The Ultimate Productivity Hack

Ever enter the week with no direction or clue what to do? Don’t feel guilty, I’ve been there too.

I used to have so many flexible tasks to do during the week, so flexible in fact, that they sometimes wouldn’t get done. Not because I had bad intentions, but because I didn't have them appropriately scheduled. I work with many coaches and rehab professionals, most of whom are solopreneurs. With great power comes great responsibility (Spiderman nerds, where you at?) and the same can be said for your schedule. 

Time blocking is a process of calendar and task organization so you can have some focus and direction to your days and weeks. When I used to manage a large team of 20+, one of my favorite things to do used to be helping them organize their schedule and integrate work with their everyday routine. 

Here’s how you can do it:

Broad to Specific

To start you simply need to outline:

• What days you want to work (for me it’s M-F)
• What time you want to work on those specific days (10am - 4 or 5pm for example, blocking my schedule allows me to get more work done in less time)

Once you have that general structure outline, I want you to think of what can be classified as working “in the business” or “on the business”. 

Working  “In the business” for me is to fulfill the promises I made to my clients or potential clients. So this is either group or individual mentorship calls, sales calls, check-in/responding to messages, managing my groups, or other client related tasks. I personally like my “in the business” to be in the middle of the week, so these tasks are performed Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. 

Because these days are high energy for me, I need to understand my capacity limit. Typically 5-6 of these interactions is where I place my cap. 

Working “on the business” is more project and future oriented. Maybe this is planning the development of a new course, analyzing or figuring out what tweaks to make to a system/process, doing future planning, out-reach for strategic partnerships, and many other examples. 

I like these days to cap my week on Mondays and Fridays. 

Daily Specificity

What gets scheduled gets done. Simple. If it’s important, you need it on your calendar. So if you want to do 2 hours of sales outreach per day, schedule it. If you want to work on your website, write an email sequence, work on a document…. Schedule it.. If you want to workout… you guessed it, SCHEDULE IT. You can move these tasks around to different times and days, but they need to occupy specific time slots! This is key!

Feel Free to Experiment

Don’t like how your week is flowing? Change it around. Now that you know what tasks are pertinent to your business, you can manipulate the days and tasks to better reflect what works for you. If you’re the boss of you, act like it!

Audit Yourself 

At the end of the first week, pull up your calendar and do a quick review. Did you give yourself enough time? Were you drained at the end of a certain day/task? Can you rearrange it and better organize your energy? The options are endless and you won’t know until you try!