Time Blocking Method | Why Time Blocking In Google Calendar Is Overwhelming And What To Do Instead!
Hi Muses. Welcome back to my channel. Does your time blocked calendar look like this?
But your level of productivity looks and feels like this?
Black Knight: All right. We'll call it a draw.
By the end of this video, you'll know three reasons why the way you've been time-blocking is actually holding back your productivity and three simple solutions so you can fix it.
Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript.
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I have an entire coaching membership where I help people get productive and, more importantly, stay productive without overwhelming themselves. And if I were to tell my clients to time block like this, they'd demand a refund.
Basically bad things would happen.
So what's problem number one? Problem number one is: you're not a robot.
Robots can live via a consistent, inflexible schedule. You cannot. Such an inflexible schedule will almost always hold you back. Because when you're a human trying to be a robot, this is almost always inevitably your future.
C-3PO to R2-D2: My goodness. Why did you have to be so brave?
Problem number two, you know what other advantage robots have over you? Capacity.
A robot doesn't get tired doing basic cognitive tasks. As long as they're powered up, they can keep going. We humans most unfortunately do not have this skill. We need to rest and recuperate. And our capacity varies from day to day. Especially if you're someone like me who has a chronic illness and mental illness. We don't have very many spoons.
So facing ourselves with this overwhelming schedule, it's like looking at a solid brick wall. It's not helpful. It's overwhelming, it causes stress and you knew what those things do? Make it harder to think straight!
But you know what you're asking yourself to do when you provide such an overwhelming schedule? You're asking yourself to think straight consistently.
These things do not mesh.
Basically, when you're overwhelmed, not only do you feel overwhelmed (which…icky), but your priorities lose their priority status. Because even if you're color coding, even if you're using emojis, even if you're screaming at yourself in all caps from your Google calendar, everything still has the same flavor of priority when blocked together on a Google calendar. And so the things that are important to you tend to fall by the wayside because you're too stressed to manage it all and it's just burning yourself out. Does this sound familiar?
Problem number three, time-blocking like this doesn't actually help you start doing the work that you have scheduled for yourself.
And this is something I see a lot in my coaching practice. People will discover a new way of either organizing their lives, planning their time, just in general being on top of things. They'll get super obsessed and fall down the rabbit hole with said system, get it all set up… (And this could take anywhere from a day to weeks. Like seriously, we get kind of obsessed. I've been there before.) But then afterwards, you've kind of spent all your spoons. The system is there, but it starts gathering dust because: A) you're not actively using it and keeping it up anymore; and B) you're not actually doing the work that you planned.
So while their shiny new system gathers dust, they just revert back to their old habits even though they know those old habits, aren't serving them.
That's why they set up the new system in the first place. But lo and behold, here they are again. And the more times you go through this cycle of shiny new system, setting it up, not using it, it gathers dust; you revert to where you started. The more times you go through that, the worse it gets. You find yourself investing less time in a new system. You start letting it gather dust sooner, and you revert to your old habits sooner. And what's worse, sometimes your old habits get more self destructive. It's a terrible rebound.
At the end of the day, regardless of what time blocking method you use, none of them help you actually do the work you've scheduled for yourself.
It's purely a scheduling system that helps remind you to do the thing, but does it help you do the thing? Not necessarily.
Before we move on to the solutions for these three problems, comment below and tell me which problem you relate to most, I'd love to hear from you.
Solution one, keep it flexible and edit as you go.
This is something I touched on a little bit in my review of Cal Newport's new Time-Block Planner in this video. Ultimately, the idea is you allow yourself the grace to edit your time block schedule throughout the day to reflect what comes up, because life isn't 100% predictable. Things are going to happen. You're going to need to adjust things. So giving yourself full permission, if not encouragement, to edit your schedule, as you go is really important.
That being said, if you're spending a lot of time every day just editing your schedule over and over and over again, that means your schedule wasn't flexible enough to begin with. So building that flexibility into your original time block schedule for the day is super important. And that includes things like scheduling in breaks and buffer time.
So breaks are obvious: lunch break, morning break, afternoon break.
Buffer time is where you make sure you've got little, like 15 minute to 30 minutes slots in between your larger blocks of work. This is not only important in case the task you had set for that time block takes you longer (because the buffer time allows you to have that extra time to get it done), but it also makes it so if you get something done sooner, you now have more time in between that and your next block of work that you can choose to use at your discretion.
This inherent flexibility to your first draft of your time block schedule for the day not only helps you not become overwhelmed, but it's more conducive to actually being productive during your work time blocks.
Solution two: time block on a daily basis for that day only (instead of time-blocking forever in advance).
We're trying to prevent the Google calendar brick wall syndrome that I've been talking about (in order to reduce overwhelm). This also helps you ensure that you are focusing on your priorities, and this is where having a separate system that manages your tasks and your projects, and your priorities is really important; so you can refer to that when you're creating your time block schedule.
But making a time block schedule either in the morning for that day, or the night before for the next day, can be much more calming because you're only dealing with one day at a time. And that allows for infinitely more flexibility, as opposed to someone who has a brick wall on their Google calendar that's basically the same routine every week. That could feel really constricting for some people and is the opposite of helpful.
So if you're one of those, time block every day for that day specifically, and watch how much more effective it will be for you.
And solution three: if you struggle with any amount of procrastination and resistance to actually doing the work that you've scheduled into your calendar, learn how to start and stay consistent.
It took me over a decade to learn how to start and be consistent. I told that whole story in this video, and I highly recommend you go and give it a watch. But ultimately I developed a system for myself that I now call Butt In Chair Time. And honestly, from the bottom of my heart, this skillset changed my life. I can trace all of the accomplishments I've made and all of the success I've had for the last four years down to this one simple three step process and the three mindset shifts that go with it to make the process effective.
And this is such an important and meaningful toolset to me that that's why I have taught an entire Masterclass on Butt In Chair Time.
I want more people to have this skillset, which is why I offer this masterclass for free. All you have to do to sign up is go to this link. It's about an hour long.
I dare you to sign up for this masterclass. It really could be the thing that changes your life. I know because it changed mine and I'm already seeing how it's changing the lives of my coaching clients. And if I think about it too hard, I'm going to cry. So I'm going to move on.
So there you have it. Three reasons why time blocking in Google calendar could be holding back your productivity and what to do about it.
If you liked this video, please hit that like button, subscribe to my channel and share this with your friends. I'll be back next week with another video. Talk to you then. Bye.
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