- Hey everybody, we're in
a not different location but just different chair
in the same location because I'm doing something
slightly different today. gonna talk about calendar blocking. I mean, it's not new for me
to talk about productivity and organisation and time management, and all of those things but I'm gonna actually
screen share with you and show you my calendar
and how I calendar block. Isn't that exciting? I mean, I'm excited,
it's color-coded come on. What more could you want? The ears, yes, the ears, I'm doing a video with my friend, Lena. It'll be out in April, you'll see then. (laughing) I didn't wanna take them off. Think they're really cute. Okay, so before I dive
into the screen-sharing what is calendar blocking? Why is calendar blocking? And then we shall get onto
the, how is calendar blocking? Also, just to prepare you for
the screen-sharing situation, I have a mechanical keyboard, so. (typing) Yeah, you're gonna have
to get used to that. So what is calendar blocking? Also known as time blocking. So calendar blocking is
taking tasks off a to-do list and giving them a time
allocated slot on your calendar. Like an appointment, like an event, like a meeting of when
you're gonna do that thing. The idea behind putting
tasks on a calendar, which is normally reserved for meetings, appointments, et cetera,
means that you mentally start treating those tasks as if they were meetings,
appointments or whatever, and you give them the same importance that you do those things. Like you prepare yourself and you show up and you attend and you do the work. Now, if you all an analogue person, if you use bullet journals, if you have like a physical planner, this maybe is not the strategy for you because it needs to be flexible and digital calendars are the
way forward, in my opinion, but it is much easier with the digital calendar, I promise you. Unless you're some sort of
bullet journaling wizard and you have your own system in place for calendar blocking in a bullet journal. I'm curious how, but even though you need the flexibility of the digital calendar, the point isn't to move everything
around and procrastinate and just be like, oh,
I'll just move it to here. You only move stuff around
if you absolutely have to, like you treat it like an
appointment, it's the same as like if you have to move a meeting, you'd be like, I am so sorry. Something came up, can
we please reschedule? And like I said, also color-coded, just for general happiness but also being able to differentiate between the different kinds
of things that you're doing. So why, why did I start calendar blocking? So I actually have tried
calendar blocking before, I've done it for like the
odd week here and there when I've had a really busy week. And that's basically what
happened this time round. Busy week, was feeling very overwhelmed by my schedule and my to-do list. And so I thought, okay, the
only way that I can tackle this and actually know if it is possible to get all of this stuff done
and then actually make sure that use my time wisely, so that as much of it as possible could get
done, is to calendar block. So for that week where I
had a really busy week, I did my calendar blocking
and it just worked so well. There's something about allocating time to a task that makes me
so much more productive. Like if I've given
myself an hour for a task on my calendar and I can
see that on my calendar, it will take me an hour to do that task. If I didn't allocate any
time to do that task, it might've taken me
two hours, three hours, four hours, like who knows? But usually when I've
calendar blocked a single week in the past, I then stop
after the busy period is over. And I just go back to not doing
it and having my to-do list. But this time I liked it so much that I just continued doing it. And actually I'm now in one of those, like low periods of busy-ness
like when you're freelance, you get like peaks and troughs
of like really intense, like very busy, like
everything comes at once. And then just kind of like, oh, there's really not much
to do at the moment. And I'm definitely in that state, which I'm trying to
embrace because normally I'd be like, oh my God,
I'm not busy enough. I must do things, and now I'm just like, no Hannah it's fine. Like yesterday afternoon I
was done with all of my work by two o'clock and I just
did some painting by numbers for the rest of the
afternoon, it was glorious. I'm making the most of this because I know that it all will increase
again in busy-ness and I will be really busy
and really stressed again. And so I'm just making the most of it. Anyway, that was a tangent. So I kept doing calendar
blocking and before I knew it, I'd calendar blocked for an entire month. And I was like, oh my
God, is this a new habit? Have I got a new system,
is this gonna be my thing? And like yeah, for now,
until it stops serving me but I'm really enjoying
it even in less busy days. I think when it comes to less busy days of calendar blocking,
it actually shows to me, like once I've mapped out all of my tasks, on my week, I'm like oh,
there's all of this spare time. And then I actually am
confronted with that spare time. And I have to say to myself, Hannah, take advantage of that
spare time, rest, relax, do something creative, read a book. Don't twiddle your thumbs at your desk and try and create more
work for yourself, okay. (laughing) But these are some practical things that I think calendar blocking really helped me with over the last month. One, it helped me gain an understanding of actually how long tasks take me. Previously, to do list would
just try and do as much as possible without any idea
of how long stuff takes. But now I know how long roughly,
writing a newsletter takes. I now know roughly how
long doing the Patreon and reading lists take, filming videos. Before, I didn't really
have any tangible evidence of how long all of those
things took me, but now I do. Number two, it's holding me accountable to batching my boring admin email work. So roughly once a day, I might have like an hour
scheduled out for admin. Sometimes it's a bit longer,
depending on the day. Sometimes it's a bit longer,
sometimes it's a bit shorter, depending on like how messy my inbox is but it's really holding
me accountable for like just in the allocated time
slot, check your emails, rather than doing it like
sprinkled throughout the day and constantly distracting myself from more important things. Number three, I'm actually
taking lunch breaks because I have a repeated calendar event for my lunch, every single day. I know, I know. Number four, I feel myself
procrastinating less because I always have my
calendar open on my desktop. And so I'll just like look
over and it'd be like, oh shit, I'm meant to be doing this thing. I don't know for me, it
just really helps me focus and kind of hold me accountable
and like tell me off like if I've procrastinated
a bit and I'm like, oh no, this is what I was supposed to be doing. This is what my calendar says. And then number five, it's helped me to not
overbook or overextend myself. And I think those are really great things. Okay, so how do I do it? It's time for screen sharing
and mechanical keyboard time. This is my first time ever
screen recording on my PC. So fingers crossed it goes well. Right, let's dive in. So this is a blank week, now
I don't normally start out with a blank week because
usually by this point, it's already populated
with a bunch of stuff and I also have regular occurring tasks that automatically populate,
but I wanted to show you from a blank slate of
how I calendar block, so you can kind of
understand how it works. So some people put like their
morning and night routines on their calendar, like when they wake up and when they go into bed,
I don't really do that. The only morning thing
I put in is working out because on workout days,
I start work a bit later because I do not wake
up earlier to work out. So let's start by inputting all of those regular occurring tasks, starting with lunchtime. (typing) There we go, now I like to put lunch in my personal calendar. Oh yeah, I haven't talked
about my calendars. So, that's going in every weekday. So I have my personal calendar. So this is just stuff
like for me, personal. Only I need to really know about it. And then the yellow Hannah
calendar is what is shared with my manager and my assistant. So that is where I put in
things like meetings, events and also when I'm filming, so that they know that
like I'm unavailable, like I'm filming and then get stuff done as you shall see, is
basically all of my tasks. That is the only way I split it. I know some people like
will colour coordinate even more than that. Like breaking up the getting stuff done into like different kinds of tasks, I just have it all in one. I understand my calendar,
right, lunch is in. What else do we have as repeating tasks? So I work out every other day and this week it will be
starting right on a Monday. Yeah, so we put that in. And I put it in for an hour and a half. I do not work out for an hour and a half but that extra half an hour
is me like getting ready after working out. It repeats on, oh my
God, how do I do this? Repeat every two days, save. Fantastic, this is looking good. The next thing that is repeated task in my calendar is my videos
and like when they go live, so I like to have it in my calendar, so that I am like ready on social media to do all the posting. And also I can like be available in the comments for the next hour. Now, sometimes I do have
other stuff going on during the hour, but I still
like to put it in my calendar so that I'm just aware
that that is the first hour that a video is live and
to kind of dip in and out of checking on the video basically. So videos go live
Tuesday's and Thursday's. So we put publish video. This goes in get stuff done and it repeats every Tuesday and Thursday. Yes, I think that'll do it. Boom, so I tend to record
videos every Tuesday morning, that has been the routine
that I've been getting in into lockdown, so that we put in filming. And I kind of just do
it up until lunchtime. I give myself three hours to
film whatever I need to film and this is gonna repeat a
weekly on Tuesdays, boing. And then the other thing
that I like to put in as a weekly thing but it does
sometimes get moved around is my ISEE classes. So ISEEis the Institute for Sexuality Education and Enlightenment, which is where I'm doing
my certification course. And there's a whole
bunch of online webinars that I need to make my way through. So I like to put it on my calendar so that I have a time that I'm doing it. If it isn't on the calendar,
I will not do those webinars, so that, I like to do
every Wednesday morning. So we put ISEE in Wednesday morning. So I actually do put that
in like from nine till 12 because on non-workout
days, like next week, it won't be a Wednesday
that I'm working out. So we just stick it in for this time. And then it repeats weekly on Wednesday. Fantastic, okay, so those
are my repeated tasks. So this is kind of what a
blank week looks like for me. This is my blank week. Now we put in the things
that are like my meetings and events and stuff that
is already populated. Like this is stuff that has already been
scheduled and planned. So the first thing is
that on Monday at 4:00 PM, there is a Patreon, no,
that's not how you spell it, ambassador round table. So this is a digital round table for all of the Patreon
creator ambassadors. As I am one, if you haven't seen, I've been doing this
creator Chronicles series across this YouTube channel and my IG TV, where I talk about the behind
the scenes of being a creator and how I manage my Patreon
and being a YouTubeer, podcaster, et cetera, all
of that kind of stuff. It is a paid ambassadorship
for full transparency but I talk about Patreon a
whole bunch because I love it. And yeah, we will get onto
some more Patreon stuff that I need to populate
this week with as well. So the next thing is that every Wednesday, ISEE has a thing called webinar Wednesday, where current students
will like do a practise, like presenting some research or like something to do with their work. So I just make sure that that is in my
calendar every Wednesday. I don't always make it. I'm not always available at that time but I make sure that it's in
my calendar every Wednesday so that I don't like
accidentally book myself. But you know, if it can't be
helped, it can't be helped but I always liked to attend those. And then this week, there is a special
event Wednesday evening, which is the menstrual activism meet up, which is being hosted
by Bloody Good Period. And there'll be like lots
of menstrual activists on Zoom together, which I'm
really looking forward to. That is it, I told you, it's
not very busy at the moment. So that is like my stuff
that is scheduled in, that are actual appointments. Next, what happens is
I look at my to-do list and then we populate this situation. So obviously I don't always
do this like all at once. It just kind of like happens as stuff gets added to my to-do list. I still use Todoist as my to-do list because as stuff comes in and as I know that I need to do stuff, it just populates in the to-do list and I still like being
able to take stuff off. But when I'm planning a week,
I will look at my Todoist and then I will like put it
in the calendar accordingly. So on Mondays, I usually have
a bunch of like admin to do like whatever emails are
left over from last week that I couldn't be bothered
dealing with on a Friday because who can be bothered
with emails on a Friday? And then also I have that week's video and podcast to schedule on Patreon. So I don't always like to have
an admin morning on a Monday but that is what is happening this week. So we pop that in, we're
having an admin morning just to like clear all of that shit before we get started on the good stuff. Next up, one thing that I
always like to make sure that I do on a Monday is
prep the next day's videos that I'm going to film. Now often they're like
planned way in advance but I just like to make sure that I've got all of my ducks in a row
so that nothing shocks me when I come to sit down
and record the next day. I'm like, oh shit, I didn't plan that. What am I meant to be saying here? So I just like to make
sure I do some video prep. And so that's going in
right after the admin. Maybe that'll take a bit longer, I'm not gonna bother filling out that half an hour before
lunch, but basically, it's gonna be a morning
of admin and video prep. Then the afternoon is much more fun because we're doing some video planning. What's the difference
between video planning and video prep Hannah? Good question, so in my head, video prep is like last minute, getting all your ducks
in a row before filming. Video planning is like, okay, what's the schedule gonna
be like for the next month? Let's like move shit around in
the content calendar schedule and make sure that we
know when we're filming and like what do we need to
have prepared before we film? Is there anything that
has to happen before that? What research needs to be done? When do I have time to do said research? That's probably gonna be like two hours. I like to really take my time with it. I also like to sometimes
like watch YouTube whilst I'm doing that to kind of like see what is out there and
like get some inspiration. And then Monday is also
the day that my editor gets to me the first
edit for the more Hannah, this channel YouTube video,
that wasn't a sentence. And so later in the afternoon this day, I will need to do some video feedback. So watching the video and
sending her over some notes. So that usually takes
me about an hour to do. I've put it in here but it depends on what time she gets it to me. So I might have to do
it after the round table but if she gets me before
then I can do it before. And guess what? That is Monday, what a
great day to start the week. So on Tuesday, I have two
videos that I need to film. And so I actually like to put them in here because sometimes I've
got one video to film, other times two, other times three. And depending on the kind of video, I know if it's gonna be one
that will take me an hour or like a bit more, a bit less. I would say on average it takes
me one hour to film a video but I like to make sure
check what the video is, and see if I can basically
get all of the videos that I want to get done that
day in this three hour block. So for this week, I'm
filming, well actually, this is still TBC, I need to
do the research on this one. But the plan is to film a
video about the difference between sexual desire, arousal,
attraction and orientation. So we just pop that in here. Sexual desire, attraction, arousal. Doesn't have to like
actually make any sense. I just have to know like
what the hell that means. So that's one that we're filming. And then the other one that I'm filming is all my yellow clothes. 'Cause I just thought that
would be silly and fun. Look out for that next week. There we go, so two
videos filming on Tuesday but I'm still giving myself
that entire morning to do that. And actually anything that is
a video to do with clothes, normally takes me longer than an hour because of getting all of the clothes out. And then also like putting
all the clothes back at the end of the video. It's a hard life. (laughing) So what we haven't got on
this day yet is any admin. So if I don't have time for
doing admin, like email stuff in the morning, then I
always pop it in after lunch. And I'm actually just going to pop it in for like half an hour after lunch and hope that that is like enough because I did the admin,
like an hour of it on Monday. So we will see, that might change. Then on Tuesdays, I
record my podcast intro. So we put, record podcast intro. Is this even interesting to people? And I give myself a full hour for that because basically I look
back over on all of my notes that I made whilst recording the episode, which could have happened like months before I'm
recording this intro. I look over my notes and I
write a script for my intro and then I record it. It may be actually takes
more like half an hour but I still like to give
myself a full hour to do it. Don't know why, maybe I should start being a bit stricter with myself. Next is my newsletter. So this week there will be a newsletter coming out on the Friday. And Tuesday is the day
that I write my newsletter. And so that's going in and I would say, it takes me about an hour and a half. I will just basically give
myself all of that time until the video is live
to write that newsletter. And guess what? That's Tuesday, what a
great day, nine till five. Wednesday is gonna be a bit different than my normal Wednesdays
because on the Tuesday, on the 16th, is when the bookmarks for my Patreon special
offer are meant to arrive and the envelopes should have
all arrived by then as well. And so in theory from Wednesday, I'm gonna start packaging
up all of the bookmarks into the envelopes and writing
out everyone's addresses. There's like 840 that I need to do. And this is something that
I know takes me a long time but I actually don't know how
long it's going to take me. So I'm just gonna put it in for all of Wednesday afternoon,
the common room bookmark. It's just going in all of
Wednesday afternoon basically. And then there'll probably be bits of admin that I needed
to do during the day, that I can just like take half an hour, an hour break from doing the bookmark. And sort out that stuff. And then obviously we got those events in the evening and then Thursday. So this week I'm actually
doing the show notes and the transcript for the podcast that'll be coming out next week. This is something that my
assistant normally does but she can't do it this
week, so it is on me. So I need to make sure
that that is scheduled in. Now I did one of the transcripts and it took me like three
hours to do the transcript but then obviously I'm doing
the show notes on top of that. So I wanna give myself a
real good amount of time to make sure that this gets done. So I'm giving all of Thursday morning. But then in the afternoon, I'm gonna continue with doing the bookmark because I will need to change
it up, just for my brain. So that's going in there. And then again, I kind
of can't be bothered putting in a thing for admin
because sometimes I don't know like when I'll need to do admin, sometimes I'll like pop in in the morning but then I'm like, oh,
there's like nothing to do. And then there might be
like more stuff coming in that I need to look at in the afternoon. So I'll just kind of
like, see what the inbox is looking like that
day and still make sure that I only do it for an hour but I just don't know when
that hour will be yet. So next, I think Friday
morning, I'm gonna continue with the transcript and the show notes and I reckon that will be
enough time to get it done. Then what I'm actually gonna
do is I like to make sure that we just do that admin on the Friday. I know I said that I
don't like to do emails on a Friday afternoon. When I say admin, I'm not
replying to those emails. I'm just kind of like sorting
them and moving them around. So with that come Monday
morning, I'm ready. Obviously, if there's anything urgent that I do need to respond to, then I can make sure it's done
before the end of the week. But otherwise not important,
can wait until Monday. Okay, so I'm actually gonna
leave it there for this week. Like I said, it's not super
busy for me at the moment. And rather than shoving
extra work in for me to do on Friday afternoon,
I'm gonna leave it empty and basically kind of
like see where I'm at with the transcript and
show notes and also see how many envelopes addresses
that I have written out. And maybe I'll continue
with doing the Patreon stuff Friday afternoon, maybe I won't, maybe I'll continue doing that next week. But as long as the transcript
and show notes are done, that is like the main thing that I need to make sure it's done by the end of the week,
as long as that is done, I am happy to give myself
a Friday afternoon off. So I'm just gonna leave it blank. Granted, things might
fill it, but we shall see. Hello, Hannah from the future here. As I mentioned, you
need a digital calendar because you gotta be flexible
and this is just proof of it. So I filmed this video a week ago and now, as you can see from this
calendar, it is Monday afternoon, evening time and it looks
a little bit different and there's also a few things I forgot. So the first thing that
I completely forgot, was that Tuesday evening
is my Patreon live stream. So obviously that is an event
in my calendar at 8:00 PM, tomorrow for me, I'll
already have happened by the time you're watching this. And then of course, because
I make two YouTube videos every week, one on this channel and one on the Hannah Whitton channel, I also needed to make sure I popped in doing video feedback on Thursday, which is the day that my editor gets me the first edit for the
Hannah Whitton channel, we know where we're going with this. So that is now populated in on Thursday. And then as you can see, my Monday looked very different to how I originally planned it. Now I was still in that
video like almost a week before this week actually happens. And I don't normally plan my
weeks like that far in advance because you don't have
all of the information but I had a phone call
meeting this morning and then I had a meeting with
my manager this afternoon. And so then obviously other stuff kind of had to get moved around a bit. The Patreon ambassador
round table was so good, but it ran over because it was that good. And so I'd just finished
doing the video feedback as you can tell, because now I'm like, oh, I have extra thoughts. This is Zen Caster live demo thing that I'm doing on Thursday. They're just doing a
bunch of free live demos for their new video feature. And I'm thinking at some
point in the next few months, this year, at some point,
introducing video to my podcast, which is nerve-wracking and exciting. And then Thursday morning,
I've actually put in that I'm starting my show notes at 8:00 AM because on non-workout
days, I can like get up and just like start working, which means that I will
start working at eight, and we'll see how much I
can get done in four hours. I may need to add a bit more
onto Friday because actually, Friday morning now, I've
got read Queerly Autistic, which is this book here. I'm interviewing the
author, Erin on my podcast. And so I just have a few
bits that I want to read and take notes on, so I can
ask some good questions. And then Pleasure Workshop is
homework for my ISEE course, that doesn't have to get done that day. It's one of those things
where the deadline is in like a month's time,
but if I don't put it on my calendar every week and then I'll move it
'cause it's not a priority because the deadline is in a month, and I'll just keep moving it until I have some free time to do it. So it's currently in on Friday 'cause I have some free time
on Friday and then we will see. So even though lots of new stuff has been added, Friday afternoon
is still very much free and I can fill it with any
stuff that needs to get done that I didn't manage to get to or I can just leave it empty if I have managed to hit
all of my tasks this week. Again, we shall see 'cause
that is in my future. Okay, back to past Hannah with the ears. So there you have it,
that is how I plan my week with account blocking. It has honestly made me
so much more productive and efficient with my time. And I don't want that to come across in a kind of like hustle, hustle. You gotta work so hard kind of way. It's actually like helped me relax and helped me value my time. And like you've seen, I'm just like, Friday, let's just have
the afternoon off then. It's all about that balance for me. And I feel like I've talked
about like work-life balance and making sure that you rest as well. Like I feel like I talk about
that a lot, but honestly, doing calendar blocking has actually like visually shown to me
the time when I can relax and actually shown me like, hey, you don't need to be working right now. Like you put everything
that was on your to-do list on the calendar and look,
there's all of this extra time and I'm like, oh okay, great. I don't need to like make myself seem busier than I actually am. I hope that you enjoyed this video. I hope that you enjoyed this look in to how I schedule and plan my weeks. If you signed up to my Patreon in time to get the common room bookmark for the special offer,
then they're coming soon. They're coming soon, as you can see on my
calendar, I'm working on it. And let me know in the comments. Do you calendar block,
have you ever tried it? Does it work for you,
does it not work for you? Do you have a color-coordinated calendar? How many different colours are in it? What is your system? Please let me know, and also let me know if this video has maybe persuaded you to try calendar blocking and
to let me know how that goes. I hope that you're doing well and I'll see you in my next video, bye.
