School Blocks as a Model for Time Blocks

Who remembers defragging your computer to make it run more efficiently? I'm talking about defragging time confetti into time blocks today. "What is time confetti?" Yes, thank you for asking…it's all those little 2 or 5 minutes that are free and sprinkled throughout your day. How can you most effectively use your confetti time to conquer the never ending, always evolving list of essential time blocks that you must complete as the mom, wife, and/or household manager?

4 Essential Time Blocks

Let's start with what demands our time. We have some mandatory tasks (time blocks) that our homes and lives demand from us. After surveying 1000 people, it became very clear that Americans define housework as laundry, food, and cleaning. I explained how I like to defrag or consolidate my cleaning and laundry to the same day and time. Saturdays are great for this for me. I get my machines going and clean till about Noon. I auditioned being available for Abby and the grand kids on Saturdays. But, I have realized I like my Lisa time on Saturdays, so I'm keeping it that way to stay sane. And food, good Lord does it take a lot of time to tackle the food part of life. You gotta plan it, buy it, process it, and then prepare it! It takes time. How can you most efficiently schedule those housework tasks into time blocks? Consolidate like tasks in one time block to efficiently and productively conquer housework. And then there's a 4th essential time block that life requires out of us.

Block 4: Household Management

The 4th essential time block to this human experience is…household management. Thank God for the Sunday Basket® that's all I can say! On Sunday's I process all the administrative and actionable paperwork for the house including the mail. I look at all the communication for the kids, texts or DM and emails that are family related. Then, I decide where our money is going for the week. Instead of paying one bill here and one there and them each taking 3 minutes. I decide in one setting which ones need to be paid and when I'll do that. In the past, this has been a game changer. When we didn't have a lot of money, it really helped me to best manage our money. And then plan my week; my time blocks. I look at all the similar tasks and put them in one time block. Like an errand time block(s). The Sunday Basket® helps you to systematize your house management. The Sunday Basket™ allows delayed procrastination till Sunday and that allows you to productively cluster or consolidate like tasks into one time block. All those invisible tasks we do - we get to visualize them and then schedule them at the optimal time.

Time for Defragging All the Confetti

THIS is a skill set that is learned over time WITH a mindset shift. You must first make the mindset shift to start to practice time blocking. I hope after hearing all of this it makes sense why you would want to defrag your time to cluster like tasks into one time block. But you need time to learn how to do it right? Where will that time come from? Planned neglect and lowering your expectations of what clean and done means my friends. You are going to choose a suggestion or two that I offered to free up some precious time. Like how Saturdays used to be a free day and we ate fast food. You may want to consider outsourcing your cleaning or laundry. I know it costs money to do what you can technically do for free, but in really overwhelming seasons of life, it'll save your well being and sanity. It can also free up time for you to learn and begin to practice how to consolidate all the things and place them into time blocks. Productive people habitually think in time blocks. They have made a mindset shift and appreciate the time block "rigidity" over the chaos of time confetti and inefficiency.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

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• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

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