Current time block method

Now that I’m sort of getting “back in the groove” of life, I’ve resumed my current method of time blocking. Since I’ve been really leaning into my Google Calendar, I’ve been trying to fine tune some of my digital habits and systems.

One thing for me that has never really worked is doing time blocking on paper. The reason being, there’s just too much uncertainty usually in my schedule. I typically have a couple “rocks” in the day, but the rest of my days are often fairly fluid and varied. My job is pretty flexible and I’m also the primary “driving” parent most days (before 6 p.m., anyway)- but where and when I’m driving can vary also day to day.

Time blocking is probably not necessary for people with a very strict, 9-5 job. But because I often work a bit of a “piece-mealed” schedule, with breaks to drive kids and/or do other things, I find time blocking to be pretty essential.

I do not always time block, but I definitely notice that when I don’t, my life just doesn’t work nearly as well. I flounder around more and get much less done.

Before, when I was doing more paper planning, I kept most of the kids’ activities, events, etc just on my paper calendar. And I used Google Cal just for sketching out my time blocks and not much else. However, now that I’ve moved to Google Calendar as my main “everything” calendar, I have changed up my system just a little.

I now have 4 main calendars that I utilize:

1. Kaelyn

This is my primary calendar. My personal calendar items go here- meetings, personal medical appointments, personal obligations that only affect me. *I have a separate Outlook calendar just for work, but I will put important work obligations like meetings on my personal calendar as well.

2. Family

The calendar that gets the most action. This is where ALL kids/family stuff goes. Blue= Ethan, Green= Asher. Yellow= both kids/whole family.

3. Workouts

I keep this one un-checked (not visible) most of the time. But this is where I have been sketching out which workouts I plan to do each day (in Red). These I just list as an “All Day” event so they aren’t assigned to a specific time- I just like to have my day’s workout plan visible somewhere.

4. Timeblock

The latest addition! I decided to create this separate “Timeblock” calendar so I didn’t have all these separate events cluttering up my “real” calendar. This is the purple calendar below.

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This has worked so beautifully for me!!!! Most mornings (or actually often the previous afternoon) I try to look at the upcoming day and sketch out what’s going on.

Here is the “full view” that I have pulled up on my desktop basically all day, every day, except obviously much larger on my big desktop monitor. (This is a made-up/ sample calendar I made; my current week has too many personal details on it! But this is very similar to how it normally looks.)

The thing I LOVE about doing time blocking digitally is that it is soooooo easy to just slide the blocks around, shorten them, lengthen them, etc. I used to get so annoyed when trying to do this on paper, because I would write down one time and then be like, Oh wait, no. That won’t work- I need another 30 minutes there. But meanwhile, I already wrote down something else….

I feel like my days are usually kind of a big puzzle. It usually takes me several attempts to make it all line up in a way that actually works and makes sense!

Here’s a zoom in on a (sample) time blocked day for me, with the other calendars unchecked:

Typically, I keep just the Timeblock, Kaelyn, and Family calendars checked. I usually uncheck Workouts, since I don’t need to look at that all day.

Zoomed in:

This separate Timeblock calendar works so well because I just uncheck it if I want the more simple, ACTUAL events version (actual places I need to be- like the kids’ activities, etc.):

When I first started using Google Cal more and used my personal Kaelyn calendar for time blocking too, it was too much. This is perfect. It’s there when I need it, and gone when I don’t. 🙂

ALSO- as I do my timeblocking, I also update my DO TODAY list in the sidebar in Google Tasks. I have many other to-do lists (in the drop down) including one titled THIS WEEK, so I’ll usually just browse that and pick out a couple things I need to prioritize on that day and switch them to the DO TODAY list.

I’ve also started adding my personal “daily items” on here too so I can check them off (walk, read, workout, etc.)

Anyway! Nothing overly revolutionary here, but just sharing what I’m currently doing and is working out well!

Oh, and I also have the Google Calendar widget on my phone AND I can see my Google Cal on my Apple Watch! So no matter where I am, I can easily pull up my time blocked plan for the day. 🙂

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for my pretty bookmark. I have probably shared this before, but I was just admiring it again this morning as I slid it between the pages of my book. If you read paper books and don’t have any fun and/or pretty bookmarks, get some!! It’s such a small, simple pleasure. This one was a gift from my mom and is my favorite. I also have started collecting them when we travel.