0:00  

Hey, hello elevated entrepreneurs welcome back to a brand new episode of the Elevated Entrepreneur Podcast. And I want to start this episode with a really important question. Do you control your calendar? Or does your calendar control you? And if you’re anything like me, the answer is the calendar controls me. But I’ve spent years and months where I’ve worked because my calendar controls me. 

0:25  

And I was able to break away from that control by using a very special productivity tool called time blocking. In this episode, I’m going to show you how to use time blocking, and it’s three cousins to your advantage and how to make the most of these productivity tools so that you can get away from your calendar controlling you. So grab your headphones, and as you’re driving, turn up the volume and let’s cue the intro. 

0:53  

Hey there, welcome to the Elevated Entrepreneur Podcast. This podcast is designed specifically for entrepreneurs and founders to implement winning habits, mindset and systems, so they can elevate their entrepreneurship game and quit the hustle game. My name is Dhiren Bhatia. Let’s get started.

1:17  

Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Elevated Entrepreneur Podcast. If this is your first time here, please remember to head on over to elevate it entrepreneur.fm To check out all of the show notes and the transcription for this particular episode, as well as check out some of the other amazing episodes I’ve published here on the elevated entrepreneur podcast. And if you’ve been listening to the show for a while, thank you so much for coming back for yet another amazing episode on the elevated entrepreneur podcast. 

1:46  

Now let me tell you a little bit about my day. Prior to using this productivity tool called time blocking, I used to spend a lot of time in reactive mode. And that looked like answering emails, then reading emails, going back to another meeting, followed by a doorbell or a whatsapp notification, and then going back to emails, and then finally wrapping it up with another set of phone calls. something or the other was always clamoring for my attention. And there was always a problem that I had to solve today. Which is why I went about looking to solve this problem.

2:20  

 And I discovered a really cool tool called time blocking. You may have already heard of time blocking, which is why in this episode, I want to give you my tips on how to make this system work for you. Now before I talk about time blocking itself, I want to talk about two different concepts that you may have already heard about as well. And that is shallow work versus deep work. Shallow work is the kind of busy work that most of us entrepreneurs and founders spend most of our days doing. Think of this as the work that’s urgent but not important to achieving your long term goals. These are things like paperwork, answering emails, phone calls, and WhatsApp notifications. 

3:01  

Cal Newport in his book defines a shallow work as non cognitive logistical minor duties performed in a state of distraction. Deep Work, on the other hand isn’t about working harder, or working longer or even working with your head down in a constant zone of focus, it’s actually working smarter on a set of tasks that are actually going to make the needles move. Deep Work is about transforming your workday from a random series of reactive events, and chaotic busyness into a well oiled schedule that allows you to focus on your highest value tasks. 

3:38  

And Carl in his book talks about deep work being a skill that must be trained, it’s a skill that we need to learn, just like we go to the gym, when we learn to play a new instrument, deep work, learning how to do deep work is exactly that. It’s a muscle that we need to train and build on. Till the point it becomes a habit till the point it becomes really easy for us to get into that focus zone where we can crank out some really high quality work in a very short amount of time. 

4:08  

And the obvious question, then is then how do we get into deep work mode? How do we build that muscle? Well, there’s a few ways and one of those ways is using this tool called time blocking. So what is time blocking? Time blocking is a time management system that allows us to divide our days into blocks of time. And each of those blocks is actually dedicated to accomplishing a specific task or a group of tasks and only those tasks. So instead of having a to do list that is constantly open and having things come in and go out, time blocking allows us to group our tasks and be a lot more intentful and purposeful about our day. Time blocking also ensures that you know exactly how your day is going to start and what you’re going to spend your time on and how it’s going to end. 

4:56  

A really good trick to having time blocking work for you is actually Use a day startup and they shut down rituals. These are rituals where you actually spent some time not necessarily doing a task, but actually planning and prioritizing for what’s most important, and then creating those time blocks to get those tasks done. If you’re curious about Day Startup and day shutdown rituals, head on over to YouTube and search for elevated entrepreneur with Darren, and you’ll see the playlist that I’ve created specifically for habits and systems for entrepreneurs. 

5:28  

One of the biggest benefits I’ve seen of using time blocking is that I don’t have to make choices about what to focus on, all I need to do is get my laptop open, start my day, and follow my time blocked schedule. If I get distracted, I go back to my schedule and see what time block is next. And sometimes time blocking can get a little mundane. And a good way to get away from that mundaneness is actually to use something called Task batching. Thus, batching is a cousin of time blocking. And the second tool that I want to introduce you to get your productivity amped up. 

6:03  

So what is task batching? Well, task batching is when you group tasks of similar nature together and schedule them in specific time blocks to complete them all at once. And by completing tasks in a group, you will find that you are limiting the amount of context switching overhead that your body and mind have to go through when you keep jumping from one task to another. It’s almost like saying that you do your laundry, one sock at a time or one gene at a time. And that seems really foolish and silly, because we’ve been taught how to batch all of our laundry at the same time. And yet, when we approach work, our approach seems to be very different. 

6:42  

We tend to do things in random order, and end up causing a lot of overhead and strain for our mind and body. And what we end up losing is time and energy the two most important resources for an entrepreneur and founder. And you might be wondering how you could task batch better? Well, here’s a few things that you can actually batch phone calls, meetings, content creation, and the best of all, is emails. Yes, you heard me write emails, I will now check emails only three times in a day at nine o’clock at 12 o’clock. And finally at four o’clock, and I can hear you screaming all the way here to tell me Listen, then email is a lot more important. 

7:21  

And I would like to challenge you to think about how important email is really for you. Could you survive by not checking emails 25 times a day. And instead use that time to focus on something that is really important so that you can actually do deep work. And I know sometimes it can be easier said than done. But believe me, once you’ve got the ability to limit how many times you’ve checked your email, you can get a lot more good quality deep work done in those times. The next variation or cousin of tasks of time blocking is day theming day theming is a more extreme version of task batching. And this is great for entrepreneurs and founders. Because we have so many different areas of responsibility and work that needs to get done. Sales, product development, business development, customer support, and HR are all of the different areas that we as entrepreneurs and founders need to focus our attention to. So they theming allows us to block off days and blocks for each of those areas of responsibility. So each day can be allocated to a full area of responsibility. A quick example here is I will use Mondays for proposals and sales related work. Wednesday’s, on the other hand, is all about content creation, research and recording. 

8:46  

So take a few minutes and think about how you can use day theming in your daily lives. What are some of the things that you can batch and schedule by day. The fourth and the final cousin of variation of time blocking is time boxing, and time boxing and time blocking is often confused and used interchangeably, but they are very different. Time blocking is where we are setting aside certain chunks of time to focus on a task. Whereas time boxing forces us to impose a limit on how much time we will actually spend on that specific task. 

9:24  

A great way to illustrate time boxing is using the example I gave earlier about email. In even though I limit checking emails to three times a day, I will tend to spend no more than 45 minutes at each given time when I’m checking emails. This ensures I get to the most important emails and then move on to the next set of tasks rather than getting drawn into the chaos. That email brings with it every single time. Now that you’ve been introduced to time blocking, and it’s three variations, let’s talk about why time blocking can be so effective and you may have already given the shot Previously, but here are four really good reasons that you can give this one more shot. Firstly, it is designed to promote deep work. 

10:08  

When you’re scheduling a chunk of time to work on a single task or a project, you’re working with all of your attention and all of your mental resources on that one particular project rather than spreading your attention across several different tasks. And intuitively, this actually allows us to become more focused and going back to building that muscle one task at a time. The second reason time blocking can be effective is because it makes us aware of how much time we’re actually spending on a set of tasks. 

10:39  

As Parkinson’s Law states work expands to the time allocated to it, which means we will continue to do the work as long as it has infinite time around it. When you’re blocking yourself off with a certain set of tasks in a certain set of time, it forces us to be really effective with our time and making sure that we get done with that task in that particular period of time. And this actually brings me to Reason number three, on why time blocking can be so effective because it allows us to counteract that devil of perfectionism that we all have within us. 

11:13  

Typically podcast recordings used to take me the whole day, but because of me blocking my time, I’m absolutely okay with shipping a podcast episode with all of its flaws, because I need to get done with that episode, and a few more, because I batch them all at once. And the fourth reason why I think time blocking can be so effective is it allows us to knock out shallow work a lot more effectively. What I mean by that is we can’t really get away from shallow work, we still have to respond to phone calls, we still have to respond to emails and all the WhatsApp notifications. However, blocking time around those tasks, it forces us to get them done a lot more effectively and a lot more efficiently, because we’re now blocking our grouping similar tasks together. And we’re avoiding all of the mental fatigue that comes with context switching. So now let me give you a few steps on how you can use time blocking effectively. 

12:07  

The first and the most important step is to actually do a time audit. Figuring out where you’ve been spending your time is going to allow you to measure what the problem actually is. As we’ve all heard, you can’t fix what you can’t measure. So doing a time audit is going to be really important and helpful in helping you understand the nature of the problem. Once you’ve got the time audit completed, you’re now able to take a look at how you’re spending your time and how you can group those better using the four techniques that I’ve just talked about. Tip number two is actually about overestimating your time. Typically, when we tend to use time blocking, we will always underestimate our time, we underestimate how much time it will take us to do a certain tasks. So my tip here is to give yourself extra buffer when you are boxing of time or creating blocks on your calendar. And the third one is being rigid with those time boxes. 

13:04  

Sure, sometimes things can take longer. So it’s okay to be a little looser and flexible with our schedules. Oftentimes, we tend to lock ourselves onto our calendar and we feel upset when our day doesn’t go plan. So it’s okay to be able to edit your day as the day happens. So if you’re finding that you’re spending a little more time in a certain area, it’s okay to cross off the next time block and reschedule that as you’re going through your day. And with all of the tips out of the way we are at the end of this amazing information packed episode. I hope that you enjoyed this episode and will give time blocking a chance in your daily scheduled. If you liked this episode, please take a minute to leave some feedback on Apple podcasts, and how this episode helped you so that other entrepreneurs can also find this amazing piece of content. If you have some feedback, you’re welcome to head on over to elevate it entrepreneur.fm slash speak where you can record a quick voice note and I will be happy to feature that here on this very podcast. Thank you much love, and I will see you in the next one.

14:16  

Thank you so much for staying with me till the very end of the episode. You’ve done it. I’ve got three specific asks for you only if you think that this podcast is worthy of your support. And if you’ve enjoyed the content, my first request is for you to hit the subscribe button. Actually smash that subscribe button so that you can get notified when new episodes come your way. Or if you haven’t already, head on over to elevated entrepreneur.fm And subscribe to the podcast on the website so that new episodes are emailed to you right away. My second request is for you to help me spread the word with your friends and families and business owners that would enjoy this podcast and helped elevate them too. You can do that either by leaving a review on Apple device or just telling your friends how cool this podcast is. And finally, if there’s a question that you’ve been dying to ask me, or this pieces of feedback that you’d like to give me, head on over to elevate it entrepreneur.fm slash speak where you will be able to record a voice message that I can listen to, and also maybe feature here on the podcast together with my answer. I’d love to hear from you. Thank you much love, and I’ll see you in the next one.