Plan your day, your way.

Framework for Effective Time Blocking

Self-Assessment: Begin with a moment of honest reflection. Time blocking isn't one-size-fits-all. If it feels like a fit, let’s, do it... If not, that's okay too.

Visulaise and Scheduling: Imagine your ideal week. What tasks are non-negotiable? Schedule these into your calendar, using colours to differentiate between tasks like marketing, admin, creativity, and personal time.

Batch Similar Tasks: Cluster similar tasks. If you're filming video lessons, consider also scheduling other camera-ready activities on the same day.

Minimise Distractions: Designate specific times for email and use airplane mode to curb the temptation of constant connectivity. This fosters deep work, where your productivity peaks.

Customise Your Calendar: Your business, your rules. Align your tasks with your most productive times. Early bird or night owl, schedule demanding tasks when you're at your best.

Group Meetings and Calls: Consolidate meetings and calls to specific times or days. This reduces the mental load of constantly switching gears.

Financial and Data Tasks: Consider a "Finance Friday" for all things money. This keeps you in the right mindset to tackle financial tasks effectively.

Flexibility and Buffers: Build in buffer times for transitions or unexpected tasks. Rigidity can be the enemy of productivity. Allow space for breathers and personal moments.

Personal Time and Surprises: Don’t forget to block off time for you. Whether it’s a walk, time with kids, or an hour of "choose your own adventure," self-care is crucial.

Worry Window: Allocate a time slot weekly for worries. This helps compartmentalise concerns, reducing their immediate impact on your daily productivity.

Prep for Tomorrow: End each day with a brief planning session for the next day. This ensures you hit the ground running each morning with clarity.

The beauty of time blocking lies in its flexibility. While it provides a framework to boost productivity, it's not set in stone. Adapt it to fit your evolving business needs and personal rhythms. Remember, it's a just a tool to serve you, not a rigid set of rules to constrain your creativity and spontaneity.

Armed with this framework, I encourage you to carve out some time today to draft your ideal week. Remember,

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Transcript

0:13

Welcome to Designing Success from Study to Studio. I'm your host, Rhiannon Lee, founder of the Oleander Finch Design Studio. I've lived the transformation from study to studio and then stripped it bare and wrote down the framework so you don't have to overthink it. In this podcast, you could expect real talk with industry friends, community, connection, and actionable tips to help you conquer whatever's holding you back. Now let's get designing your own success. Today's episode I am going to chat to you about time blocking. I have been working with a couple of coaching clients this week and really talking about streamlining their calendars and thinking about time blocking in a non traditional sense. Some people will freak out when I say time blocking and think, Oh my gosh, my brain doesn't work that way. I could never implement that into my business or in any successful way. But for others, they're like, yeah, look, I'm time blocking curious. I've always wanted to know how people do it and whether it would work for me. So I thought I'd break it down for you today. That way you can make an educated decision, leave it or adopt it. It's completely up to you. I personally live by time blocking. I find it really helpful for my productivity. I really like to be able to see everything color coded and know what I'm up for on any given day. But let's get back to basics. What is time blocking? It is effectively just a time management strategy and you schedule out every single part of your day and break it into blocks in your calendar so you might have 1. 5 hours, you might have 90 minutes there for marketing, you might go and then do 15 minutes for emails and you might schedule three 15 minute breaks. blocks throughout a workday where you check on emails and every other time you work on airplane mode, for example. And there's lots of different things that you can do to effectively time blocks. It's not just about filling your calendar and feeling busy. But let's get started on how to do it. The very first thing that I always suggest that we do is be really honest with yourself. If this is not going to work for you, don't set yourself up for failure. Don't make it hard on yourself. If you do think it's a system that you could adopt or that you'd be willing to put the work in, then let's get going. Basically how it works is you want to visually schedule blocks into your calendar. And you can do it two ways. You could basically plan your ultimate week. What does that look like? And plot it into the calendar and then drag and drop across the days until you're happy. I like to List out everything that's needed to run my business this week, for example. So maybe you need to do emails. You need to onboard somebody, you need to do discovery or alignment calls. You need to plot in project management. You need to think about what's coming up on your calendar on 14 day basis prepare design time, time for creativity, Feels counterintuitive to plot out time to be creative, but hey, if it isn't in the calendar and you go time blocking, you may not get it done in saying that. Personal time is really important to block into your calendar as well. So making sure that blocking out your weekends, pick a fun color, pick your favorite color. And maybe it's after school pickups and plot that all into your calendar. And all of a sudden, it's a very colorful, very busy looking, but quite structured way of looking at your week. Even you can even look at it across your mind and think about, perhaps 1 week a month is more admin heavy because you do a monthly review and you do a bit of planning or quarterly planning or monthly planning. Yeah, you can. You get a bigger picture of what you do on a day to day basis. And maybe you're quite new. Maybe you don't know yet what is required of you. I think back to all the hours in the first year of my business that I lost to not having systems, not being faster or having a clear process and just repeating the same email over and over, writing things instead of having a template. Like a lot of that lost time, it's like horrifying to me now, but when we know better, we do better and I have a totally different system. And I've definitely adopted time blocking in my business. Some people, myself included, it's really helpful to schedule similar type tasks near each other when we're time blocking. So if I'm doing a bit more of an admin kind of day, I might block off two hours in the morning for filming new Video lessons inside of the framework or updating some of the older ones. If that's the case, I'm probably chances are. Relatively nicely put together to be on camera and a recording. So I would also think about doing a podcast interview doing some mentor or coaching sessions and blocking them into that Thursday, for example, because I know I'll already be on zoom or presentable. I can just do all of those things at once. So then if I want to have a slob studio day, I can make that the admin day and group all of the tasks where I don't need to be put together. I don't want to. I don't really care if I feel completely camera ready. The big bonuses for this is it reduces that feeling of like shiny object syndrome or swapping, going. From this task over into checking an email and then back over to this task. And before you know it, it's lunchtime and you haven't really achieved anything. It promotes a lot more deep work. So where we, I like to listen to a podcast, but I know lots of people that listen to meditation, music or lo fi or classical music is something I do listen to when I'm like doing a really big project. Like when I write a business seminar or the marketing workshop or whatever, and I really want to. Get a lot out of my brain. I work to classical music, so choosing something that you can work to and gamifying it a little bit. If I have 90 minutes, I will put on a timer. I will force myself to do that thing and maybe get a reward afterwards. There's sorts of little tricks that you can do to make sure you get it done. Once you've mapped out what tasks are required and how much time you'll allocate to each of those tasks. It then makes it a lot easier to group them into same vibe. If you've got finance Friday and marketing Monday marketing, if you're doing that already, that might be a good time to pop in a little block that says contact, past clients from the last 6 months with a referral offer or, that is obviously still marketing, but just. Being able to break out specific tasks and then match them to the bigger umbrella, if you will, if you're doing finance Fridays and you're checking your P& L and your cash flow, maybe there's something on your mind from a financial perspective that you've been meaning to do, but you haven't been doing. So I would throw in. Get a comparison for business insurance into a finance Friday, a little time block outside of that, but in the same sort of ilk. And then it's easy to do all these tasks while you're in the money mindset and you're in that mode, you've been in spreadsheets, or maybe you've got something else that you need to do that's quite data driven. And I would put it over onto finance Friday. After I've done my. Money stuff. I'm then going to do like this big data entry thing or whatever it is. I'm not really selling it. And can you tell it's probably not my favorite part of it. But yeah, just making sure, look, it's one day of my life and I'm just going to get it done and I can see it in my calendar and I have to do that hard stuff if I want to do the fun stuff. So we just get on with it. And this is like the path of least resistance or the most pain free way to get it done. It's not a flawless system. Even with time blocking, there are days where I don't get to it all and something needs to be dragged into the following day. Or there are days that you're just not productive. There are definitely days even with a great system. Net to catch all of this non productivity. There are still days where I'm in the studio. I'm like, Oh, I don't feel like I'm just getting into it. And there are other days where I do much better at it. So be kind to yourself as well. I mentioned before, really. Being honest with yourself about whether time blocking will work, but there is a version of it for everyone, even those of us who can be a bit defiant or have opposition defiance. I don't really like it when the alarm goes off that it's time to do this. And I'm thinking, Oh, but I was just about to, I want a bit more freedom and control in what I'm doing, but I have tried both ways. And I have to say, I get So much more done when I'm actually just follow. And it was me that planned it in the best place. There's nobody else telling me what to do, but me. I decided what time blocking look like my business. What were the tasks? When did I want to do them? What fell into a Monday? What I do on a Thursday, et cetera. Reminding myself when I do feel defiant about being told for the next 90 minutes, you must do it. Do X was just that it's just me telling me and I do actually want to achieve this task. So I have had to have little self talks here in the studio. Another thing that's going to be entirely specific to you is working out when are you most productive? What does productive look like to you? Because I might be like, out of the gate, one coffee, working really well focused in the morning and someone else just might not really come alive until three, four o'clock. And that way, when you're time blocking, It's nobody said it has to be nine to five. We're designing our own success. You run your own business. It's your rules. You actually do not have to work nine to five. And if you're worried about other people's schedules or that's when trades and showrooms and things are open, schedule your emails to go in their workday. Sure. But if it doesn't work for you, don't round hole square peg it, find what does work for you and lean into that. When you do find what works for you, do the hardest or like The task that's going to take the most mental energy and concentration and it's going to need the most of you do that in that productive window. So if you happen to recognize that you, a bit sluggish in the afternoon, but a really good first thing in the morning or late at night, if you have something that's there, It's quite important or that you need to be concentrating on more than some of that busy work or just easy to do, but not fun. Always schedule that or time block that in correlation to when you're going to be most productive. I mentioned this before, but grouping your meetings or calls into one morning or one day is so good. Nothing flips the calendar on its head, like a 15 minute discovery call in the afternoon, one day, and then a Zoom meeting the next morning. And then, it can be a bit draining and it's across your whole week. It feels like you're always communicating and meeting others where they're at and to their, agendas and all sorts of things. My advice is and I do this on Thursdays. The framework is have a mentor call. So I'm always on a zoom call with them and one of our experts or just them workshopping whatever they need. So I know I'm going to have at least a 11 hour zoom call on a Thursday. And so that is the day where I'm like, cool. Want to book an alignment call? Let's chat on Thursday. podcast interview. Let's do it on Thursday. And then I've taken the pressure off me to jump between having a call with all the girls and workshopping their client issues and marketing issues and whatnot, and then jumping straight off that and going, I'm just going to plug in here and do some reconciliation in that quick books. Like that, to me, It's a bit frustrating. I'd rather do that when I'm in that zone on a different day. So that can be really a helpful switch. And if you're not doing it already, I really would suggest that you think about that. Nothing. I used to try to be available to anyone all of the time, but if you went on my website and you inquired about a discovery call, I'd be like, great. Are you free tomorrow? Or let's chat straight away. And now I have a link that I use through Calendly and I'm like, choose the next available that's suitable to you. And I only have specific days for alignment because I don't offer it every day that I work. It's like pick, basically pick the next Thursday that you're available and we'll chat then. And that's like a mindset set. It's like a mindset shift that had to happen in my business for me to be like, it's okay for me to ask you to meet. Me in my requirements and not constantly setting aside what I need to do and focusing directly on what you need straight away. That's like emails that come in all day and disrupt us. I mentioned before working on airplane mode. It's always helpful. But also having scheduled times where you're like, I check my emails at 9. I check them at 10. 3, and then I check for any emergencies and tidy up and schedule to make sure everything's ready at 5. and those are the 3 non negotiable times for email. I may even say to clients when I'm working together I check my emails morning, noon and night, you may. I'm not on it all the time, effectively, and that it could be anywhere between 2 and 4 hours maximum for me to reply to an email. In the case of an emergency, they know what to do. Something like that, just getting, if you don't already do that, little things like adopting a link and then just having the calls when it's suitable for you to have the calls, not the other way around. It's really not rude and people do it all the time. There's so many, I've never felt it rude when other people have done it to me. Like they've said to me, okay, no problems, book a spot in my calendar or here's a link or can't wait to chat. Let's do it in a week or so. I'm never offended or worried about that. So I feel like it's silly of me on the other side to think that it would be a problem for anyone else. Okay, now don't forget to build in buffers. One thing I see with time blocking sometimes after I will go through it with a client and we have a whole new approach to things and then they send me a screenshot of the calendar after they've time blocked. And I'm like, you can't even go to the toilet. You need to have a little bit of flexibility so that if a last minute meeting comes up, if somebody needs, if you need space in your calendar, we all need space. We need to not feel bound, one task ends and another begins and another, we need to put 15 minutes either side, pop a blank AOR color code it if you want so it looks fully timed. Some of those are sort of sexy minutes and times where you can choose your own adventure. I like to throw in an occasional, an hour that is a choose your own adventure. Do whatever you want for the business. Whatever you think will drive a result this week. You do have to be flexible. Time blocking is, has so many benefits. It's really beneficial, but it's not You can be flexible with it. You can drag things across, but it will just help keep you focused don't forget to add in as I mentioned earlier, the personal time stuff, but it's not just time you think you need to put in there we're going on a holiday on this date and not that sort of stuff. It's more like time for a walk, time for chatting. Just downtime with the kids or take an hour break and like surprise and delight yourself, if you will, as you would a client with little pockets of free time when you get into really following your calendar, you'll be like, Oh, this is great. I love this for me. I can do whatever I want I also put two things in my calendar that sounds weird but each day is like a 30 minute period in the day for unexpected or like top of the list stuff. So stuff that I didn't map out a week ago because I had no idea someone was going to email me with a supplier issue or this was going to happen and I can park that there. Email or issue into that 30 minute block. And when it gets to that block, I'm like, cool. Now I'm doing all the fiddly little things that I wasn't expecting to have to do in my day, but that's also time blocked, which makes it really easy for me to focus. I was speaking to a client today about one thing that I sometimes suggest that people do in their time blocking and that's have a worry window. It sounds really silly, but bear with me. On a Thursday once a week or once a fortnight time block into your calendar a worry window make it 15 minutes Make it one hour. However big you think you need to make it and then every time you have imposter syndrome which everybody gets or Comparisonitis you're looking around and you're about to spiral out of control into a vortex of ah, I'm no good and blah blah blah Park it in your worry window. So it is valid You It is real. You really are feeling like an imposter. You really are feeling frustrated by what is going on. But you need to go put it in your worry window. Make a note of it. And when that worry window comes up on Thursday, I promise whatever it is that you made a note of will feel really silly and trivial. And it's also like kind of comical, the idea that you are like, Oh, it's 1230 time to worry, time to fret about it. It starts to remind you how much this stuff holds you back in business and how much focusing on imposter syndrome and comparative synitis. These are just examples, but in focusing on things that you worry about that are completely outside of your control. Anyway it's not a good use of time. So after a little while of the exposure of seeing your worry window come up in the calendar and realizing it feels weird to sit and worry when I felt quite fine it actually does help. It helps set aside those feelings as they come up in and redirect them to Thursday at 12. 30. Yeah, give it a go. I know it sounds mad, but it is after a couple of weeks you really start to get Oh, what am I supposed to do? Put this in the worry window. And it helps you to like, when it rises up, when it happens and you're in the moment, you're like, Oh, park it or push it away. Leave it till the time that is allocated. To do that. And then we can worry, which when the time comes, you probably won't worry. You will be able to look at it a little bit more objectively and go, that was nothing. That was nothing. But in the past, if you didn't have a worry window, these are the periods of time where people lose like 2 or 3 hours of their day spiraling out of control over something that they, yeah, they literally cannot control other people or the way other people behave on the internet or whatever it is. So just a little tip, give it a go. Now I don't want to get too advanced on time blocking because I'd love for you to just go write a list of all the tasks you think that need to be mapped out, allocate a specific amount of time to those tasks, put them into your diary, like start moving things around, build in some break time to eat, time to walk, time to play put in a few pockets of surprises along, sprinkle them through the calendar. And you will start to get routine as well, because if you're doing the same thing, marketing Monday is every Monday and finance Friday is every Friday, you start to know what's ahead of your week when you're planning projects and when you're taking on work. But the last tip that I'll give you is the very last task of my day. So I do the 30 minutes of like unexpected random. Things and then the last task of the day is prep for tomorrow. So I just have a 10 minute set my to do list, double check my time blocking. Who am I onboarding? If I'm working coach in pocket, for example, which two or three. Businesses am I currently working with? And what are we focusing on? Are we doing systems for them? Marketing? These are the things that I need to be really prepared ahead of the game on my end, so that when I know all the right questions to ask them, I can go a bit deeper and I've done the prep work. I'm not just in the morning oh, that's right. That's right. I forgot about you. It's all very organized, but that it's done that way because of each night, it's Tomorrow's to do list is signed off. It's my responsibility as a business owner to be like, yes, those are still the priorities in my business. That is still the right approach because it is just a style of organization. It is not something that you set in stone. You can, there's wiggle room, you can make choices. It's not intended to be like a military approach where you just wait, rise, brush your teeth. Wash the gun or whatever they do in military academy. I don't know. I'm going from movies, but it's not supposed to be like that. It's supposed to actually free up a lot of extra time that you were already wasting scrolling. How many of us have been guilty of say, I'm researching the real or I'm scrolling. Babes, you've got marketing Monday now, you've got to do it in there. Or if you are legitimately using it for personal use and then saving stuff to your folder, no problems. But we're no longer going to spend like a huge chunk of your work day being like, where did that go? What did I do? And you have no idea. If you're time blocking, you can see what Tasks you spent time on and this will evolve and you'll edit it and you'll refine it. And you'll do it your way, I hope. Design your own success. Get it done how you like it. You might actually time block five hours and call it each day of the week is for a different collection of tasks and then have sample tasks inside of it. Whatever is going to work for your brain is going to be the best way to time block in your business. Alright, meet me back here next Thursday because I am bringing you all of the Pinterest tea. I am speaking with Jo from Jo's Social, she's a Pinterest marketing manager and social media manager. I remember walking out of this conversation with her the actual emoji of brain matter. I, it was so good and I'm so excited to share it with you because I know how many of you are going to go, ah. Is that all it is? Yeah, meet me back here on Thursday and we will go through Pinterest for, specifically for interior designers. It is absolutely still relevant for all creative service based businesses, but if you are a designer, get here on Thursday. That wraps up another episode of Designing Success from Study to Studio. Thanks for lending me your ears. Remember, progress over perfection is the key. If you found value in today's episode, go ahead and hit subscribe or share it with a friend. Your feedback means so much to me and it helps me improve, but it also helps this podcast reach more emerging and evolving designers. For your daily dose of design business tips and to get a closer look at what goes on behind the scenes, follow at oleander underscore and underscore finch on Instagram. You'll find tons of resources available at www. oleanderandfinch. com to support you on your journey. Remember, this is your path, your vision, your future, and your business. Now let's get out there and start designing your success.