Hey, there! It’s time for episode 12 of Creative, Happy Life! Huzzah!
As a working artist, working at home with two young kids during the pandemic, join me to hear more about a method of planning my days that allows me to create boundaries and balance between personal time and work time, flexibility in my day during personal time, and how I'm getting more focused and productive in my work. I came to a realization that my days felt busy, but not much was actually getting done. And the already blurred lines between my personal and professional life had become even more blended. It was time to regroup, and rethink, and re-prioritize how I spend my days.
I hope you enjoy this episode! I invite you to subscribe to the podcast, leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts so we can get into the ears of some new listeners this year. I appreciate every bit of support you give, and I’m unbelievably excited for this fresh start in 2021. Let’s do this!
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Episode 12: Why I’m Loving Block Scheduling
Hey friends! Have you purchased a planner for 2021? Have you explored some new ways of getting organized and scheduling your days? This week I want to share about a new style of schedule I am learning to work with, why it’s a good choice for me, and why you might want to consider giving it a try.
First, I have to talk a little about working from home, having kids at home, and why I ultimately decided to give block scheduling a try. If you’re anything like me, you’ve tried all sorts of planners and organizers, and no matter how hard you try, no matter how busy your day feels, you somehow end up feeling like nothing got done. Can you relate? You have projects to work on, things to get done, and somehow, nothings ever finished. Housework gets pushed off. Or your work-work gets pushed off.
I’ve been working from home for over 5 years now, with varying stages of kids being home, or at school some days, or suddenly home for long stretches. Especially in the last year, we’ve needed to learn to be flexible. Things can change quickly with school, but we’ve gotten pretty good with changing gears by this point in the school year. At least, the kids have.
For me, I have my own schedule to manage, client projects that are long term or short term, plus my own work that needs to be done to grow my art business. If I’m not making art, I’m not making money. It’s as simple as that!
I realized that a lot of days were going by quickly, and I’d chip away here or there at the work, but it was actually taking a long time to complete. Or it was never getting finished. Or started. I made lists, and I made lists for my lists. But I also wanted to make sure I was getting dishes and laundry done, meal planning, spending time with the kids…It would be time to make supper and I’d feel obligated to keep working because I didn’t feel like I did enough, I was unfocused and stressed. And the to do list just kept growing.
I remembered back to high school and the block schedule we used to follow. Instead of cramming every subject into every day, we’d have 4 classes that would last 85 minutes each, allowing time to really dig into the work and get a lot done.
Why not give that a try for my own daily schedule?
So two weeks ago, I created a block schedule template for myself, and I am working on making it work. Am I an expert and fully immersed in it? No, but I will tell you why I like it and think it will be good for me to stick with moving forward.
The way block scheduling works is, you give yourself longer blocks of time to hyper focus on one task or project. Whatever you assign to that block of time, is all you do.
So before, I would sit to check my email and social media, and then I’d remember I need to throw in a load of laundry, and then I’d see the playroom was a mess and would tidy up for a few minutes. Then, I’d sit to do some work but my son would need a snack and I’d see another project I needed to attend to. A text would pop up and I’d spend time responding, and before I knew it, it would be lunchtime and nothing would get done. But I’d look forward to my son’s nap, because then I’d have 2 hours to myself, to get work done!
Would I get work done, though? Sometimes. But usually, I’d remember to change the laundry over, place a grocery pickup order, spend some time bouncing between painting or writing or podcast editing or website updates, and then it would be time to wake up Roo, go pick up Lily, run a few errands, and come home to make dinner.
Are you noticing a trend? Yes, I am easily distracted and unfocuised. And I know I can’t be the only one trying to find a way to work more efficiently and focused while at home with kids. It’s not easy. But I think the solution for me, and maybe someone else out there, might be to do less.
By doing less each day, we can ensure that more actually gets done. And here’s how…
A block schedule allows me the flexibility to look at my days or week ahead, prioritize what needs to get done, and spend focused time working on that thing. When the time block is up, I move on to the next block of time.
So for instance, I typically break up my days into two morning blocks, and two or three afternoon/evening blocks, generally assigning the following to them:
8-10am is personal time. I get Lily ready for school, drop her off, Roo and I do a grocery pickup or other errands, and then we come home and do some home preschooling. If we aren’t doing preschooling, sometimes I do a 30 minute workout. Sometimes we go to a playground. This block of time is flexible and gives us time to get the day started.
10-12pm is for me to work. Roo gets to play independently, or watch a show, while I work on whatever I’ve assigned to this block.
12-1pm is for lunch, and maybe doing 1 or 2 household tasks, like laundry or dishes. When lunch is over, it’s naptime for Roo.
1-3pm is my other main working block. I try to assign things to this block that are easier to do without any distraction, like if I need to do a Zoom meeting, record a podcast episode, or work on painting.
3-4pm is a personal hour where I wake up Roo, we pick up Lily from school, and we run any other errands we may need to do before coming home.
4-5:30pm is playtime for the kids, work time for me. I reserve this block for wrapping up whatever I was working on earlier, or doing something like social media planning or writing. Then we spend 30 minutes cleaning up, and winding down for the day.
6-9pm is family time. We make and eat dinner, clean up, baths, reading and bedtime. It’s not really scheduled, but evenings are generally the same across the board.
So how is it possible to get stuff done when it seems like I’m only really working for 4 hours a day?
In short, by cutting out distractions, and staying laser focused on the task at hand. I waste so much time on social media. Like, an embarrassing amount of time. I also get lost in emails and thinking about all the things I have to do. So I decided to turn off my phone, or leave it in another room, so I wouldn’t be tempted to mindlessly scroll.
Do I still mindlessly scroll? Yes, yes I do. But much, much less. And the less I do it, the easier it is to recognize in the moment when I am starting to lose myself in the Instagram feed or a comments section. The more I say no to social media, the more I can say yes to my art and my family.
The part about focusing is still a struggle for me, and I have honestly wondered if I need to see someone about it. But for now, I am doing my best to devote these two hour blocks of time to what really needs to get done. And if I need to go to the bathroom or get more coffee or water, I use that as an opportunity to stretch my legs, but anything else has to wait for another block of time. The dishes can wait. The laundry will still be there.
There will of course be times when I assign a task to a time block, complete it, and still have 30, 60 or 90 minutes left. In those cases, I think about what I can complete in that time. It might be writing my weekly email newsletter, replying to an email, or working on new Etsy listings.
Another thing that helps is prioritizing work that moves my business forward. After a year of spending so much time worrying about growing my social channels and interacting in Facebook business groups, I realized those were all times I could be making new art, sharing my newly made art, and working on sales.
Simply talking about business isn’t going to grow my business. I had to spend some time really thinking about what my goals are and how I’d get there. And when I took a good hard look at 2020, being home every day, my work and personal life blended to a point of really losing myself. I lost focus. I made myself available to anyone at any hour because I was home. I literally told people (frequently) to call me anytime, I’m home. Text me whenever, I’m home. We can do a playdate anytime, we’re around and not doing anything. I minimized my own productivity and the worth of my time. And there are layers and layers that could be dissected here, but the long and short of it is that I needed to come to this realization and recreate my own boundaries, for myself, my work, my family and relationships. I had to start looking at my days as work days, as I would if I were in an office or other work environment.
As a self employed person, if nothing’s getting done, that’s on me. I can control what I let in and out of my days, from social media to texts and emails and calls, by controlling when I let them into my day.
And if you’re wondering, well, why not just break down the day and assign things to an hourly schedule?
That definitely works for many people, I’m sure. The nature of what I do, and needing flexibility with the kids, means simplifying my schedule as much as possible. I’ve tried saying I’ll do laundry at 8:50, 1:20 and 6:05 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, so far as assigning different laundry baskets to different days. I’ve scheduled myself solid by the hour or half hour. I’ve watched myself fall behind daily and wallow in feelings of failure because I was distracted, procrastinating, trying to do it all, but all was simply too much. Oh, and nothing ever got done.
Block scheduling allows you to be flexible with your time, which is what I realized we needed with all our different daily schedules. Some days I work for an hour. Some days I work more like 8 hours, including after the kids go to bed (although, I really try not to do that anymore, because boundaries). I know that I can try to schedule a couple blocks on Sundays when Sean is working, so I have more flexibility on Fridays when Sean is also home. I don’t schedule exercise, because that’s one of those things that I might do at 9am, 12pm or 4:30, depending on the day and how I’m feeling.
When quarantine life started, I thought having a fully scheduled day would be how we keep a sense of normalcy in this crazy world. But like wearing masks and carrying sanitizer everywhere and all the things we’ve adjusted to over the last 11 months, scheduling is one of those things that there’s no easy answer for. It’s a matter of looking at what works for you and your family, and giving it a try with a little flexibility and a lot of grace.
So if you’re thinking about trying block scheduling, here’s what I recommend. Look at a typical day, and think about where those 1.5 to 2 hour chunks of time naturally occur. For me, my days are pretty well segmented around the school day. You might have a 2 hour block from 6-8am doing a workout, showering, getting dressed and having breakfast. I don’t track that myself. You might leave your mornings open for personal time and choose to break up 12-8pm into four 2-hour blocks for working.
Once you determine you time blocks, start assigning your work or tasks to your blocks. I fill mine out in pencil so I can easily make changes as needed. I created a printable that I use for this, which you can grab in my Etsy shop. Or, you can create your own using a spreadsheet, if that’s your jam!
Keep in mind that each block is ideally given one assignment, or subject, to focus on. For me, I might assign something general, like “work on podcast”, or I might decide to be more specific and say “Work on podcast edit”, and will focus on that from start to finish. Not graphics, not writing a transcript or popping into the Creative Happy Life on Instagram. Just getting the episode edited and done.
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