About: How to time block to help conquer chaos and achieve the peaceful and joyful-filled days you and your family crave.
Discipline and self-control are two gifts Erik and I aim to instill into our children as they grow. That’s why, even though I’m fully aware that despite my human imperfection in this area, I feel it’s important to keep striving to cut through the mental and physical clutter in life to get to the heart of the things that matter most.
I can’t think of better areas to practice self-control than time, money, and health. The latter two are conversations for another time. Today, we’ll talk about a process that has transformed our days for the better and shifted our mentality on time. Time blocking has also helped us to gain massive momentum in our homeschool days.
Enter: The Time Block.
Time blocking is similar to financial budgeting, in that it seems like it would be restricting. But, the beautiful surprise in it is that it is actually one of the most liberating habits you can instill in yourself and your family.
And here’s why:
When you get intentional about your time and determine beforehand how you will use it, you give yourself clear direction and, better yet, permission to let all other things go. The only things you have to focus on during that time are the things that fit into that intentionally set block of time. Something urgent but not important pop up?
Breathe.
Then put it aside for the appropriate pre-determined time to tackle that topic for the day. This single action can remove so much stress and overwhelm from your days.
If it doesn’t fit the time block, it will still be managed. Just not right this moment.
By time blocking, you effectively exit the reactive state and enter into a proactive one.
Where to start:
If everything I’ve mentioned to you above sounds great, keep reading. I’m going to outline a solid plan on how to help take control of your days to experience the peace, joy, and presence you’re craving for yourself and your family.
1. Complete a time assessment
To best appreciate how time blocking will serve you, you’ll need to understand how you’re spending your time each day. To do this, download and print an hourly planner (you can get mine here) to log how you spend your time, down to the minute, each day.
You can also use your notes app on your phone to accomplish this. But be careful! Those tiny devices have a way of taking you down many time-sucking rabbit holes.
Over the next 5-7 days, write down what you’re doing every minute of the day. Be especially mindful of your time spent on social media, because this is one time suck that tends to creep in on us. Check your Screentime feature on both iPhones and Android devices is the best way to gauge the amount of time you’re spending on apps like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
This can be done simultaneously with your time assessment.
In a journal-like format, or by using the guide in my time block assessment, walk through what an ideal day looks like to you. Get into the details here. What are three words you would use to describe the overall tone of your days? How do you feel? How do you interact with your kids and husband?
Make a list of 3-4 key areas you’d like to focus on. Mine, for example, are family time, household responsibilities, homeschool time, office hours, and time for myself. (Okay, that’s five. 😃)
Another way you can create your time blocks is by the many hats you wear:
I am a teacher
I am a wife and mom
I am a homemaker
I am a writer
I am a child of God.
The video below perfectly explains how those priorities should fall on our schedule. It aligns nicely with a book called First things First by Stephen Covey.
3. Establish Your Top Priorities
Food for thought as you begin your time blocking journey
4. Subtract, Subtract, Subtract
Life is a series of choices. Every yes is a thousand no’s.
John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
The next important task is to eliminate the non-essentials in your life. If you were honest and thorough in your time-blocking assessment, I’m sure you noticed at least one eye-opening trend with how your time is being spent that doesn’t align with your priorities.
The big ones for most of us tend to correlate with our smartphones: social media, email, and text marathons. If this is you too, I have some great news. This is the perfect place to begin taking back your time by removing them from your phone entirely.
Or maybe it’s the overpacked social schedule of your family that’s running you ragged and stretching you too thin?
Become ruthlessly picky about what you spend your time on.
Now’s the time to take out your weekly time assessment and unapologetically (and excitedly!) slash those non-essential items with a red marker.
5. Determine What Can Be Delegated
In motherhood, we’ve become conditioned to think that everything falls on us. That, somehow, we’re the only ones capable of doing the things it takes to manage the household.
Not only is this completely untrue, but that mentality is actually hurting your family. Research indicates that those children who do have a set of chores have higher self-esteem, are more responsible, and are better able to deal with frustration and delayed gratification, all of which contribute to greater success in school (and life!). As quoted from The Center for Parenting Education. The full article can be found here. For us, chores and maintaining a clean and organized home are part of our home school agenda. By instilling these good habits in our kids when they are young, they’ll naturally be more tidy and organized as they enter adulthood.
The next thing you’ll need to do with that weekly time assessment is to determine the tasks you did that can be assigned to your kids as chores. Not sure what tasks are most appropriate for your kids based on their ages? You can read more about that here.
6. Putting the Plan into Action
After you’ve identified your most important items (your golf balls, if you will) and intentionally eliminated the time sucks of your day… you are well on your way to creating your time blocks to take back your days.
Your top priorities will become your time blocks
Your daily to-do’s should fit nicely into these blocks of time
Plot your time blocks on a paper scheduler or a digital one. My planner of choice is Google Calendar paired with Google tasks.
Watch my tutorial on How I Use my Google Calendar to Time Block.
Wake up each day knowing you have a solid plan to make the most of your precious days!
Congratulations on taking an important step to taking control of your days. With practice and diligence, time blocking will be a key component that helps you conquer chaos and achieve the peaceful days you’re craving for yourself and your family.
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