Today we're gonna talk about time blocking. I don't know if you're familiar with it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. You can leave thoughts in the comments, of course, and let me know.
You also might be joining or listening to this video as a podcast. If so, welcome! I'm glad you're here.
Welcome to limitless business online. I'm Tracey, and so glad you're here with me either live, on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or maybe you're listening to the podcast replay. How ever you are here and how ever you have found me, welcome. I'm glad you are here. I'm the founder of Limitless Business online. I always get so excited to know where you're joining from or listening from because that's one of my favorite parts of online business. I love that it's limitless to who you can connect with and where you can connect with people from all over the world. It's so super fun!
Today, I wanna talk with you about time blocking as a tool to help with scatterbrain.
Picture that emoji with the The mind blown. That is scatterbrain. It's also known as overwhelm. And time blocking, I wanna talk about to help you maximize productivity as well. Because I work with virtual assistants who support multiple clients, and I support online businesses that have a lot of projects, tasks, ideas, things going on all at the same time, I thought this would be a helpful topic for all of us.
When you work online, It is very easy to get distracted and lose sight of the tasks that you're trying to complete or the goals that you're working toward. And this is where time blocking is so super helpful. So once again, if you're just joining, I'm Tracy, founder of limitless business online. I want to I help people who want to work in a unique way either as an online business owner or as a virtual assistant to pursue their life's current passions, and live the life they want around work instead of work dictating their life. I do this by teaching people to become accept exceptional virtual assistants.
I'm offering an online course this May to do that, and I also help online business owners with systems, strategies, and support in group masterminds, one-to-one sessions, and in online business management when I have space available. I've been in the online business space since 2012 and I absolutely love that online, your business and your work is truly limitless. From all that I've learned over all the years, I wanna help you grow your online business through what I feel is the triple threat of systems, strategies, and support. System strategies and support. That is my area of expertise in online business and what I hope to offer you if you're an online business owner OR if you're just getting into online work, then, maybe you want to do that as a virtual assistant. That's how I started out and I can help you to be an exceptional virtual assistant to support online businesses.
So it's your turn. If you're joining me live, I'd love to hear where you're joining from. What do you do in the online business space? or are you just curious and you're just here checking it out?
I see a couple of people joining live, so I'd love to hear from you in the comments. And there is a link in the comments on the Facebook page and on YouTube that you can click to allow those platforms to show your name, or you can just comment anonymously. That'd be fine too. But I'd love to know where you're from. That's always super fun.
So today, we're gonna talk about time blocking. As I'm launching limitless business online and supporting online business owners, I have several jobs, so to speak, because I have multiple clients.
Sometimes I get asked, how do you get all these jobs done? Like, you have multiple areas of focus. How do you stay focused?
Having several clients can cause overwhelm and scatterbrain. Just picture that mind blown emoji. It can cause that scatterbrain.
Have you had scatterbrain? Are you tracking with me what scatterbrain is? When you feel scattered because you have so much to do in a day... It's overwhelming. And Maybe you don't really have that much to do in a day but your brain feels that way. So I call it scatterbrain.
My suggestion to combat brain overload is to time block your day. Time block your day when you have scatter scatter brain.
So what is time blocking? So here's an official definition. time blocking is a time management technique in which you schedule specific blocks of time for different tasks or activities throughout your day. It involves setting aside dedicated periods for focused work on particular projects, meetings, personal activities, or any other significant tasks. The key principle of time blocking is to allocate specific time slots for specific activities, helping you to organize and structure your day more efficiently.
Isn't that very official sounding? Of course, I did not write that. Thank you to AI for the help on that.
Basically, you decide what chunks or blocks of time you are doing certain activities. It could be for thirty minute chunks or maybe hour long chunks, which is pretty much what I do for each client. Then within those blocks, you decide what tasks are being completed.
So how does time blocking help you with scatterbrain? Time blocking helps you with scatterbrain because it helps you to feel grounded. It allows you to get all of those thoughts like "Oh, don't forget about x y z", "Don't forget about calling the vet. Don't forget about this or that. running that errand" out of your brain.
When you time block you know that that task is gonna get done in that time block. You can even write it in that time block. Instead of just trying to remember all the things that you need to do or just putting them in a giant, super long to do list. You actually decide in advance when you're going to do them, and you don't have to think about them anymore. So it really helps you to feel grounded.
What are some benefits of time blocking your day? Have you ever time blocked your day? If you've never done this, I'm curious. You can leave it in the comments. If you haven't, there's four benefits I'll share with you.
One is increased productivity because you can focus on just one task at a time.
Multitasking is a myth. Trying to do multiple important tasks. You know, you of course, you can cook dinner and talk to your children and, watch TV. You know, you can do those kinds of things the same time, but true multi-tasking with true concentration; you can't multitask when you truly need to concentrate on tasks. It doesn't work. It's a myth. Time blocking gives you increased productivity because you know the time you're gonna focus in and concentrate on that one thing.
Time Blocking also gives you a visual representation of your day. So if you are a visual person, a visual learner, it gives you a visual guide to your day, and I find this helps me to feel more focused as well. I like to think of it as a flow for the day. So "here's how I would like my day to flow" knowing that everything won't go exactly as planned, which is why in the planner that I'm creating, the on purpose planner, there are actually two columns for time blocking because, you will inevitably have to you know, shift things in the second half of the day. It gives you a visual of your day, though, in a way that is, It's it's better than, like, a Google Calendar. I guess it's maybe better because it's handwritten, but I like it better than the Google Calendar, which has my appointments. Time blocking shows me when I'm doing all the tasks outside of just appointments.
Time blocking also helps with procrastination because you have preset time blocks your when you're doing certain things. Whether you plan your day the night before or you plan your day in the morning, you predetermine when you're doing those tasks in the certain blocks of time. It gives you a structure for accountability to yourself and it helps with procrastination.
Time blocking can also help to reduce the stress of a super long to do list. It is helpful to brain dump, you've probably heard that phrase, brain dump, where you dump everything you're thinking that you need to do into one list. That is helpful. But then when you just look at this giant list of to dos, it's pretty overwhelming of "how am I gonna get this all done? When am I gonna do it?"
When you time block it, it helps to chunk it down into, more reasonable, actionable, steps. It takes away that overwhelm and reduces stress.
How do you actually do time blocking? Well, I'm gonna show you my example in the on purpose planner.
If you're here with me on Instagram, you won't be able to see it right now, so you'll have to come back, to a different platform or get on my email list, and I can send you the replay, so you can see what this looks like. Or maybe I'll be able to edit in some samples for you to watch here on Instagram. But here on YouTube and Facebook, I'm gonna show you what my planner looks like. And Let's see...
The first one I wanna show you is just a, you can see here, this is just, an image of the planner. Out those chunks like I was talking about. Then I also wanna show you let me switch over... I'm gonna switch over and just show you a little video sample of the on purpose planner. So let me show you that, and I'll talk you through it as we're looking at it.
So here is the on purpose planner. And on one side is just a time blocked day from six AM to ten PM, and then there's a second column to readjust the flow for the day. And I picked out some sample pages to show you what it looks like.
This is actually today, and it's kind of messy, but you can see where I blocked. I made little blocks for my clients.
This was, this past Sunday, and it was very simple. I had church and then a date day. So I just kinda blocked those to give myself that visual.
This page shows you again how I have blocked My client work for the day. And then this is just another example page where I time blocked and had specific times for the clients. You can see there's some more hours for one client, a little less for the other on that particular day. So, that is what a time block to do list can look like. And there's two columns in the on purpose planner because, like I said, your day is not gonna go exactly as you planned in the morning or the night before. Sometimes by 10AM, I've already had to readjust the flow for the day, and that's why that's there.
By the way preorders for the on purpose planner are gonna be accepted starting next week to preorder and have planners delivered to you by the end of March so that You have them for quarter 2 and you can stay focused on those 2024 goals for your online business or as a virtual assistant or just as a someone in general who has lots to do.
I always say the on purpose planner is for someone with a very full life that has a lot going on. So preorders will start being taken next week to get those planners to you in time for quarter 2.
So are you curious about time blocking your day, or do you already time block your day? I would love to know.
If you don't already, how do you manage those super long to do lists? How do you eliminate scatterbrain. If you have this super long to do list or you get distracted when you're working online, how do you manage that without time blocking? I'd love to hear.
You can leave it in comments below or on YouTube, Facebook group, Facebook page, I'd love to have a little conversation about it.
For me time blocking is a helpful tool to minimize Scatterbrain, to stay focused, and feel grounded in how my day will flow.
If you're not already time blocking, would you like to try it? I'd be happy to send you five days of time blocking pages from the on purpose planner that I showed you. I have a five day free download available.
If you go to limitlessbusinessonline.com/planner and enter your information, I'll send you that five day sample of the on purpose planner with the time blocking calendar days. I mean, it's just basically, Five days with the times, but, it's just super helpful to block out when you are actually doing the tasks that you need to do.
Thank you for joining me. If you're here live, thanks for being here. If you're listening to the replay or listening to the podcast, I'm so thankful that you're here.
And I will be here next Wednesday to talk with you more about online business and specifically how you can create how you can create your own continuing education university. I hope you'll join me here live. I hope you have a great day, and go try some time blocking.
Get 5 sample pages of The On Purpose Planner HERE.
