Blocking Work On Your Calendar + Why it is Essential
By Erin Sless - eGuide Operations Coordinator
Prioritizing your day allows for a quick return to focus even when the chaos of day-to-day work finds itself in your inbox.
Scenario:
You’ve poured a fresh cup of coffee and have taken a good look at the pileup of tasks for the Wednesday you have ahead. Your desk has post-its all over and Trello is filled with Red and Yellow tasks all shouting out for attention. Suddenly, amidst your first task of the day, you get a ping on the company Slack channel. A small question then turns into a 30 minute sidetrack. The Reds and Yellows feel louder as the day goes on, and suddenly it’s already 3pm. Ensue stress.
Sound familiar? Then calendar blocking might just be for you!
First, plan to block for the next work day at the end of the day prior.
You may only have that free 45 minute window at 9am to complete the task you need for your 2pm meeting, and you could waste that precious time day-of just figuring out where to start off. I block off time at the start and end of my work days to make sure I’m always caught up on blocking, emails, notifications, etc.
Use a different color than your regular meeting color for blocks. If you need to rearrange items during the day, then you automatically know what might be most flexible. This also helps a Project Coordinator disseminate blocks from meetings for scheduling purposes.
Now- how do we go about blocking in a healthy way? You may think you can never have too many blocks to sort out your tasks, but you would be wrong! For example:
Scheduling blocks on meeting days that already start off looking like this →
….is not the best idea.
Next, let’s take a look at proper blocking versus improper blocking.
To start, imagine it’s the evening before a work day, and you’ve prioritized what is of immediate importance for the day to come. You’re determined to finish as much as you can, and you create a block like this: →
Looks great, right? Well… no.
Ultimately, this has the calendar owner working nonstop from 8:30am-5pm. If you take 5 minutes to help a team member find a file in the G Drive, 10 minutes to respond to a time-sensitive email, 15 minutes to heat up some leftovers, bathroom breaks….suddenly all you may see is how behind you are getting rather than what is progressing. A gap in your calendar is not a sign of weakness, so don’t feel the need to fill them all!
Check out this much more doable block: →
Note how there’s buffer time after each meeting to process any delegated action items.
We don’t always have the luxury of this much free time to work around. However, as long as we stay self-aware of the work we deem necessary to complete per day, then we can properly feel out our daily bandwidth. Also, blocking is helpful to recount our days in retrospect.
If you don’t complete a block - you can move it right over to the next day. Aim to move blocks as little as possible. If you are constantly moving blocks, then perhaps you need to re-evaluate your realistic view of what it takes to finish certain items on your docket.
Some people might think stress comes with the job, but if you wish to have some semblance of zen in your day, then rely on yourself to create it. In my opinion, blocking is essential to do just that.
Want to see a video walkthrough on this subject? Check the following video out from our YouTube channel!
Help Someone. Have Fun, Be You. Learn & Teach. Finish What You Start.
