Time blocking can be a very effective way to manage all of the things that you have to do in a given week and it can also give you the added benefit to make sure that you have a balanced week between your work life, your personal life, and other things that you're responsible for.
So in today's video, I'm gonna show you exactly how to effectively time block within Google Calendar.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And let's get started off with just a quick definition of what is time blocking.
Well, essentially, time blocking is all about putting things that are not appointments or meetings onto your calendar.
Your calendar probably already looks a little bit like what I've got here in my example.
I've got a variety of meetings. I've got interviews. I've got things that I actually physically have to be a part of or maybe a phone call that I need to participate in, but sometimes it can be very effective to put in tasks as a part of our calendar as well.
Let's say that there is a report that I've just been deferring all week long. I've just never found time to write this particular report.
Well, if I need to get it done before the weekend, a very effective thing to do would be for me to come in here, create an event and just say write the report.
I wanna block it out. I wanna make sure that I don't have any other meeting, anything else that conflicts with this time so I can get this task done.
However, you can see that this task looks very much the same as to all of my other appointments, all of my other meetings on this calendar.
Now I could go in here, I could edit it, and I could change the color if I wanted to.
I can make it green for example so it's gonna stand out a little bit here.
But we are using Google Calendar so there is a much more effective way to do time blocking within Google Calendar.
So let me delete this example here and the very first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna come over here to my calendars and I'm gonna create a few different calendars for the different types of tasks, the different aspects of my life.
Now you'll see here the very first one is my default calendar. It's called Scott's calendar.
This is the one where people are using my primary email address.
They're inviting me to meetings and appointments and I'm doing the same.
All of these things here are part of my default calendar.
And the next two below I've unchecked, these are reminders and tasks which are built right into Google Calendar, but I'm not gonna make use of them as a part of today's example.
What I wanna do is I wanna create a few additional calendars.
So I'm gonna go down to other calendars and I'm gonna hit the plus button and I'm gonna say create new calendar.
Now the first one I'm gonna select or create is gonna be called work.
This is where I'm gonna be putting work tasks. Not work meetings, but work tasks.
I'm gonna hit create calendar and the nice thing is it is actually gonna keep us in this menu.
I'm gonna add a few additional calendars here all at the same time.
I'm gonna add a personal calendar for some personal activities.
I'm also going to add a, sometimes it takes a second, I'm gonna add an exercise calendar, making sure that I fit in enough exercise as a part of my week.
I'm gonna add one more in my example. This one I'm gonna call travel and you'll see I'm not gonna use it for things like my commute, but I'm gonna use it for things that maybe I don't usually travel at a certain time of day or a certain distance and I'm gonna put that in.
So now under my calendars, you can see that I have them listed here.
Now Google Calendar has chosen a bunch of very similar colors here so I'm gonna go in and change this.
I'm gonna change travel to maybe more of a blue color, work I'm gonna change to let's use like a green color.
It's nice to have some different shades in here. There we go.
It's gonna be a bit easier to see the differences between my calendars here.
So let's go back to that first example where I need to write a report.
Again, I'm gonna do it here between 9:00 and 11:00 so I'm just gonna click and I'm gonna drag and when I release, the first thing I'm gonna do even before I add the title, I guess it doesn't matter which order you do this in, I have the tendency to come down here.
I'm gonna select the activity first.
This is a work activity so I'm gonna say work and I'm gonna say write the report just like we did before and I'm gonna hit save.
Now not only do I have the different color, but it's actually a different calendar.
Let's have a few more examples just for fun here.
Maybe let's say the first thing I need team meetings may be the first thing on Monday, but I got a lot of email that's gonna be coming at me on Monday morning so I'm gonna say process email.
I wanna get through all of that email first thing Monday morning.
So that's another work activity. I'm gonna hit save there and maybe let's add one more thing.
Maybe I'm gonna review. I'm interviewing a candidate on Wednesday so I'm gonna say over here on Tuesday afternoon I'm gonna say review job applicant, their application there.
And again, that's gonna be a work activity and I'm gonna hit save.
So right away I can tell just at a glance that these three items are different.
I don't have to physically be somewhere.
I don't have to call in to a conference call.
These are work-related tasks and they show up very differently than my other appointments here.
Let's try and fit in a few other things as a part of our day.
Exercise is very important and I like to go for a run on a regular basis so let's put in some exercise here for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
I'm gonna come up here. I'm gonna start again. I'm gonna say go for a run.
This time of course I'm gonna change it to exercise and I'm gonna make this one recurring.
Actually, it's not a full hour. It's just a half-hour run.
I'm gonna go into more options and I'm gonna go down to my repeat option here.
Instead of does not repeat, I'm gonna say, it's none of these so I'm gonna say custom.
I'm gonna say Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and I'm gonna say done.
I'm gonna hit save and now you can see, this is gonna go on beyond just this week Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
And let's say on Thursdays I get together with some friends and in the late afternoon we play some pickup basketball so I'm gonna put that one in here on Thursday afternoon.
I'm gonna pick exercise so I can see that it stands out.
Again, the nice thing is that I can get this overview of not only when these things are happening, but am I fitting in enough exercise as a part of my weekly routine.
All right, obviously, there's gonna be some personal activities and maybe I've got a lunch scheduled with a friend on Tuesday.
So I'm gonna come in here, I'm gonna say lunch with Jane and we're gonna change that to personal.
It's not work related or at least not directly related to my work so I'm gonna put that as a personal activity here.
And then maybe on Wednesday night I've got dinner with friends.
So I'm gonna put that one in here, again choose the correct calendar and hit save.
So I've got a few personal things that stand out as a part of it as well.
And the only other calendar that we haven't used in our example is travel.
In this case, I'll usually use something like this not for my everyday commute.
Not for the things that I'm doing on a regular basis.
But let's say I've got this community breakfast.
This is an early breakfast and I need to travel downtown to attend.
So this is different than my other days.
So what I'm gonna do here is at 6:00 a.m., I'm gonna say leave for downtown and I'm gonna put that to my travel calendar.
So I want it to stand out a little bit more here.
I wanna make sure that I fit that in, that oh yeah I gotta get there by a certain time.
Sometimes another way that I'll use a travel calendar is that if I'm leaving for like the airport for example.
I know when I need to be at the airport. I know when my flight is leaving, but sometimes we don't calculate how much time we need to give ourself to actually get to the airport.
So maybe I'm leaving for the airport on Friday afternoon.
I need to be at the airport at 4:00 so that means I need to leave my house at about 3:00.
So here I'm gonna say leave for airport and again we're gonna choose that travel calendar.
So again, I've got that built in. I know when I should be jumping into my car and leaving for the airport.
So it does look like a bit of a kaleidoscope, a bit of a rainbow I guess you could say here of different activities here, but the other nice thing about Google Calendar in separating out your activities by different areas in your life is that you can of course hide and minimize and just focus in on certain activities.
So let's say I just want to hide my work activity.
I'm gonna hide my work calendar and my work tasks.
I can take a look and say okay, I'm gonna get my exercise in this week.
Here's when I need to pay special attention of leaving.
I've got lunch with Jane and dinner with friends.
That's nice. Maybe there's something else I should fit in there just for me or maybe there's something else I should reach out to a friend.
This is where sort of that balance comes into play as you can zero in on different activities.
Let me enable some of these other calendars again and I wanna show you one more tip which you may think is just for fun but I actually think it can be very effective.
Of course, the colors help things to stand out from other calendars and other events in your time blocking calendar, but there's one other way that I sometimes add, an additional way to make things stand out and that is by adding emojis.
And no, I'm not kidding.
I use a website called Emojipedia on a regular basis.
And you can just search for emojis as you want.
So in this example, I'm gonna go grab this man running emoji.
I'm gonna select copy which just copies it to my clipboard and I'm gonna go back up to this recurring run event and I'm gonna hit edit and at the very beginning of it, you can do it at the end as well, but I'm gonna paste it in there.
I'm gonna hit save. I want it to be applied to all of my events.
And so now, it may be a little hard to see with that purple background.
I can always change that color of course.
I've got this little sort of running man out in front which again sometimes just makes it stand out that much more than everything else on this screen.
So I hope you found this video helpful as you consider time blocking within Google Calendar.
I would love to hear from you next.
Do you have additional suggestions as to how to time block within your calendar?
Or do you have further questions about how to effectively time block within Google Calendar?
Make sure to let me know down in the comments below.
And remember being productive does not need to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple.
