Unlock Peak Productivity: Mastering Calendar Blocking for Business Success

Are you constantly juggling a million tasks and still feel like you're getting nowhere? Imagine having a clear, organized schedule that not only boosts your productivity but also gives you more time for what truly matters. In today's episode, I’m discussing calendar blocking, a powerful way to take control of your time and skyrocket your business success!  Tune in to learn how calendar blocking can transform your chaotic days into productive powerhouses.


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Chapters

• 0:45 Unlock Your Productivity With Calendar Blocking
• 14:07 Effective Time Management and Productivity

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:45

Are you constantly juggling a million tasks and still feel like you're getting nowhere? I know this has been top of mind for me lately and even after 20 years of being in business, I still need to review and refine my productivity habits and systems. Imagine having a clear, organized schedule that not only boosts your productivity, but also gives you more time for what truly matters. Only boosts your productivity, but also gives you more time for what truly matters. In this episode, I'm discussing the secret weapon that top entrepreneurs use to take control of their time and skyrocket their business success, and how to use it as well, and how I use it to help me. So stay tuned and learn how calendar blocking can transform your chaotic days into productive powerhouses. You won't want to miss this. Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine-month-old. My main goal To help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I've seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out. You've come to the right place, so sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the e-commerce made easy podcast.

Carrie Saunders: 2:08

Today we're talking about one of my favorite subjects. That has nothing to do with technology or websites, but it's imperative for business owners, especially online business owners like you, and that's calendar blocking. I'm sure you've heard it before, but do you fully utilize it? How can you learn and revise from what you has and hasn't worked so far? This is a process I've been working on for several years now and actually just recently did some more calendar blocking revisions, actually as of just recording this episode a few hours prior. But before we go there, let's back up and make sure we know the definition of calendar blocking, in case you haven't just maybe heard of it and not really dug into and aren't really quite sure exactly what it entails.

Carrie Saunders: 2:53

So, at its core, calendar blocking is a time management method where you divide your day into blocks of time, each dedicated to specific tasks or activities, and we'll go into why this is important here soon. So, instead of working through a to-do list haphazardly, which is so easy to do, you allocate time and time slots for each task so that you're ensuring that you stay focused as well as being more organized. Have you ever fallen into the to-do list trap of just going through what you think is important at that moment in time? I know I have, and I honestly still do. It's a battle I constantly fight. I'm sure that you will probably run into this as well, and I'm definitely a work in progress on this one, because it is so easy to fall into a trap of reacting to the inputs that come at you throughout the day. Whether you have a team or don't have a team, there are things that are coming at you all day, whether it's social media things, whether it's email notifications that are coming in, questions from customers, questions from other people around you. You always are getting, you know, bothered and interrupted, and if we can have a great calendar blocking system, we can start to put some boundaries around that. We're going to talk about that here in a little bit more detail.

Carrie Saunders: 4:10

So with calendar blocking, the aim is to minimize the time you spend reacting to the world around you so that you can get the most important tasks done as well as them get them done more efficiently. I know that when I have done calendar blocking and stuck to it. Well, I feel I get so much more done in my workday. I feel more effective. I feel like I'm getting the more important tasks done.

Carrie Saunders: 4:38

So some of the benefits of calendar blocking is enhanced focus. By dedicating specific time slots to a specific type of task, you're eliminating distractions and focus on one thing at a time. It really helps your focus. It also increases your productivity. Structured time blocks help you make the most out of your day. By grouping similar tasks and avoiding procrastination, you kind of get a ball rolling on that group of tasks that are similar, have a similar brain function and need and it really helps you get the important tasks done. It also helps you do a better work life balance because whenever you're scheduling both work and personal tasks at the same time, your brain is getting pulled here and there in every different direction.

Carrie Saunders: 5:23

So I actually have a pretty hard rule where I don't really do much, if at all, personal tasks during the day and if I do, I group them together. And my family knows that I don't really respond much to text messages unless I purposely am taking a break and looking at my text messages, for example, or anything like that. I really want to make sure that I have a really good work-life balance and, conversely, when I'm at home with my family, I'm at home with my family. I don't generally work when I leave the workday. Whether you work from home and it's your workday set off, you know cutoff time, or whether you actually go to the office, like I prefer to do, and when you come home, you have that boundary where I only work on work stuff in the evenings or on the weekend if I absolutely have to, if there's something critical a client needs. So you can see here that this can really improve your productivity and your efficiency if you're working on some similar task at the same time.

Carrie Saunders: 6:23

So to implement calendar blocking, we need to do a few things, and I actually just went through these tasks earlier today. First, you need to identify your priorities. So you want to start by making a list of all your tasks. So what I did today is I made a list of all my daily tasks things I felt like I needed to get done every single day and then I made a list of things that I felt like I needed to get done weekly. So when I looked back at that list of daily and weekly things, I really scrutinized what I really really need to do every single day to make sure the business is moving forward and being successful.

Carrie Saunders: 7:02

Then I took those daily tasks and grouped them together. So, for example, some daily tasks would obviously be I need to check my email, which I'm honestly not good at, but also not good at getting through all my email. So my purpose here is to make sure I'm getting through all my email and making sure I'm responding timely to other people in my email. Sometimes I'll get buried and I get behind on it, and that's one thing I'm really working on. So I grouped in the morning and I made a specific block of time on the morning. That is email checking only. It's designed to be specifically for email.

Carrie Saunders: 7:39

I also group together some of my common morning routine tasks where I might be checking in with staff or I might be, you know, doing that quick social media check that I need to do for my business. I might do some journaling during that time in case I feel like I need to, you know, get some creativity and get some thoughts out of my head so I can have an effective day. So I group all these small tasks into a morning routine um grouping and then I've also created time blocks for those weekly things that need to happen. I need to be sending out client proposals regularly, so I put it on my calendar to send that out four times a week and I created a time block on my calendar for that. And then what I plan to do is I plan to take my task management system and use it to assign tasks during those specific time blocks. So I also have time blocks let me back up a little bit for client work and I have time blocks for creating content, like I do for this podcast. So what I want to do is I want to take those tasks that I have on my to-do list and put them in the appropriate time slot so that when it's time for content creation and I've created myself, maybe prior, some podcast type of content creation tasks or maybe social media tasks, I put those tasks during that time block. That way I know I can ignore that task until the time comes up for me to be doing content creation. And I like to use um also some blocks of a buffer block or a break time block.

Carrie Saunders: 9:15

Honestly, I block out a full hour for lunch every single day. One full hour. Many times I only take 30 minutes or 40 minutes for a lunch. I do go home or I go somewhere with my husband for lunch, and I think that's really important to go to a different location for lunch. I really strongly believe that sitting at your desk and working through lunch is not the most healthy thing for your brain and for your mental productivity, and just for your general health. So I recommend you going somewhere for lunch. So I forced myself to go somewhere else for lunch. Unless it's absolutely critical, maybe once a month at max, I might sit at my desk and work, but I generally do not do that. It's kind of rare, and so I have a time block for lunch. It's a whole hour long. But you know what, if I get done with lunch and feel recovered and rested in 30 minutes or 40 minutes, I've got 20 more extra minutes that I can do something in my business.

Carrie Saunders: 10:10

And then I also alluded to this too I have buffer blocks built in and I'm actually I'm looking over on my calendar right now. I have buffer blocks built in and I'm actually I'm looking over on my calendar right now. I have buffer blocks in just about every day. I have about an hour buffer block. So this is going to be for those times when I do need to react to something that could be. Maybe I stack up and wait to respond to my staff um instant messenger messages and do them during the buffer block, when I can be reactive and when my brain's in a mode where I can just, you know, react and respond quickly and get back to them and have conversations. So make sure you have some buffer time built in too, because we tend to underestimate our tasks and how long it takes us to do tasks. I know I totally do and I'm very conscious of this, but it's still hard to allocate the right amount of time for your tasks.

Carrie Saunders: 10:59

And another thing I've done is I've color coded my tasks or my types of blocks. So I have types of blocks that are working in my business and types of blocks where I'm working on my business. So working on my business would be income type producing activities, and working in my business are those day-to-day or week-to-week tasks that I need to do to keep things rolling. But they aren't directly tied to an income producing type of activity. So I've color coded those differently on my calendar. So it's very easy for me to look at my calendar and see what mode is my brain to be in at this moment in time. And then I also try to be very conscious in doing, in the business type, tasks in the same time area on a day and on another time area of the day. That way my brain isn't having to switch too much as far as what type of tasks it needs to be prepared for.

Carrie Saunders: 11:55

So for me, I use a light blue color for working tasks on my in my business I'm trying to remember which way it was in my business and my favorite color is purple. So I use purple for things when I'm working on my business, and blue is my second favorite color. So I wanted to make sure they were colors that I liked for those tasks too, because I don't want to look at the colors and think, ooh, I don't like that color, I don't want to do that task. So make sure you're using colors that you like and that you can relate to what they are. Okay. So when I do this, I actually do this on my Google Calendar. So I use Google for my calendaring and I use Google Calendar to create these colored time blocks for me, and I actually also love a program called to do is. That's my to do application that keeps my todo list and it auto puts things on my calendar.

Carrie Saunders: 12:46

So now what I need to do, now that I've revised my calendar blocking, is I need to make sure, when I'm doing my weekly reviews or planning for my next day, to put the task in the right time block slot. This is something I've not been great at in the past, I will admit. It's something I'm always working on is refining my productivity. So what I'm going to be very purposeful on now is making sure when I have those tasks scheduled because sometimes I'll have tasks actually scheduled because they're a bit more time sensitive than just it would be nice to get this done I want to make sure that they're scheduled on my calendar at the right time block timing. So I want to make sure those proposal type of tasks are scheduled on my client proposal time slots and my morning routine type tasks are scheduled in my morning routine time block and then also be flexible. So one thing that I've had to make sure that I'm getting better at is, you know, sometimes things happen, sometimes a client has an emergency and I need to toss all the things in the air that I had planned for the day and make sure that client's been taken care of, and things can happen to you in your business, even if you aren't like a service provider like us that might come up that are more urgent. So make sure that you are flexible and give yourself grace if, for some reason, you cannot stick to your time block schedule for that day.

Carrie Saunders: 14:07

Now, obviously, if this becomes a habit and you're not working on your with your time block schedule regularly, then you need to revise it. That's what I needed to do. I actually that's why I revised it earlier this morning is it just wasn't working for me how I had it laid out. So I needed to sit down, recognize that, really pull myself back and think of how am I working currently, now and when I'm effective, how am I working effectively? And so I tried to work with that.

Carrie Saunders: 14:33

I also want to work with my energy. So when you're creating these time blocks, think about your energy. Is your brain much better and more creative in the morning? Or, if you're like me, I'm a bit more creative in the afternoon. I'm a night owl, so my brain really starts kicking into the creativity about middle of the afternoon. I think about when you want to have client calls. If you have client calls and make sure that's in an effective part of the day. Make sure if client calls drain you like they can some people and sometimes they drain me and sometimes they're so much fun and I just absolutely enjoy them Make sure you're putting those client calls in the right, appropriate time slot for you so that if it does let's say, a client calls do drain you, then you might want to consider doing them right before lunch. That way, you then have a break at lunch, get your brain refreshed and you come back fresh from fresh to work after lunch. So think about how your brain works too when you're coming up with these calendar blocking times. It's super important.

Carrie Saunders: 15:33

And then lastly and this is something I'm totally guilty of and need to work on a lot is setting boundaries. I am, I tend to be, a people pleaser. I tend to want to always help people. So when my staff or customers are asking questions, even if I'm already working on something, I tend to stop and answer them. So make sure you set boundaries and you guys can message me or email me and see how well. Ask me hey, carrie, are you doing good on setting boundaries? Because this is one thing I really need to do to make sure that I'm effective and can help my staff better and not be distracted and not be juggling and multitasking too many things. So make sure you set boundaries and let others know about your schedule, especially if you're doing something like a power hour, where you definitely don't want to be distracted at all and thinking seeing that power hour thing out loud reminded me I didn't get my power hour on my calendar when I was doing this calendar blocking earlier today. So I'm going to make that to be a task after I'm done recording this podcast episode.

Carrie Saunders: 16:37

So think about these things.

Carrie Saunders: 16:39

How can calendar blocking work for you? You want to make sure this is an easy, no brainer system. The more it is, it's going to be much easier to follow. You're going to be more productive. It's going to be more helpful. You're going to be able to explode your business more, because then you're working on the right things, not the most urgent things, because sometimes the most urgent things aren't really the right things to be working on in your business. It's just a fact that sometimes those urgent things really aren't that urgent. They might seem urgent but they really aren't. So this can really help you filter through what you're doing and making sure that you are working on the important things, not necessarily just the urgent things that aren't really that important.

Carrie Saunders: 17:24

All right, so that was a lot. That's all I have for this week's episode, the e-commerce made easy podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. I love time management and productivity, so I hope you really enjoyed this episode. Be sure to visit our show notes at the e-commerce made easy podcastcom. That's e-commerce made easy podcastcom. You can also find the show notes on any app that you're listening to. If you're watching on the YouTube video, make sure you hit the subscribe button, and if you're listening on the podcast, make sure you hit that follow button on the podcast app that you are. That way, you don't ever miss any of our upcoming episodes. And if you're loving my e-commerce made easy podcast, I would be thrilled if you could rate and review us on Apple podcasts. Your ratings and reviews help us get the word out there better and help more business owners, just like you help you thrive in the online business realm. Thank you again for listening and I'll see you next week.