The Christmas period can be a busy one for everyone, especially if you’re running your own business or are in a position of authority within a business. Not only do you have to make time for your own personal Christmas shopping for your nearest and dearest, you also need to ensure your business is making the best use of the festive period and reaching out to those crucial business contacts too.

Time blocking your tasks can be the ideal solution for you – if you use it wisely. I think we can all learn a thing or two from a blog I’ve recently read on the subject (via Darius Foroux https://buff.ly/2zStMh3).  Here’s my view on how you can use time blocking to help during the busy Christmas period.

Time blocking tasks may seem an obvious solution – but don’t overlook the obvious!

For many, time blocking seems an obvious choice. After all, you’re only setting aside a chunk of time to work on specific tasks. But herein lies the secret to effectively time blocking your tasks – you need to focus only on your important tasks.

And for many of us, we don’t know what those most important tasks are. We think everything is important, so we try to multitask our way through them – but this just leads to overwhelm and frustration.

Time blocking tasks is about self awareness and time management

So, maybe using time blocking isn’t as simple as it first looks, because it isn’t just about blocking off chunks of time; it’s about self-awareness too. We need to know what it is that’s important to us, to ensure we’re making progress on those things AND doing them in the timescales we’ve set out.

During the Christmas period it’s even more crucial to start time blocking your tasks, as you’ll have your usual business-related and personal development tasks, but you’ll also have those tasks that are only here as a direct result of this festive period too.

Start by understanding what your important tasks are

You therefore need to have a clear indication of what is important to you, along with a clear strategy for grouping together the different tasks you have and a way to effectively block off time for them, in your diary.

What important tasks do you need to get completed during this period? For many of us, important tasks can include:

• Christmas shopping.
• Planning our marketing and sales plans and targets for the next business quarter.
• Making time to reconnect with people you’ve ‘touched’ through the year by sending them some Christmas cheer – be it a card or an email.
• Sending Christmas card to clients.
• Personal development.

Batch similar tasks together

Now look at how you can combine different tasks to make maximum use of your time. Can you group your personal Christmas shopping together, to ensure you make the most of the time? How about thanking your clients – can you batch write those thank you Christmas cards? What about the ones you want to personally reconnect with – would you rather set time aside to write heartfelt emails to those clients? What about your planning for the next quarter – is that something that can be done in one time block or will you need a couple?

It’s all about working smarter and blocking out various chunks of time in your diary, to ensure you’re focused on those tasks, to ensure they’re completed.

Block time off in your diary for each section

Finally, block off the time in your diary! You’ll be amazed at how often we commit to do something, but don’t block off the time to complete it. Instead we hope we can ‘fit it in somewhere’ – and we all know that doesn’t happen. If it’s important to you and your business, block time off to concentrate on it and get that task done.

By taking the time to understand what’s important to you over the Christmas period AND using time blocking to ensure those tasks get done, you’re ensuring the highest priority things you want to achieve WILL get achieved!