Becoming successful throughout your life, in whatever endeavor you happen to embark upon, can often be as simple as blocking out your day into specific time frames that propel you towards an end goal. In fact, journaling has been used by numerous successful people to actively engage in their future and control various obstacles that will inevitably spring up on the journey forward.
Health researchers have also found that keeping a regular journal helps patients reduce the amount of stress they experience and reduce the chance of them experiencing Asthma and Rheumatoid Arthritis. If you are in the process of recreating yourself, or you simply want to optimize your daily efficiency, this article will showcase how time blocking techniques through journaling can change your life.
You Can’t Stop Me!
Let’s face it, multitasking, for the most part, is one of the biggest killers of your success in the modern age. Although many employers and workers pride themselves on their ability to perform various tasks simultaneously, new data reveals that multitasking is not what it’s cracked up to be. In fact, many newfound production enthusiasts seem to notice that multitasking renders them unable to finish a project and, quite literally, leaves multiple tasks performed below their standards.
With time blocking implemented into our daily lives, we can systematically attack the day and give structure to the tasks that we find ourselves partaking in. Time blocking, as the name implies, is a system of chunking our day into various time frames. Although each block of time varies from user to user, most individuals find that one or two-hour chunks are more than enough to complete any task.
Once this section of productive time has been completed, follow that with a short-duration break that can range anywhere between 15 to 30 minutes. This allows us to relax for a brief period of time and recharge the brain for upcoming targets and activities.
Get Control of Your Work Output
Many of us that have full-time jobs have undoubtedly heard grunts and groans from our fellow coworkers over the years about how many hours they’re forced to work. “I’ve worked 60 hours this week,” you may hear them exclaim. Although these numbers may seem staggering, new research has given an insight into how productive we actually are in any given 40-hour workweek.
When we take a look under the hood of the average person’s workday, we find that the amount of time spent on actual work is far less than we anticipated. Shockingly, on an average, 8-hour workday we only have 2 hours and 53-minutes of productivity.
With time blocking through our journal, we can greatly increase our output and bring insight into how we spend our day and what activities are preventing us from getting ahead.
As a helpful tactic for the upcoming week, write down in your journal areas of your day where you’ve found yourself wasting time, goofing off, falling asleep, or quite frankly, avoiding a certain task that you need to be doing. Don’t be scared! These distractions are quite common and many of us fail to realize that we perform them. When we actively seek out tasks that sabotage our future, we are more inclined to correct them.
Stress Relief
Time blocking through a journal approach is, quite literally, like breathing a huge sigh of relief on a daily basis. Many areas of our lives, particularly our careers and finances, are riddled with doubt and anxiety from lack of action and clarity.
Journaling gives us a playbook that we can follow throughout each moment of our day and give us a map that can steer us in the right direction. Much like how a football coach would never play a game without his playbook, we should never tackle obstacles without a series of rules and pre-planned actions.
Having structure in your day will, unequivocally, put you in the top 1% of successful people and high-end producers on the planet. In a short period of time, you can not only achieve the goals you’ve laid out for yourself but help others build structure in their lives to succeed in their personal journey.
