Scheduling Smarts

Time blocking is the art of allocating blocks of designated time for specific tasks throughout the day that are aligned with your goals and the realistic number of hours you have each day, while keeping your life in balance. If you haven’t already, I suggest you make a list and prioritize the tasks to be included in your daily routine along with established time lines for each.
 
For example, if you have a nine-hour workday, you realistically have about eight hours (or less) to use to position various tasks within your schedule. I say only eight hours of actual task time because you should build in some buffer time throughout your day for those activities that either take longer than expected or would typically fly under your radar when planning (i.e. unscheduled meetings, traffic, emergencies, new projects, family/client demands, etc.)
 
You may also encounter certain sporadic, yet consistent activities that take up a portion of your day, such as personal errands, phone calls, e-mails, prospecting, administrative duties, managing employees, writing proposals, training, meetings or other work-related tasks.
 
Consider allocating blocks of time for each activity during certain intervals throughout your day to handle them rather then having these activities get in the way of the activities that would move you closer to achieving your goals, such as prospecting. For example, instead of being interrupted by incoming calls or e-mails throughout the day, try blocking out specific portions of your day to make and return calls or respond to e-mails.
 
Many people complain that their workflow is constantly being interrupted by phone calls or incoming e-mails. As such, they feel compelled to either take those calls or respond to an e-mail as soon as it hits their inbox, which distracts them from the initial activity they were involved in and disrupts their focus.

ARE YOU INTERRUPT-DRIVEN? Do you become easily distracted by situations, new tasks or people rather than maintaining focus on your goals? Consider for a moment that if your e-mail program is set to download e-mail every five minutes, in essence, you are scheduling an interruption or distraction for yourself every five minutes.
 
While many people feel the need to multi-task, there are many similarities between managing your mind-set and managing your schedule. Each activity or task that you engage in requires a change in your direction, both in action and in thought. As such, each task requires a shift in your mind-set and thought process, focus, action and energy, skills and resources, and desired outcome.
 
If you spend time prospecting or cold calling, I would suggest separating new prospect calls with follow-up calls. When you shift the focus of your energy and thoughts, you are taking up time. Whether it’s 10 seconds or 10 minutes, that time is compounded over days, months and years. For example, lets say for every five minutes you check your incoming e-mails, you are losing one minute. That’s 12 minutes per hour. In an eight-hour workday, consider that you are losing at least one hour and 36 minutes every day.
 
If you are a creative person, there’s a different mind-set that’s required when creating a marketing piece, writing an article or answering a phone call or an e-mail. Allowing certain interruptions can surely stall or block the flow of creativity, affecting your level of productivity.
 
Consider this solution: Change the time you have your e-mail program set to receive e-mails from every five or 10 minutes to every four or two hours.
 
To determine a realistic frequency when it comes to checking your e-mail, ask yourself these questions:
 
1. “Are the bulk of my e-mails time sensitive? Does my ability to quickly respond to an e-mail determine whether or not I will earn a new client’s business?”
 
2. “Can I still provide the same level of service to my customers, and not compromise my ability to attract new customers or perform my job effectively, if I respond to e-mails only twice a day?”
 
If creating time blocks to respond to e-mails or phone calls would compromise your ability to do your job effectively, then this strategy may not work for you. But I encourage you to take the next week to determine if there’s a specific time throughout your day when you receive the bulk of time-sensitive e-mails. There still may be an opportunity for you to block out designated times for responding to calls and e-mails at less frequent intervals than you are doing now.
 
The fact is, even if you change the frequency of when you check your e-mail from every five minutes to every 10 minutes, you have just cut the time you can lose from this distracting tactic in half.
 
Remember, this same strategy can be used for telephone calls. Whether it’s once, twice or three times a day, you can allocate a designated block of time to make or return calls.
 
Become someone who is driven by goals rather than driven by distractions. The more effective you are at time blocking, the greater the quality of your life will be. If you are responsible for attracting and retaining your customers, your ability to manage their expectations is a direct reflection of your ability to not only manage your schedule but your mind-set as well.
 
Make time your ally. Eliminate at least two hours of your workload each day and do more of the things you want to do.

The author is president of Profit Builders, a business consulting firm. He is also the author of Time Management for Sales Professionals and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cold Calling, the latter of which has made it to the Top 50 Best Seller List on www.amazon.com. Reach him at 888/262-2450 or info@profitbuilders.com.