s Tip: Utilize the Top Priorities feature on the Daily Pages of The Astral Planner to tackle your most pressing tasks for the day. Keep your priorities organized per life area by checking off whether they are respective to your home, family, work, social, personal, or financial.
V. Task Batching
Task batching means grouping similar tasks together so that you can complete them all within a designated time block. Not only will this help you streamline your schedule and save you from wasting valuable time from shifting between different tasks, but it’s also going to make you more productive and effective. For example, instead of allowing yourself to get distracted by email notifications and boundlessly checking social media throughout the day, you block off designated time for those tasks.
Founder’s Tip: What has been helpful for me in eliminating distractions is setting a designated time in the morning and before I leave work for checking and responding to emails that have come in throughout the day. Similarly, I have a set time when I check The Astral Planner social media handles and respond to comments or messages.
VI. Set Aside Time for Deep Work Hours, Breaks, and Reactive Tasks
Deep work is focused work such as writing, designing, or researching where you want to be able to work without interruption or external distractions for a few hours. One of the best ways to make the most of your deep work hours is to time block it into your planner, put your phone on silent, and turn off all notifications. If you work on a team and you have a shared calendar, you can add it on there so your teammates are aware and know not to disturb you.
Always include breaks in your schedule. Continuing to work when your bandwidth is depleted is counter-productive and opens up room for overlooking important details or letting errors slip through that otherwise would have been caught.
Remember to also schedule in some leeway into your schedule to allot for potential reactive tasks such as impromptu phone calls, last minute meeting invites, or unanticipated problems. Managing your schedule in this way gives you the flexibility to pivot without derailing your responsibilities when something unexpected happens.
Founder’s Tip: Be careful not to be overly optimistic about the time that you have. It’s better to overestimate how much time you will need for a task rather than underestimate and inadvertently put yourself into a stressful frenzy over an artificial deadline. Always add buffer time in between tasks and meetings!
VII. Always Plan Ahead
If you look at the most successful people, you’ll notice a common thread between them — they all plan ahead as being unprepared can zap your motivation. By not having a solid plan in place, you can end up wasting a lot of valuable time and energy. Whilst you can’t 100% plan the future, the goal is to be prepared for unanticipated variables and allocate your resources and priorities accordingly.
We recommend organizing and planning your schedule in advance at least on a weekly basis. Pick a day and time that you can consistently dedicate once a week towards looking at your calendar, reviewing upcoming deadlines and personal commitments, and scheduling them into your planner. If you own The Astral Planner, you can utilize the Monthly Calendar pages to get an overview of your month ahead and know exactly how many days you have leading up to a deadline or event. Once you have an understanding of everything coming up, make sure to work backwards and allocate enough time and preparation to hit those major milestones. Utilize the daily pages to time block relevant tasks and write out to-do lists that you can continually reference and update.
Founder’s Tip: I use the last 20 minutes of my work day on Friday to review my personal and professional calendar, plan my schedule and tasks, and write down any reminders for my upcoming week. For example, back when I used to work in an office, I would write down reminders to pack all my orders into my car the night before so I could drop them off at the post office after work.
READY TO ORGANIZE YOUR LIFE?
The Astral Planner is the perfect all-encompassing, holistic planner that offers a variety of thoughtful planning features that will support your day to day organization, inclusive of your mental, physical, spiritual, and financial health . . . all in one place. Don’t know where to start? Try our Weekly Task Organizer Notepad to “brain dump” all your pressing tasks and to-do’s under each major life area or our Weekly Overview Notepad for streamlining your personal and professional schedule each week.