Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
Block out Time
Somehow, it’s already February. How fitting that I want to talk about creating a habit of “blocking out time.”
In January, I asked you to take inventory of your belongings, so that you really know what you have. This month, I want you to become more conscious of how long it takes to do the things you do and where your time is going by blocking out time.
Time is a funny thing: It’s precious, yet we waste it frivolously. You would think living in the digital age would make you so much more efficient. And it does: Think of the time you save by emailing instead of snail-mailing, texting instead of calling, even conducting meetings via Skype. But, as you well know, technology can make huge amounts of time evaporate: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube—where did the morning go?
If you feel strapped for time (and who doesn’t), introducing this simple habit is a great way to gain awareness of how you actually spend your time, and improve your efficiency.
When you block out time, you bundle small, similar tasks, such as answering emails or making phone calls, into chunks of time (which could be an hour or even half an hour) that you include on your schedule. The trick is that when you decide to spend an hour on emails, you only take care of emails. You aren’t responding to texts, answering the phone or working on your big project. You definitely aren’t checking Twitter. To be a more effective time manager, you have to actually know how much time you need to respond to emails. Maybe you need to deal with email multiple times a day—you can still block out the time. Use a timer (and there are apps to help with this), and use this technique on all your small tasks: phone calls, bill paying, even straightening up the kitchen. Don’t load the dishwasher and then send an email and then empty the trash. Finish the kitchen, then sit down and do your emails for the allotted time. If you bundle and schedule your small tasks, you’ll feel more in control of them.
Block out your whole day—your whole week. Schedule when you do the laundry, and when you go to the gym. Sometimes people feel like they “should” be doing something, but when they actually build a schedule, they realize there actually isn’t enough time, or they see may see where there is time to fit things in. It doesn’t matter if your schedule is digital or analog, but you need to be able to look at it. This keeps you from using fuzzy logic. Before I leave a client with five bags to take to the thrift store, we look at the calendar and determine exactly when they will drop them off, because if we don’t schedule it, it probably won’t happen. If you want to do something, put it on the calendar. Make it happen.
Don’t just schedule tasks, block out some time for fun stuff too!
This week, experiment with bundling, and with putting everything in your calendar. Let me know how it goes—notice what works, and especially what’s challenging.