How a Simple Time Block Schedule Can Increase Your Productivity

My biggest business to date has been my personal planner business. I’ve done over $2.5m in sales since 2019 and it’s been extremely lucrative.

The reason I started it is because when I was at a low point in my solopreneur career, I needed to get organized and focused. I created a planning system that, after a bit of tweaking, worked extremely well to be productive.

The problem stopping you from being productive

Even being the owner of a planner business who should have no problem with this, I often fall into slumps where I am extremely unproductive. What is the common factor when this happens? I stopped using my planning systems.

With all the products I offer, I often jump back and forth from the different planners and switch it up a bit. I’m the type of person who likes routine but also likes to have something new every once in a while.

The important thing here is to have a system and follow it. Whatever works for you, I’m not saying you need to use my products, you can use a Google Calendar system if that works best for you.

What is time blocking

Time blocking is the simple system of blocking off a certain amount of time for each task. Mind-blowing, I know, but it is extremely effective.

Make sure you set your schedule up in advance, it’s never a good idea to be planning the morning of trying to remember everything you have to do.

Either the night before or even a the beginning of the week, block out each day and figure out when to do what. Block out the entire day, even if it’s blocking off time to take a break or eat dinner. Know when you’re doing what is extremely effective.

Psychology of time blocking

There is a bit of psychology behind what makes it so effective. I believe Elon Musk said it but it stated that a task will take as long as you plan for it to take.

What does that mean?

If you don’t set a time for a task, for example, cleaning your house, it could take you 1, 2, or 3+ hours to complete. But, if instead, you block off 1 hour to clean the house, you’re more likely to complete the task in that amount of time.

I experience this myself. Creating an email used to take me 1.5-2 hours but then I started time blocking and it drastically changed.

At first, I set the block for 1 hour, after just a few days, I was completing emails in about 30 minutes. I just saved myself 1 to 1.5 hours a day on 1 task.

Time blocking with a Boss Personal Planner

Our planners have were created with time blocking in mind. Whether you use a planner with a weekly layout (Weekly Planner or Life Planner) or you use our regular Digital Personal Planner, you can time block.

All you have to do is use the daily or weekly page planner and block the time necessary. Each view already has an hourly view so you can designate what time you do each task. It’s super easy and extremely effective.

How to use Last Plannr for time blocking

Another software that I built is called Last Plannr and its purpose is to help you manage your businesses, goals, and tasks.

Time blocking with Last Plannr is also fairly simple. When you create tasks, simply assign a date and time, both start and end times, and then go to the calendar.

When you view either the weekly or daily view, you’ll be able to see the tasks in their designated block.

Try it

If you’re looking for a super simple strategy to be more productive, time blocking is the best thing to try. Not only has it helped me the most, it’s so easy you’d be crazy not to try it.

You don’t need anything fancy to do it, just create blocks with designated times and put a task in each block, and that’s it.

If you want to take it a step further, you can use one of our planners to get a little more organized. And of course, our planners include a bunch of other productivity tools and features that you’ll find useful.