Scheduling my day

Occasionally my productive streak will end. Typically it will be because certain things come up in my life that get in the way and essentially throw a spanner in the works. For the past month I've been busy with performing in shows, an impromtu holiday to Wales planned my friends and some personal issues occurring. As a result, not only do I stop working on myself, being productive and getting things done, I lose that mindset of productivity that I had. That can be hard to get back, but I have a tactic to try and help.

That tactic is called time blocking.

Time blocking is covered in numerous videos on YouTube and is essentially where you 'block' specific times of day for specific tasks. This can be done for the whole day in order to create a schedule to stick to. Here is mine built using a Google Calendar:

As you can see here, I've pretty much filled in the entire day for the entire week. This won't be the final, definitive schedule. I'm looking to make some changes here and there to add a few different thing such as yoga, or to clarify specific things, but as it stands I have a pretty simple routine that I can make a start with. Creating this routine is simple to do, you simply have to write down all the things you want to make sure you schedule in throughout the week and then put them in.

For example, going to the gym is something that needs to happen often throughout the week, so I've put it in every weekday morning. However, something like cleaning my room only has to be done once a week so it's been put in for one day, Saturday morning.

It is very easy to take that little bit of motivation you're able to give yourself when you get excited about being productive and create this schedule. The real trick is making sure you stick to it. There are lots of calendar apps that can be used for this, but a Google Calendar is a great one to go with. It's free, you can write it up on your computer and it will sync to your phone. Plus, with it on your phone you can set it to send notifications at the start of particular blocks to remind you what you're supposed to be doing. I've used this method a few times and found it's worked incredibly well in helping me stay on productive tasks and make the right decisions for myself.