Transform Your Workday: Block Timing Techniques to Boost Productivity Ep 004

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Ready to transform your productivity and achieve your entrepreneurial dreams? Discover the game-changing block timing techniques that will help you structure your workday effectively. Learn how to start by scheduling only 50% of your time, making it easier for your brain to adapt without feeling overwhelmed. We also tackle the common issue of discipline, offering unconventional tips like cold showers to build mental resilience, and discuss the critical step of eliminating distractions by removing temptations altogether.

Later, we dive into maintaining focus and achieving balance throughout your workweek. Uncover the power of the "Is it time?" list for capturing unexpected big ideas and projects, ensuring you stay on track with your deep work sessions. The "weekly dump list" is another valuable tool we introduce, helping you manage immediate tasks without interrupting your workflow. By organizing these tasks with designated due dates, you'll maintain a steady rhythm and avoid productivity burnout. Tune in to gain practical insights that can revolutionize the way you manage your limited work hours and enhance your efficiency as an entrepreneur.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Maximizing Workday Productivity
• 6:52 Staying Focused and Balanced

Transcript

Joey Young: 0:00

Welcome to Breadside Business, where we talk directly to online entrepreneurs like yourself about how to grow your business to seven figures and beyond. My name is Joey Young. I help grow my family's professional service business from $19K to over $100,000 a month in revenue in under two years, and I'm really excited to talk about some of the lessons I learned along the way on that journey. This particular episode I want to talk about how to maximize your workday. If you're someone who has trouble focusing and getting the most juice, the most productivity and the most efficiency out of your workday and you kind of feel like you're aimless or you don't really use your block timing very well to schedule your tasks, this is the perfect episode for you, because I was talking to a client recently who asked me like man, how do, how do I maximize my workday? How do I get the most out of these limited hours I get to grow my business? And at the time we were working on block timing together and really integrating that strategy of block timing into his calendar and he said you know, how do I make the most of this? And so I gave him this framework and I think it would be really helpful for you, especially if you're more of the creative, intuitive type that doesn't like to schedule out your day.

Joey Young: 1:09

First thing I told him was man, I think you're trying to dive into the deep ends headfirst without knowing how to swim. I was like man, you really signed up for the whole hog. Because if you schedule 6 am to 9 pm each weekday and you've never done block time before, your brain is just going to reject that. It's just going to be too much. You're going to feel like you're being controlled. So I was like dude, you got to ease into this. Instead, why don't we walk down the steps of the shallow end feet first and get your brain used to having more of a structured workday? So I said listen, 50% of your workday schedule that the morning. Get that locked in your most important tasks on the calendar and then leave the afternoon free, completely open. That way your brain can kind of know okay, even though I'm being sort of structured and forced to work on this in the morning it has a little bit of breathing room and it knows in the afternoon it can do whatever it wants, right, and then later on you can kind of like schedule out more and more of your workday to kind of dial it in.

Joey Young: 2:11

But that was the first thing I said. And then you know we were talking more and he was like well, even when I do have my block time on my calendar, I sometimes get distracted and I don't know why. I'm like really, and so here's the thing I said like there's only really three reasons why you wouldn't key in and focus on whatever your block time is when you have it on your calendar to do. There's really only three things that'll stop you from actually sitting down and doing the work that you pre-schedule on your calendar to do on any particular day at any particular time. And the first one is pretty simple and you can probably guess what it is it's a lack of discipline, and this is, you know, not a sexy topic, but listen, there's a lot of people out there who don't have the muscle of discipline developed, and if that's you, you just got to learn how to enjoy doing hard things. It's really that's what it comes down to If you don't like to be forcing yourself to do hard tasks and you don't find a lot of satisfaction and fulfillment out of like grinding and doing something hard but meaningful and then accomplishing it and having the satisfaction of knowing that you did something really hard that helped somebody and that feels good like that's just something you got to learn, you got to develop over the long term. I mean, one of the things that really helped me in the beginning was I loved taking cold showers in the morning and to this day I still five days a week, even in this New York winter we have here. I'm taking cold showers five days a week in the morning because I know if I can do that in the morning, if I can force myself in the shower where it's ice cold and it's, it's like jolting me out of my my current mindset of waking up and kind of like groggy, you know, puttering in the morning, I know I'm going to be keyed in to whatever task I have the rest of the day because I've already done the hardest thing that morning that I'll do the whole day, which is step into a nice cold shower. So use that idea if you want to, and the other you know.

Joey Young: 4:07

The other thing too is if, if you're struggling with discipline sometimes it's not about trying to force yourself to do something. It's about removing the potential distractions that will inhibit your discipline. You have to banish those distractions from your life. If you find it very hard to stay disciplined and work on whatever task you're working on, take all the things that could potentially pull you away from that discipline and remove them, banish them. I'm talking phone in a different room, I'm talking slack and emails completely closed. Maybe you even have to get away from those, uh, from the browser altogether. Maybe you've got to have a special device like an iPad or something you do your work on in the middle of the patio, in the backyard, because you know if you're in your office or in a place where there's potential distractions, you'll go for it. It's really, really important that you start by saying, all right, how can I banish the distractions, instead of thinking how do I avoid temptation to engage with them when they're right in front of me? Take the candy bowl, just get it off the table. Don't try to resist eating the candy on the table. Okay, so that's the first thing. If you're having trouble sticking to your block timing, first of all build a discipline. That could be the first reason why you're having trouble.

Joey Young: 5:22

The second reason people have trouble sticking to their calendar and those block times is because there's something that truly is more important than what's on their block time and I want to be very clear on this. This is true about 0.01% of the time when someone if someone is truly dying or you know kid is sick and has to be picked up from daycare or the school or something like that. That is true in very few and far between cases. Something is very, very important only if it is more urgent and more important than what you put on your calendar, and that happens way less often than we think it did, than we think it does. So if you're constantly being pulled away and your brain's being pulled off into other things that you know feel important, remember, at the end of the day, there are instances where something urgent truly comes up. You get a phone call, you get a really bad, you know information about someone close to you and something that's happening and it just cannot wait for the hour to finish Like you have to deal with it in that moment. But that is the 0.01% of cases. Okay, and that's the second reason why we get distracted from block time.

Joey Young: 6:52

The third reason and the most prevalent reason why we get distracted from block time the third reason and the most prevalent reason why we get distracted and we don't focus during our block time is because something feels like it's more important than what we put on our calendar. And when something feels like it's more important than what we put on our calendar, there are real strategies we can use to counteract this. And I'm not going to leave you high and dry. I'm not going to let you go without telling you some of these things that can help you avoid this reason for avoiding your calendar, because we all struggle with this. Okay, so here's the thing If you ever are sitting down and all of a sudden, you get hit with an idea or you listen to a podcast or a YouTube video and you get inspired with a new product, a new marketing avenue, a new channel, something like that, and you're like, oh my gosh, this is awesome.

Joey Young: 7:45

I got to jump in and I got to get this kind of fleshed out in my brain, I got to research this and kind of write it out or whatever. If some big project is inspiring you, that is almost always a distraction from what's on your block time, and what I do in these scenarios is put it on what I call my is it time list. So the is it time list is just a productivity list in my software that I made, and it can be a piece of paper for you, a sticky note, I don't care. But what it is is it's a list where I put all the projects and ideas that I don't have time for right now and throw them on that list, put a due date on them for three months from the future and then forget about them. And what's great about this list is that I can capture all these ideas, all these products, all these marketing channels, all these you know, ideas that come to my brain or inspirational things that I hear that I'm like, oh, I should implement that, but I know I don't have the time for right now. So if you are struck with a huge idea, throw it on a list. Is it time? Is what I call it Is it time? And then when it pops up on my calendar three months from now, because I put a reminder on it, you know it's like the is it time? And then like, whatever the idea is and if it is time, great, I can implement it. If not, I just set the reminder back another three months and it's out of my head, out of sight, out of mind. I can get back to whatever I'm focused on in that particular season. Whatever I'm focused on in that particular season, that's a really good strategy to keep you focused.

Joey Young: 9:22

Now, the other strategy to help you avoid getting distracted when things feel urgent is to throw them on what I call a weekly dump list, and this is separate from my. Is it timeless? Is it timeless is like for big things. Weekly dump list is like oh shoot, I forgot to send that email to that person. Shoot, I forgot to follow up about that thing, darn it. I wanted to check in with that person and see how they're doing. You know, this is like those little things that you remember for some reason, because your brain is a little bit more empty while you're doing deep work, because it's less intense, and so like these things that you forgot to do or you meant to do or you should do, kind of like bubble to the surface.

Joey Young: 9:55

And for a lot of people, me included, our brain loves these things because they're opportunities to escape from whatever we're forcing our brain to focus on. So what you need to do is have a place to capture those things and know when you'll when you'll get to them. So the weekly dump list is for things like you know, follow up with suzy about blah. That's what I throw in that weekly dump list. It's in my productivity software. Again, you can use a sticky note, you could use a paper list and then you know, put a due date on it for Friday, so I remember before the end of the week I'm going to follow up with Susie about X, y and Z, so that way you don't forget about it, you don't get pulled away from what you're focusing on and you'll get to it within the time frame that you need to get to it. So those are a couple of strategies the is it time list, the weekly dump list. They kind of help you stay on task with whatever you're doing and not getting off track, which is so, so easy to do with tasks that feel like they're more important and more urgent, but they're really not. So again, lack of discipline something is more important, something feels more important. Those are the only reasons why we get distracted from our block time on the calendar, and there are certain ways to combat each one.

Joey Young: 11:10

Lastly, I just want to leave you with this. This is something that I noticed a lot with people who are kind of new to the high performance game is they don't really know how to view the particular day that they're in in context with the rest of the week. I made this mistake as well. This is a huge lesson for me. I used to like jump into a particular day and I woke up feeling great. I would launch into work. You know, I was like hitting the end of the workday feeling good, so I'd work some extra hours. You know, I knew I had, you know, some big stuff later in the week, but I would just kind of be vibing and I just work really late and work really hard that day. But then I wake up the next day feeling kind of like a productivity hangover. I was like, wow, like that was crazy yesterday. Kind of like a productivity hangover. I was like wow, like that was crazy yesterday. And I kind of want to like putter around the next day Like.

Joey Young: 12:03

This happens to a lot of people, unfortunately, and it's a result of not viewing any particular day in the context of the week that it's in. So if you're someone who naturally goes hard, or someone who naturally doesn't go soft hard, or someone who naturally doesn't go soft, this is really important. Take the first five minutes of your day and look at what's going on. Do. I have a gigantic block of meetings that's going to get me really, really tired. I know because it's like back-to-back Zooms.

Joey Young: 12:33

Is it on the flip side, kind of an open day? It's a lot of you know, focus blocks on long-term projects where you know it's not like anything urgent needs to happen by the end of the day and look at that day and then balance it out. So if it's a really busy day and I've got five hours of meetings, I'm going to put in my calendar man, get myself a nice coffee and take a walk right in the middle of that, because I know I'm going to be tired, I'm going hard, but I don't want to burn myself out that day. I don't want to be completely spent on the end of the day because if that's a Wednesday, I got two more days in the week. I need to be able to be at my best those days.

Joey Young: 13:13

Conversely, if it's a big, wide open day and I've got big blocks of time focused on long-term projects, I need to also key into those and make some adjustments to my calendar in the morning of. So I'll sit down that morning, take five minutes, look at the day and say, okay, this could easily slip into a day where, just because there's not a whole lot of urgent things going on, I lose my urgency. So what I do is I say, all right, here's the thing that absolutely has to get done by the end of this day, here's the day's deliverable. So I'm really focused and I'm really keyed into one particular task or two particular tasks. That will be a little bit of a stretch goal for the day. So I don't just look at the wide open day the kind of like easy, lackadaisical day it could be and lose my sense of urgency while I'm at work day it could be, and lose my sense of urgency while I'm at work.

Joey Young: 14:02

So, whatever kind of day it is, balance it out with. On a busy day, maybe a treat, maybe a break. On a slow day, maybe you put yourself into a certain here's what's got to get delivered by the end of the day, here's my daily task I got to accomplish. And that way you balance out the day and you don't burn out or lose momentum in the middle of the week. I think that'll be really, really helpful for you and it'll help you to see the day in the context of your week, step back a little bit and feel like you can actually maintain your momentum the whole week not overdo it, not underdo it any particular day, but maintain consistent momentum throughout the week.

Joey Young: 14:38

Which is the name of the game in high performance is consistency. Consistency ability to bounce back quickly. After you hit a roadblock or discouragement or something that stops you from achieving a goal, you can bounce back quickly. It doesn't destroy you emotionally, you just keep going. You get up the next day and you keep fighting, and that will be really helpful for you.

Joey Young: 15:01

And hey, if this is helpful, you really need to check out my priority clarity sheet. It's a free worksheet to help you define exactly what your priorities are right now to grow your business. It's specifically made for online entrepreneurs to focus on. Okay, what are those needle moving tasks that will actually create the revenue and create the growth I'm looking for? Because a lot of people have trouble focusing on those most important needle moving activities. They maybe spend half the day on less important things and then it just doesn't really pan out in terms of really productive day. So I created this priority clarity system so you can understand, for your business and your context, exactly what needs to get done and you have hyper clarity on it at each and every day.

Joey Young: 15:49

So download that. It's a free download. There's a link in the description of this show. Also, if you like this show, if you have any thoughts or any questions for me, I'd love to hear from you. Email me, joey at joeyhyoungcom, or shoot me a DM on Instagram. That's at joeyhyoung on Instagram. And while you're there, book a free 20 minutes coaching call with me and I'd love to just talk through your business, see how I might be able to help you grow your business. It's a free call. There's a link in the bio of my Instagram there at joeyhyoung. And hey, while you're here, if you're still listening, thank you. Hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, hit the follow button on whatever platform you're on. That really helps. I really appreciate. It Gets the word out, you know, affects the algorithms and pushes the show forward. Leave a five-star review if you're on a podcast platform, I really appreciate it. And hey, until next time. Happy scaling.