How To Plan Your Time (Part 2)

In episode 5 I showed you how to prioritize your day by using my priority picker prioritisation flow, I’m now going to show you what to do now that you have a nicely prioritised to do list. I’m Lor Bradley, a business mentor and I’ve started, grown and scaled global businesses for myself and other entrepreneurs for almost 30 years. I teaching how we can work smarter not harder in business and harness the 80/20 principle to be more productive.

We’re going to take a quick dive into Timeboxing!

No matter how long your to-do list is, once you’ve prioritised its really easy to plan your time and tasks in ways which will keep you focused and on track. Let’s talk about time boxing your tasks and an example timeboxing from Ionos below.

And the purpose of timeboxing is to use your time productively.

If you approach your time as something that flexes based on the boundaries you put around it, then it’s pretty normal to find that a task will take up more of your time than you originally planned for. But, there is a savvy way to work around this and that’s to create a box of time around each task. To use this technique, you assign a specific deadline to each task. This is known as a timebox, and when it's finished, you analyze your progress and move on to the next task.

What you’re essentially doing is allocating a fixed, maximum period of time (or a box) around a task in advance, and then you’re working to complete that activity within that time frame you've set. What do I mean by this? 

You might decide that the most important thing today is to finish your sales page. And, you set aside four hours to do it in the morning. At the end of those four hours, you’re still not quite done. With the time boxing method, you stop the task, take a decision on if it’s done enough to call it complete, and if not then set a new time in your schedule to assign more time to complete it. 

Then, you proceed with the next time boxed item on your list. 

What Is Timeblocking?

Time boxing isn't going to suit everyone so let's take a look now at timeblocking. If you’re the type of person that likes to get into a flow then this is going to feel quite disruptive, BUT if your intention is to keep your focus or restrict the time you’re working on a task, then time boxing is going to be a great way to keep you on track.

Now then, time blocking, is very similar but with time blocking, you are creating time blocks for everything that is happening in your day and scheduling them into your diary. You can see a time blocking example here. 

I prefer to time BLOCK as opposed to time BOXING as I like to work in a highly structured way. Elon Musk for example works in 5-minute time blocks! It enables him to categorise and prioritise his time. Whilst that might feel a little too detailed, I recommended that you also don’t time block for anything longer than 90 minutes, as our brains aren’t functioning as effectively after this length of time without a break. 

If you’re familiar with the Pomodoro principle, it recommends you should split your work-day into 25 minute blocks of work-time and 5-minute break-times. Once you’ve identified what you’re going to do and when and for how long, you’ll need to work with intention and that means keeping your promises to yourself to consistently follow your daily plan.

Remember, the goal of mastering your time is to build a systematic approach which will help you to get everything done with some time to spare.  And when you’ve done that the secret is to review how you’ve got on and revise your techniques until you’ve found the one that works for you.

With a little trial and error, you’ll be able to find the methods and system that works for you and the great thing is there’ll be no more icky feelings that time is slipping away as you’ll be consistently moving forward, and going places in your life and business!

Use whichever methods make prioritizing easier for you and if you’re not sure which works best then give them all a try! 

See you over there!

xo, Lor Bradley