Speaker 1: You might be missing out on this awesome productivity technique because only 5% of people that use calendar apps for task management actually implement it. Time blocking is one of those techniques that once paired with deep work, it can really help you to optimize your productivity in 2024. Today, we are going to teach you the ins and outs in this ultimate guide to time blocking. We're going to show you some of the beginner stuff and the basics, but we're going to dig into some of the ways to optimize it with color coding, with Pomodoro techniques, and also with deep work states. We're also going to touch on day themes, task batching, and even apps that can pair alongside it to companionize your deep work. And we're also going to touch on all of the things that you might be missing out on if you're using time blocking right now, and we're going to help you to fix those problems. Hey. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, welcome to Keep Productive. We dive into apps and techniques to help you to improve your productivity every single day. If you're new, hit subscribe. But if you're in the hunt for a calendar app that does time blocking, you can jump over to Tool Finder. That's linked below, and it'll help you find any productivity software. In today's video, we're going to be using Acuflow, which is our sponsored tool to help you understand how to use time blocking. If you like Acuflow and you like what you see, download it in the link in the description. So by the end of today's video, you're going to be a pro at time blocking and starting to implementing it right away. So one of the first things to understand is the basics. So time blocking is very simply allocating specific time in your schedule for distinct tasks and activities. This can be anything like a project, a task, or an activity that you can use. Here's some examples. A task is something like committing to a completed article about time blocking by design. An activity might be something like setting aside 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. exclusively for writing. And a project, allocating a specific time block to a dedicated project you're working on. Now, this is slightly different from time boxing. Time boxing focuses on output metrics. So, for example, it could be like write a thousand words, and it's also not focused on the desired set period of time. Time blocking is more of a specific time period. Whereas. If you do time boxing, if you complete it, you can move on. So let's take a look at the calendar and really try and dig into some of the techniques that help you to optimize your time blocking. So one of the first things we're going to do here is start color coding. And this is simply using colors to optimize what your calendar means. Now, colors can be used in two ways. The first way could be a heat map in using a red, orange, and maybe light yellow as an indication of the intensity. of the intensity. Of task, a lot of people like doing this to help see what intensity is coming up on the calendar, and that can give you a bit of an indication on what's going on ahead. But other people do like to use it in a more traditional sense in allocating a type of task to a color, for example, blue for meeting green for fitness, purple for personal, et cetera, et cetera. And those colors can mean that you can read your calendar and get a sense of it without having to actually read it. So color coding is a really effective technique. So color coding is a really effective technique. So color coding is a really effective technique. Next up is actually using the Pomodoro technique in here. That's very simply 25 minutes on and focus time and five minutes off as a planned break. Now, what is different with this is, for example, if you've got a two hour slot in the morning dedicated to writing as your time blocked time, then this could be a great way for you to set a series of Pomodoro timers. So, for example, that could be four Pomodoro timers because that allocates to about two hours of time, which is perfect. Because you can do those four cycles. Allocating cycles to the amount of time blocked time you have for an activity can be a great way to intensify the activity without micro blocking in the work. And this is a really helpful practice. An app like session is great for being to use for tracking your time alongside of it. Now, moving on to a concept called day theming and task matching. This concept was really pushed by Mike Vardy, who runs productivity is. And it's very simply the act of dedicating a day to a specific task. And it's very simply the act of dedicating a day to a specific task. And it's very simply the act of dedicating a day to a specific task. And it's very simply the act of dedicating a day to a specific type of activity. For example, if you do filming like I do, sometimes dedicating an entire day to it might be a more effective use of your energy and set up time because you might want to set up all the equipment for that and help you to dedicate that time to that day theme. Now, this is also called task matching. And the concept is so that you can bundle a bunch of tasks in similar nature together so that you're in that creative mindset of whatever you're doing. Now, for some people. Who are maybe employed, this might not be fully practical, but if you want to demonstrate some of the techniques, you could ask your boss whether you could try this for a week and show them the results to see whether it's an effective practice. This is effective practice if you have a lot of set up equipment or set up time to what you do, and that time can be spread out or brought into one day to make it more effective. I've also known people that do task matching, but they decide to do it with halves of their day. So one half of their day might be intense. Writing the other half might be intense filming as a way to break up the day. So use this as your pleasure. But the concept can be implemented with time blocking. If you add an all day event, you can set up recurring events as you go with the type of activity. And this is really good for somebody that has a dedicated routine and doesn't really want to break from it. Now, once you're in these time block sessions, deep work is very important. Deep work is a book by Cal Newport and is a concept to getting into that flow state of work, and there are loads of ways that you can get into flow state of work. But there are three apps that I think could be potentially quite helpful for you. The first of those is Freedom, which blocks all of your apps and websites to help you focus on the set period of activity you're doing. Magic Flow is another one that tracks in the background to give you a score based on what you're focusing on. And the third one is Endel, which, if you're allowed to listen to music or work, can be a great way to get into focus states and also intensify the session that you're in. So all of these apps can be fantastic for that. Now, let's dig into those common mistakes that you might be making if you're already using time blocking. This is going to be helpful to iron out some of the issues that you might have. The first tip is don't underestimate your time periods. Sometimes one of the issues with time blocking is actually you've got two or three tasks in your day and they overrun. And then that has a series of knock on effects to the next day and the next day and the next day. So making sure you don't over underestimate them is very important. Give yourself maybe 10 to 25 percent additional time to potentially have for any interruptions or potential things that might happen across your day. The second thing is not taking breaks. This is something that a lot of people don't do. I'm not saying completely plan them in and stuff them into your time blocking. Not taking breaks will give you no time to recover between your intense activities. And whilst you don't have time to buff them into your thing, it's important to add that buffer time between meetings and time block sessions. Now, a lot of people typically multitask a lot. And what time blocking does is it tries to stop multitasking. One of the things that people typically do is have a to do list app and a calendar app and do time blocking and a to do list app and that can might be quite overwhelming. So if you're doing that, you might just want to focus on the calendar blocking to intensify that session. One of the things that a lot of people do do as well is unimportant tasks. And it's important to spend a bit of time in your week to really evaluate the importance of the task. And actually, because if you plan your time blocking ahead of time, you may have actually had that thought a week ago, but it might not be relevant anymore and actually adding that can actually be ineffective. So spend some time in your week, 10 minutes, maybe reviewing what's ready for the week ahead. And it will give you an indication of whether those tasks are really fully relevant. And you can change them up. But the final technique that I want to do a separate video on is called energy mapping. Now, energy mapping is very simply understanding how your energy levels go across a day and for a lot of people that might be peaks and troughs across a day. And you may have one or two troughs and one or two peaks. But understanding how to plan your time around them is really effective. So very simply draw a graph of your energy across a week each day, giving a rough idea of what that energy level is and plan your most intense tasks that require the most creative energy in your brain to utilize during those periods of time. It can be a great way to intensify activities and improve the quality of them whilst making sure you take refined breaks and also planning your time around that. Now, finally, although we've used Accuflow in this video as our demonstration tool, which you can download below, there are other tools that can be really helpful. Google Calendar in Google Workspace. Mode has something called Time Insights, which breaks down what time you spend on. But you can also have the color coding to allocate to a certain type of task and allow you to break down to see how you spend your time. Very much like the energy mapping and other stuff. You can see where you spend your time week to week and it gives you an idea of the practice to improve. And for next time in Accuflow itself, there's a time slots function which allows you to bulk all of your tasks into a specific time slot instead of actually having a bunch of tasks in, if that makes sense. So it means you can bundle everything in one time block and help you to be more effective during that time period. And finally, there are other apps like Reclaim, which is an AI based daily planning tool, which also is a calendar app for teams as well, but what it does is it has a feature called Habits, which allows you to put things in like lunch breaks, fitness breaks and that are unmovable and this is great for planning meetings around it and making sure you time block more accurately and making sure that it doesn't ruin those time slots, if that makes sense. So that was the ultimate guide to time blocking. Did you find it useful? If you did, please do hit the like button. If you're new here, do subscribe. And if you do fancy sharing this around, feel free to. We'd love to help you to improve the time blocking. And you can find all the apps I mentioned in the description below as well. Thank you very much. And I look forward to seeing you. Please do check out some more videos on YouTube, including some of the ones that come up after in a moment. Thank you very much. And I'll see you in a future video. Cheerio.