My daily schedule as a working mom and full time student

there's no way I would get anything done if I didn't schedule it into my day I hope you're having a good day today we're going to talk about block schedules what they are what they're not how to make one work how to troubleshoot one that doesn't work and a few things to remember if you are new to block scheduling but first if you're new around here hello my name is Lydia sin and I make videos on Frugal and simple living and time management because that apparently is my bash last week I had a zoom call with a client and I was sharing my screen with her and I said hold on a second let me put my next meeting because she had asked for an extra Zoom Day into my Google Calendar and keep in mind that this client is a professional organizer she's a New York Times best-selling author and she saw my Google Calendar and gasped and said can you teach me how to do that because it's amazing how you may thrive in one area so hers is physical organization but you may struggle in another area which for her was keeping her schedule on track and you can flip it I physical organization it's like I have blindness to it I have clutter blindness but actual schedule keeping is where I thrive so if you are wanting some tips on how to create a Better Block schedule and just kind of figure out how to do it all then this video is hopefully going to be helpful for you now a little bit of a caveat before you begin number one nobody is doing it all number two just because someone appears to be doing more than you doesn't mean that they are if you sat down and made a video about all the stuff you do in a day you would realize it's a lot number three it's not a competition number four I get up at 4am doesn't mean you have to get up at 4am or that you're less productive because you don't get up at 4am you can be just as productive at 1am or 10 o'clock at night or 11 o'clock in the morning you have to find the time that works for you and block scheduling isn't for everyone so I could give you a hundred tips telling you how to kill your schedule but if it doesn't work for you it doesn't work for you it's not it's not it doesn't really matter okay so let's let's just jump in so I have a lot to figure out how to balance on a daily basis so I work from home full time as a virtual assistant I have four kids three of them at homeschool and one of them is a toddler or three-year-old preschooler um I am a full-time college student now and then I'm a wife and a mom and all of those things so it's all about prioritizing in the moment what needs to be done and so a block schedule is just taking your day and breaking it into blocks it's breaking it into little segments this is how I view it if you sleep for eight hours a day hmm but if you sleep for eight hours a day that leaves you 16 hours if you break up that time into our chunks that gives you eight little portions to do what you need to do so if you work outside the home you know that probably two of those or at least one of those chunks the two hours is commuting and then the eight hours is working so that leaves you six hours to figure out the rest of your time which isn't a lot but that's still six hours that are yours and you can schedule them out however you need to to fit those areas of your life so the first thing that I do when creating a block schedule is list out everything that needs to get done now this is before I even put it into my Google Calendar or my planner my paper planner I use both I write out everything that needs to be done and this includes work tasks home keeping tasks and my daily four which I'll talk about in a minute kids school slash activities college and then social hobby so a lot of times when you're looking at how to make a schedule it'll say you know identify what work you need to get done that day no no no back it up we're gonna do this by week a daily to-do list no a weekly to-do list why because not everything is going to get done in one day and sometimes you need to be a little bit more flexible and move things around to a different day not every single day looks exactly the same so some days we may have appointments or activities or something else going on and so my trip to you know run errands and pick up a few things at the grocery store or call and make appointments or whatever it was that's on my to-do list isn't necessarily going to get done that day and so I need to look at my overall schedule and figure out what days I can run errands make phone calls etc etc time blocking works because it creates a visual picture of what your week looks like and you're not a completely visual person it does kind of help you see areas where you may have a little bit more time than you thought areas where you can schedule some things are areas where you can just chill okay so the next thing I do when creating a Blog schedule is choosing what needs to be prioritized so not everything can get done at the same time and not everything is the same priority so I read a book by Jessica Turner called stretch too thin and in the book she talks about that we're all juggling balls and some of the balls are made of glass and some of them are made out of rubber and so you need to know what in your life you can drop that will bounce back and what in your life that you drop that's going to shatter and so obviously things that my family needs is going to be a bigger priority than a social event or even my own schoolwork uh work deadlines where I get paid which helps feed my family is going to be a bigger priority than an event that we need to sign up for or laundry or even some fun activities it's all about prioritizing what is the most breakable in that moment and letting go of things that necessarily aren't life or death or gonna have a negative impact on your overall home's well-being for example this morning I put the last of our dirty clothes in the washing machine and it felt great now those clothes aren't going to get folded and put away for days but we all have clean underwear and if we need to go get it out of the basket we can't know what you're going to need to prioritize and so I'm prioritizing getting classwork done turning in work for clients and even recording this video over folding laundry any day of the week I will do anything any day of the week full laundry next decide how much flexibility you need and how much structure you need I cannot do an unstructured day I am flexible in so many areas I'm just okay plot twist let's move on and figure out how to make this work but if I don't have structure I'm going to wander off and get into trouble my husband tells me all the time that I have to stay busy because if I don't I stir up trouble I'm just like oh you know what we need to start a new project let's repaint the bathroom and he's like it's one o'clock in the morning oh yeah so I need um I was actually telling someone this the other day my husband doesn't have to travel for work as much as he used to but back when he did I would have to set an alarm in my phone to go to bed at night because it would be three o'clock in the morning and I'm like oh it's dark outside and the kids have been asleep for five hours um maybe I should go to bed now so I need like I need structure I need routine I kind of need a rigid schedule if you're not the type of person that responds well to tight deadlines and a rigid schedule then know that about yourself and don't pack things in so lightly make things a little bit loose make make it more of a suggestion and less of a deadline know what parts of your day that you have the most control over so for me it's early in the morning from four to seven my kids generally don't get up until seven although the time change has ruined my life I think we're adjusting to it now but for a while there it was it was touch and go every morning but now there are little bodies have adjusted and they're not getting up until seven and then finally know what part of the day you are the most productive you may not be productive in the morning you may be productive later in the evening or later in the morning so figure that out and schedule those big deadline tasks in those areas so let's talk about how to break up your day so you may have heard this analogy about the rocks in the jar where somebody put the biggest rocks first in the jar and then Pebbles and then sand and then water and then everything filled in the cracks well it's really important when making your schedule to put the biggest activities in first the things not necessarily the first part of your day but the things that you need to focus on need to get the prime time of your day so remember how we talked about determine the time of your day where you're the most productive well that may be when you need to schedule the biggest tasks next I like to schedule in my daily 4. so there are four things that I do every day to make sure that my home stays running as a working mom and those are sweeping and or vacuuming the main area of our home so our kitchen our living room and the hallway number two is making sure that the dishes are clean at the end of the day so we wake up to an empty sink and we go to sleep to an empty sink although there are times when that doesn't happen because I will prioritize hanging out with my husband over dishes anytime right number three is making sure that we have a meal and then number four is a complete load of laundry now once a week I try to focus on cleaning like one area and so it may be a kitchen deep clean a bathroom deep clean this morning I cleaned my bathroom I cleaned the shower and so on Tuesdays I usually focus on cleaning one room and doing our sheets and then that's it so pick four tasks that need to be done and do them every single day and I promise it's like domestic magic for us undomesticated people let's talk about why block scheduling works so here is how my day works and I'm just going to read it straight to you from my calendar 4 a.m from 7 A.M is when I either go to the gym I do my schoolwork or I work so that's when I'm working on client projects so that's 15 hours a week where I'm either working or doing something to help myself physically or mentally so four to seven so my kids seem to naturally get up for the most part and we usually breakfast chores and that's when I do my daily four so I'll prep dinner and stick stuff in the fridge or I'll take the stuff I need for dinner out of the freezer I'll throw on the laundry um I don't sweep and mop until the end of the day unless we have like tracked dirt in the house I'll go ahead and do it then I'll strip the bed like anything that's on that list I'll go ahead and do it in that eight to seven area then from eight to one my kids do school and most of the time you know we do a hybrid so two days a week we go into a community and we do school together and then three days a week we do school at home and we do our piano our basketball all of this developed a really good schedule at this point my kids know what to expect I know what to expect and that is five hours of educational time which kindergartner does not need so we're done with him within an hour or two um but the restroom it's a lot of work and so we do math history science grammar Latin all of that in that two is when we do a lot of enrichment activities that's when my kids have piano or um we'll go meet friends somewhere and then either one to three or two to four is when they have rest time so that's a two hour block of time for me to work and study and do the things that I needed to do um I call those my office hours so like I'm filming a video right now that's when I zoom with my clients that's when I record podcasts with people that's when I write that's when I do all of the things that I get paid to do from four to six is just hang out yeah finish up anything that we didn't get done during the day clean our house go for a walk whatever it is you do when your kids get home from school that's what we do from four to six then my husband gets home we eat dinner and then I'll try to work for one to two hours after my kids go to bed and then hang out with him and we go to sleep um but let's talk about what doesn't get done during the different blocks so from four to seven I'm not cleaning my house I'm not working on anything other than the stuff that I need to get done the stuff that I've prioritized for work and if I don't have a lot of work deadlines um during because it's very much seasonal right now as the fourth quarter it's pretty busy but January to March it's not as busy as it is the rest of the year and so I still get up early but I may just read a book or hang out or do what I want to do because it's my time and I can't find it however I want um but I'm not focusing on things not blocked during that time I feel like black scheduling eliminates that feeling of everything has to get done right away because I have a tendency to put the same level of importance on everything and with the block schedule I can say well now it's not the block for that yeah I can see those dirty dishes but now it's not the block for that I can do that at six o'clock yeah I should probably return this email but we're learning about the Anglo-Saxons right now and we're reading this book together and then we're going to make a salt map of what Europe used to look like so we're not gonna return this email right now we're doing a science project or we're making a three-dimensional Globe at a paper that phone call can wait so it's all about lining up the priorities in the moment that make the most sense in the moment when does time blocking work for you if you find yourself constantly trying to multitask time blocking may work for you if you feel yourself frequently overwhelmed about all of the stuff on your to-do or you don't know how to prioritize or you're like me and everything feels like it's the same level of importance a block schedule may just be the key to turning things around okay so I would love to hear your comments what do you think what your schedule style do you have one leave me a comment below thank you for being here and I'll see you soon foreign

Channel: Lydia Senn

Views: 19,004

Keywords: Lydia Senn, five4fivemeals, Frugal debt free life, frugal, save money, debt free, dave ramsey, frugal living, how to be frugal, how to save money, spend less money, how to spend less money

Id: Psko0duO7H4

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 17 2022