Increase your productivity with time blocking

What do you immediately feel when you hear the word productivity? Do you start to cringe and get guilty feelings about how you are not 'productive enough'? Perhaps it makes you want to get out your to-do list and add a few more tasks to the list.

Today, I want you to think positively about being productive. The word productivity should make you think about accomplishing your goals and living out your dreams, rather than unnecessary pressure and unrealistic expectations.

I have one simple, but huge productivity tip to share with you. It's my best-kept secret when it comes to improving your productivity levels. The key is knowing where your time is needed most so you can prioritize and simplify that ongoing to-do list that you face every day.

My tip for greater productivity is: Time Blocking!

This has helped me in my business immensely as well as some of my clients. Trust me: if you are not already using this hack, you have been missing out.

To effectively use time blocking, all you need to be able to do is focus for a certain amount of time on one particular task. By dedicating that moment to a single task, you can drop the weight of everything else that needs to get done and give all your mental energy to that one task. This is how you check off important tasks on your list instead of procrastinating them. You can complete the task with more inspiration, more efficiently and more effectively.

Why and how should you use time blocking?

1. Eliminate perfectionism and procrastination

How many of you have fallen into the trap of one or both of these habits? Perfectionism causes you to waste time by working on something for too long, never thinking it is good enough. In contrast, procrastination stops you from ever starting in the first place.

When you implement time blocking into your schedule, you allow yourself to focus on the task that you want to avoid by dedicating a specific time to starting it and stopping it. By setting a certain amount of time for your session, you are forcing yourself to focus on 1 certain task for a specific time period only. When the time is up, it’s time to leave that task for the day and move onto something else. The deadline or cut-off time will allow you to walk away from the task, rather than giving in to the tendency to feel that your work is not good enough.

2. Built-in accountability for large and small tasks

The most obvious use of time blocking is to make progress on large projects. It’s difficult to sit down and try to tackle a huge project all at once, and many times we do not even want to start , as these projects just appear to be a giant pot of overwhelm. By using time blocking, you can schedule different blocks of time to focus on chipping away at projects like this, little by little, in order to complete them effectively over time.

Time blocking is also a great way to tackle the tiny but annoying tasks that keep pestering you in the back of your mind. You know they do not take long to do, but this can cause you to let them pile up over time until they become an overwhelming mountain. The strategy here is to focus your energy and create a time block to tackle many of the teeny tiny tasks in one sitting. Plowing through that mountain of small tasks feels great and certainly makes you productive.

Whether you start on a big task and get 15% done or focus on a small task that you’ve been putting off, time blocking will work for you.

Tip: Tackle the large tasks first. I have to admit I am a checklist kind of girl and love that sweet feeling of checking things off my to-do list. Sometimes that can lead me to purposely look for small tasks that I can cross off my list rather quickly. This leads me to procrastinate the larger, more important projects that require more time and effort. By using time blocking and tackling the most essential tasks first, you will feel productive and elated with the progress on the bigger tasks that you have made. Move over procrastination, with time blocking we can start hitting those larger tasks that we are tempted to leave for another day. And that, my friend, is progress!

3. Better planning

When you implement time blocking into your work day, you are able to plan your time better and actually accomplish what's on your to-do list on a daily basis. 

Time blocking helps you understand how much time you need to dedicate to certain tasks, allowing you to plan your time more effectively. When you plan your time efficiently, you can create a to-do list with a reasonable amount that can actually get done in your work day. This eliminates the guilty feeling that some of you may experience when you can't complete your to-do list by the end of the day. With time blocking, you are able to accomplish what’s on your to-do list, with nothing left over, leaving you feeling victorious!

Now you all know one of my best kept productivity secrets - time blocking. If you are not currently using this in your daily work, I strongly suggest you give it a try. No overthinking necessary here. Just set aside 30 minutes as a block of time and focus on one task until time is up. In fact, now is the perfect time… Go!