Time Blocking Tips and Tricks

Today, we are talking about time blocking tips, testers, teasers, tinkering, and tricks. How’s that for some solid alliteration! 😉

Time blocking can make a world of difference in your life. If you struggle with time management or just feel overwhelmed with your ever-growing to-do list, this should help! When you take time to plan out your day and prioritize certain tasks, it improves your focus and helps with that pesky procrastination that creeps up on all of us from time to time. Plus, the best part is you can really start to be more productive in less time, leaving more time for you to do other things.

How to Time Block

Time blocking is exactly what it sounds like. You schedule blocks of time to complete certain tasks. By having these strict boundaries for when we should complete a task or responsibility, it encourages us to actually do it within the timeframe!

Parkinson’s Law

Have you ever heard of Parkinson’s Law? It is a theory by Cyril Northcote Parkinson that states that work expand to fill the time allotted for its completion. Basically, the more time you have, the longer you will take on a project even if it isn’t needed. When we know we have unlimited time to do something, it becomes easy to put it off until the last minute and fill our time with other tasks that might be semi-related and delay our start. This makes productivity go down the drain.

For instance, I write a lot of our content at Marketing TEA. So if I know I need to write a blog post for today, I might do other small things all day long until I finally start writing, and even then might take a long time to research and put it all together. Instead, if I have scheduled out 1 hour to complete this blog, then I will get it done within that time frame. Which, incidentally, is exactly what I did.

Tips for Time Blocking

To avoid falling victim to Parkinson’s Law, give these tips for time blocking a try!

Identify what you need to work on for any given day that week. This will help you determine your high priority tasks and low priority tasks.
Assign your high priority tasks to the blocks of time where you know you are the MOST productive and have the least amount of distractions.
Place buffers between tasks. There will always be some time when you can’t quite finish something up and need to move it to an overflow list. Life gets in the way, so the buffer time is a must!
Group your meetings. Meetings can eat up your time like no other! Scheduling them throughout your day can break your stride and your productivity.
Don’t forget to block your personal time. We all need breaks to keep going, and if you try to power through without any, burnout will surely catch up with you!

We hope these tips help you become more productive in your daily life, and we bet you will even find you have so much extra time at the end of the day to fill with more things that you love! If your schedule is getting out of hand, you probably need some help taking your marketing off your plate. Send us a message and we’d be happy to chat!