How to use Time blocking and Eat The Frog

Overwhelmed by emails ? Deadlines ? Tasks ? Responsibilities ? Personal life’s activities ? And so on.. Feels like you never have enough time in a day to accomplish all of your tasks ?

Well, you’re not alone. It only means that you don’t know how to manage your time efficiently. But don’t worry, in this post you will learn some techniques that will help you improve your work-life balance.

First, what exactly is time management ?

Time management is the process of organizing and managing your time in a way that will allow you to work smarter and not harder. 

Once you find methods that work for you, you will have more time and energy for other tasks and activities. Learning how to take control of your time will help you accomplish more in less time and effort.

Good time management allows you to work smarter and use your time and energy in an efficient way which will lead to a healthier lifestyle.

Benefits of time management

Time is a limited resource. If used efficiently, mastering the art of time management can lead to a lot of benefits such as:

• Accomplishing more in less time
• Reducing stress and anxiety
• Prioritizing important tasks
• Saying bye to procrastination
• Bettering work-life balance
• Reach goals more efficiently
• Increasing energy
• Boosting confidence

Time management techniques

Today we will see two time management techniques: Time blocking and Eat the frog.

Time blocking

Time blocking is a time management method that helps you boost your productivity by dividing your day into blocks of time. Each block of time is dedicated to focusing and accomplishing a specific task. 

With this method you will start your day knowing exactly what you have to do and avoid multitasking. 

At the end of every week, take a moment to review your upcoming tasks and tasks you haven’t finished. Based on that you can start scheduling the next week with time blocks.

Tips for time blocking:

1. List and prioritize your tasks

For time blocking to be efficient and to stay organized you first need to categorize your tasks by priority. For this step you can use the ABCDE method or Eisenhower Matrix. Both of these methods will help you see which tasks need your immediate attention and which ones can wait longer.

2. Determine when you’re the most productive

Some tasks require more concentration and energy than others, this is why analyzing moments of the day when you feel the most energized and scheduling time blocks according to that is essential..

3. Be realistic

Don’t try to overwork yourself, that’s not the goal. Overloading your schedule will only lead to frustration and burn outs. Be realistic about how long each task will take you.
Allow some buffer time in case of unexpected delays and breaks between your blocks to recharge yourself.

4. Batch similar tasks

Batching consists of grouping similar tasks in the same block to complete them at once. This way you will maximize your time.
For instance you can decide to reply to emails in a batch instead of doing it as they come.

Eat the frog

Eat the frog is an efficient prioritization and productivity method that consists of identifying your most important task of the day (the frog) and to do it first (eating it).
This method helps you take advantage of your most productive hours, focus on important tasks, and set a positive energy for the rest of your day.

Tips for eating your frogs:

1. Decide on your frogs

Frogs are important tasks but not urgent. They’re usually the ones you keep procrastinating (you definitely know which ones I’m talking about). Typically, a frog takes 1 to 4 hours to complete, if it takes longer, try breaking it down into smaller tasks to make it more manageable.

2. Eat your frog first thing in the morning

Eating your frog first thing in the morning doesn’t sound pleasant. That’s one of the reasons a lot of people procrastinate. You will need a lot of discipline until it becomes a habit to do your most difficult task first.

Tackling a difficult task first will help you avoid procrastination, give you a lot of satisfaction once you’re done with it, boost your productivity and motivation for the rest of the day.

3. Don’t plan too much in advance

Once you have identified your frogs, don’t schedule them for the whole week. The whole point of this method is to focus on a frog one day at a time to avoid procrastination. 
Planning the night before is the best solution. That way when you get back to work the next day, you won’t have to think about anything else but to eat your frog.

This is a great method for those who: 

• Feels overwhelmed by their to-do list
• Has difficulty with prioritization
• Tends to procrastinate
• Struggles to progress on important tasks