You want to start your business so bad but you aren’t ready to quit your 9-5 job quite yet.
It’s totally possible, many successful social entrepreneurs started their business as a side-hustle first.
But you need a productivity system that works.
Calendar blocking or time blocking is an effective tool if you use it correctly.
Here are 5 tips to help you set up your calendar the most effective way possible.
Plan for your entire life in one calendar
To make it work, you need to use one single calendar for your corporate life, personal life and entrepreneur life.
We tend to want to separate our ‘lives’ but it doesn’t really work that way in reality.
You are one person and you have 24 hours in a day. You don’t get to triple that, sorry.
Taking a holistic approach to your calendar will help you reconcile all parts of your life and realistically plan your day.
Don’t set yourself up for failure
It’s important that you fill in your calendar in this very specific order:
- Corporate time (meetings, tasks, commuting time)
- Personal time (coffee breaks, meals, friends, grocery shopping, gym, meditation, etc.)
- Side-hustling time (meetings, tasks, thinking time, etc.)
Why? Because planning otherwise won’t work in the long term.
Most productivity gourous advise to block your high level priorities first, which could be your side-hustling time in your mind.
But you need to take into consideration your ‘obligations’ and personal wellbeing before your side-hustle time otherwise you’ll never stick to your calendar in real life.
If you try to block your side-hustling time first, you will most probably get ahead of yourself and plan way more than what is actually feasible.
Don’t do that. Do not set yourself up for failure ahead of time.
Plan ahead of time
Block your time the day before. In the morning, your mind won’t want to get to work and will get confused, question everything.
Calendaring ahead of time will allow you to plan with your best interest in mind and limit decision making in the moment.
Don’t underestimate this advice. I found it to be key in the success of the time blocking technique.
Be kind to yourself
Calendaring is a learning process.
Like any other system, blocking your time in your calendar is a very effective productivity method if you use it at your advantage.
At first, you’ll be tempted to plan too many tasks or underestimate the time you need to accomplish them. It’s normal, you’ll need time to adjust.
The goal is to remember you’re learning how to use a new tool. Instead of beating yourself up, be kind and curious.
- What worked?
- What didn’t work?
- What can you do differently in your time blocking next time?
Make it work FOR you, not AGAINST you.
Stick to it
I bet Time Blocking isn’t the first productivity system you’ve tried. Am I right?
You might even be a system junkie.
This time, I suggest you stick to it. The calendar blocking method is not the problem, the reason WHY you don’t follow through on it, is.
Register to my webinar ‘My 3-step process to stop procrastinating and get sh*t done in your business‘ to dive deeper.
with love,
Lara
