How To Use Time Blocking & Google Calendar To Schedule Out Your Week!

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome. My name is Lisa elevators. I'm a productivity coach and professional organizer. And I'm obsessed with helping people go from Obama to organize so they can thrive in a stress-free space. In this class, you will learn how to use time blocking in Google calendars features to plan out your week in a productive and organized way. I will start by going over the last project I would like you to complete for this class. Next, I will explain what is time blocking and batch working and why applying these techniques is beneficial. Then you will learn about book calendar, how to create events, and how to use Google Calendar tasks. After that, I will show you how to go about learning your weekly schedule. Next, I will give you some tips on how to get the most out of type logging. So your setup for scheduling success. This class is aimed at students who are looking to manage the time better using a digital calendar to up the productivity. And for students at a beginner level, This class is great for freelancers or side hustlers because you can use these skills to create your schedule, maximize her time, work smarter, and scheduled algebra tasks in an easy and organized way. Another way you can utilize the skill is to organize your personal life and events, keep track off your to-do lists and collaborate with others. By the end of this class, you will know what time blocking is and why you should apply it to planning out your work week. You will also know how to use 2k calendars, most important features, and how to use them to plan out your weekly schedule. 2. Class Project: As a class project, I ask you to plan out your next week from Monday to Sunday in Google Calendar, applying the techniques you will learn, they'll consider are the tasks and projects you plan on working on in the following week and create time blocks for your non-negotiables, recurring tasks, it deep work tasks, as well as everything else, such as meetings, calls, and appointments in that order. Once you're done scheduling out your week, take a screenshot of your weekly view in Google Calendar and share it in the Project tab. Completing this class project helps you apply that just learned skills and eventually helps you use your time more effectively in boost your productivity, it's important to get clear on your goals and priority projects for your week ahead first, before you start plugging them into your calendar, this helps you to hone in on what's most important for you and makes the planning process easier. Before you dive into the main lessons, make sure you created a Google account if you don't have one already and open Google calendar so you can follow along if you're ready to get started, stay put, and watch the next videos. 3. Time Blocking: Time blocking means setting aside blocks of time to work on a project or task. You set a defined start and end time, two-year time block. I define a block of time as a larger stretch of time from one hour to several hours per block. Blocking off time in your calendar ahead of time gives you permission, so to speak, to focus on just one thing at a time and literally lock out anything else you don't think about or worry about what else you have to do because those are the tasks have been accounted for for a different day or time block. Blogging allows you to free up mental space that you would otherwise need to think about, what you need to do next or what you should be working on a given day is safe decisionmaking time. If you schedule off your time blocks ahead of time and essentially make all those decisions about your working periods and all you have to do ahead of time. Planning ahead saves you time. A lets you work more efficiently hand-in-hand with time blocking goes batch working. Batch marking means that you keep similar tasks to the same day or the same part of the day, or the same block of time, keeping your focus on one task or on similar related tasks is best for productivity. So for example, you could dedicate a time block to writing content. In that time block, you could work on writing a blog post as well as writing to Instagram captions. Or you could dedicate a block of time to shooting images for your social media and your website imagery. You want to avoid switching between different tasks because research shows that it takes several minutes for you to settle in on a new task. So you want to avoid your focus to switch back and forth between different tasks because this way, you are never completely focused. You're losing time, and you won't get much done. It's much better to work on a particular task for a longer stretch the block of time to keep yourself from having to check your clock, you could instead set an alarm that goes off after your allotted time as up. Or you could use a sand clock or apply the Pomodoro Technique via an app or a YouTube video. If you want to learn more about the Pomodoro Technique, there's a link with further information in the class description. Once your allotted block of time is up, you can do one of two things. You either can continue working on whatever you're working on. If you are in the flow of things, have more time and energy, or if you want or need to finish up. The other option is that you make a hard stop, take a break, and do whatever your scheduled tells you to do next. 4. Google Calendar Settings: So first let's look at how Google Calendar is setup and let's look at some basic settings. So up here, you can change the view of Google Calendar. The default setting is a weekly view, but you can also switch to a monthly view or even to a yearly view. Let's go back to weekly view because we want to schedule out one week. I have my calendar start from Monday going to Sunday. If you want to change that, you can do so here under Settings. So if you scroll down, you see that you can change it here. I know some people like to start their week on Sundays, so you can start that. So you can change that. But I like mine to start on Monday, cells switch it back and there's a lot of different things you can do. So you can change the language, a country, the date format, the time format. You can also display a secondary time zones. So that makes sense if you work with clients from different time zones. So let's try this out here. So I have clients from the West Coast so I can label this Pacific Standard Time and the Eastern Standard Time. And there's many more things you can change here, but these are the basic settings. So once I added that, we can go back. And now you have both time zones displayed. So this is my own time zone, Eastern Standard Time. And add one at a glance, I can see what time it is on the Pacific Coast. Next, I want to go over the different calendars which you can add, which you can display. So let's actually go to a different week because this week I left blank for practicing purposes in for scheduling, which I will show you next, but let's go back here. So this is my private calendar, the red one. So I have added this, but if I only want to see my regular calendar and release its elevators, I can toggle this off. So when a toggle it off, all of those events disappear. And also there's a default calendar, holidays in the United States. I can also toggle this off. I know this is a bad example because we don't have holiday in this week, but maybe let's see if we can find one. They go. So you can choose to display or toggle doze off. Same as any kind of added calendars you have. So the red one here is my personal calendar. And if you want to add another calendar, for example, you can do that by clicking on the plus sign. And you can either subscribe to a calendar. So for example, you can browse calendars of interests. So for example, you want to add a Jewish holidays calendar. There's different kinds of sports calendars which you can add a phase of the moons. So lots of fun things you can do here. We added the phases of the Moon. And there you go. This one was added right here. And you can toggle it on or off. Up here are my calendars. So the business calendars I'm using, the blue one is my just my standard calendar which we are going to use to schedule events in a couple of minutes. This is another calendar. This is a tool I'm using ten to eight. It's a scheduling tool, it's an app, it's a different website where I send links to my clients and when they schedule a meeting with me. It appears in my calendar. So this website is linked to my calendar. So when clients use and schedule a meeting with me, it appears right here. And then birthdays is linked to my contact. So if someone has a birthday, their birth date is in my contacts. It's noted in my contacts. It appears right here. And tasks, This is something I'm going to go over in just a minute as well. You can also choose a different color for your specific calendars. Right here. I'll go back to my usual blue. But yes. So this is something you can do right here with a right-click. 5. Google Calendar Events: Next, I'll show you how to create an event in Google Calendar. So you have two different options. How you can create an event. First option is to click here on Create. And I named this past event number one. And I'm gonna delete this right now because I want to show you the second option. The second option is probably even easier because you just click anywhere you want to create this event. So let's say you want to create a new event on Thursday, the 20th, and it should be at two PM Eastern Standard Time. And you just click here, you add the title, and you click safe. You can change the length by just dragging this down. You can move it to a different day. If you double-click on it, it opens the event and you can make further adjustments. So again, you can change the date right here. You can adjust the time. You can also make an all-day event. For example. You can also add a location. But say if it's a meeting, you can do this right here. You can adjust notifications. So you can choose to get a notification just as like a regular notification. So if you have enabled modifications on your phone or on the Google Calendar app on your desktop, you will get like a ping or visual notification. You can add a second one. You can add multiple notifications actually. So you can choose to get a notification via email. Let's say today and advance today's r. Let's switch that to to just a time block. So standard notification is 30 minutes before the event. But say you want an email one day in advance, they go. Then you can also change the color. So I like to keep the same kinds of tasks, the same color. So let's say it's actually changed this to workout. And you can change busy, you free. So. I showed you before the ten to eight scheduling website which I'm using for clients to schedule of meetings with me. So those two calendars are connected. And if I schedule in a workout, I want this to be busy because I'm not available for clients to be able to book a meeting with me. So this is actually like scheduled off. No one can book another meeting with me. So this is important to check off. Then you can add a description. For example. You can also add guests. You can type an email. And then once you save this, you get a notification. Would you like to send an invitation email to Google Calendar guests? And I usually click yes, send. So the other person gets an email and they can add this to the calendar as well. You can also change the color by doing a right-click on here. And you can also delete this event. And since Another person was invited to ask see again, if you want to send this, choose to send it. Now I want to show you how to create a recurring task. So let's say on Mondays, you are writing content every single week. And you want to do this for two hours. Every Monday. You wanna give this green color. And up here, you can make this recurring, so you can choose weekly on Mondays, you also have different other options, but I want to do this once a week. And you click Save. And then when you go to the next week, you see that it's in here. And the next week and so on. And he double-click, you also can get right into the event. Let's see. Let's look at different options here. So you can also make a custom recurring event. So let's say you want this to end on a, on a very specific date. So you can do this right here. You can save it. 6. Google Calendar Taska: Next I want to show you how to use Google Tasks. So right here, if you click that, you can create a task list or to-do lists. So you can add a task. You can create the next task. And you can create different lists. And the default list was named my tasks and I went to rename this list personal to use. When you can switch between the lists by clicking this arrow. So we created two lists now, personal to-dos and business to-dos. Once you completed a task, you can check it off like this and it disappears from the list. And they appear right on the bottom here. So they don't disappear completely, but only after you delete the task here. Another thing you can do is you can take those tasks and drag them into your calendar. So basically what you're doing is you're assigning a date and time when you are going to work on this task. So the date and time also appears here in your task list. You can edit it. You can also add a subtask if you want to. You can add details right here. And once you're done with this, you can also mark it as complete. You can move it around just like events. So this is a handy tool to keep track of your different projects, of your different tasks you have to do and check them off and also assign dates and times when you would like to work on those specific tasks. 7. Plan Your Week: Now that you learned how to use the main functions in Google Calendar, you can now start scheduling out. You're next week in the following. I'll walk you through how to best do it step-by-step. But before we dive in, I'd like to point out two important things. In order to be as productive as possible, consider dedicating your first working time block of the day to the hardest type of work you have to do. The thing you want to bring further, the seeing you tend to procrastinate on the most, but you actually want to see finished work on that first. If you're familiar with the book, eat That Frog, You know what I'm talking about? You also want to take into account your energy levels as you schedule in your time blocks, most people tend to be most sharp and energetic In the morning. Be aware of that. If you have more energy in the schedule, you're more demanding tasks in the morning and routine work that you don't have to think quite as hard about in the afternoon or evening, Know yourself and schedule accordingly. Now, let's get to the actual scheduling work. Here's how to do it. First, you want to schedule in your non-negotiables first examples for that, or self-care morning and evening routine, your workouts, dates, and dinners with friends and so on? Yes. That's right. You want to put this in your calendar first and not last. If you don't take care of yourself first and make sure that you're well rested, take care of your health and are happy and fulfilled in your relationships. Your work life will suffer. Trust me on that. Take care of yourself first. After that, you want to schedule in blocks for all kinds of recurring tasks that you have to do on a daily, weekly, monthly, or whatever basis. Make a list all of those tasks and schedule them in. For example, you plan on writing insulin captions once a week, every Monday from ten to 12:00 PM. Or you want to write law post once a month, every first of the month. Another example would be to block off time for your planning time that you need to schedule out you Next week, or you have a daily evening review, a catch-up hour, or preparation time for the next day. Next, you want to schedule in your actual blocks of working time, remember to dedicate locks to the same task or type of tasks before you schedule off those time blocks, it helps to first get really clear on your current or pending tasks and projects. Write those down in your notebook, your Google drive, or the tasks lists in Google Calendar, wherever you keep track of your projects and ideas, then get clear on what it is that you need to work on for those projects next. So let's say that your current main projects are writing, book and developing online class. So you could decide that Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays are your writing time and you decide to write from nine to 12 PM. On those days, Thursdays are dedicated to work on your online class. Lack of time to work on this class are the examples of time blocks could be thinking time and scheduling of time to process your emails. After you have scheduled in those blocks of time, you can schedule in everything else. That would be things like meetings, calls, an all kinds of other appointments. And voila you've successfully scheduled out, you're next week in advance. 8. Additional Tips: Avoid distractions during your deep working time blocks as much as possible. Turn off your phone or put it in airplane mode. Work in an environment where you can't get distracted by other people or environmental influences. In short, do your best to create an environment that you work in. Best account for more time in your time blocks than you think you need. If you think it takes you 1.5 hours to write a blog post schedule in three hours. This is especially important in the beginning when you first start scheduling your time like that, it's better to allot more time than less. You would rather have a little time left. Being in a time crunch and getting stressed out. You will learn over time how long you will need for certain tasks and can adjust your time blocks accordingly. Start small with blocking. This is for you if you feel overwhelmed by the thought of blocking out your entire schedule or you've tried it in the past and it didn't work for you going from no or minimal scheduling to trying to keep a tightly-packed schedule can be hard if that's you, try to ease into it with one block time per day for a week or so. Get the feel for what undivided attention and focus means for that block. Start blocking off more time block your breaks when you get into time blocking and you're on a roll, taking a break from work almost seems wasteful because it's not on your schedule. And easy solution is to schedule those breaks so that even when you're going out to get a coffee, that's technically what is supposed to be doing. You scheduled it, and you'll feel that much more productive. 9. Take Action!: Now it's time to start scheduling out your week in your Google Calendar. Follow the process I outlined in the previous videos and proceed to scheduling out you're next week from Monday to Sunday, following the steps, get clear on your current main projects and tasks. Block off your non-negotiables, block off your recurring tasks, block off working times for your main projects. Block off the rest, such as meetings, calls, and appointments. If you like, you can also block of breaks, lunch and dinner time and transition times. Take a screenshot of your weekly calendar once you're done and submitted under the projects and resources tab. 10. For More...: For more productivity tips, make sure to follow me on Instagram at lisa syllabi.