Do you manage to deliver all your projects on time, stay on top of your responsibilities, respond to all your emails, have all those important conversations with colleagues/team members, finish your to do list and end the week feeling like you’ve accomplished everything you set out to do?
No, I didn’t think so, if only life was simple and it was easy to achieve everything you needed to during your working day. Allowing you to switch off and spend your down time focused and present, doing the things you love.
Now I don’t have any magic beans, but what I do have, is the answer to your overwhelm when it comes to getting things done. All you need, is an hour, your diary, and a simple list of your tasks and responsibilities! From there you can blueprint your diary.
What is blueprinting?
Blueprinting your diary is a game changer. No, it’s a life changer, especially for those who find themselves jumping between tasks, getting easily distracted and never delivering on time – specifically those tasks you’ve been putting off.
Blueprinting is simply sectioning your day into time blocks and assigning each block of time to a specific task, allowing gaps between blocks for travel time, wiggle room and even your lunch break! By blueprinting your week, you will have a birds eye view of what you will be doing and when, allowing you to ensure that there is time to complete everything you need to in a week giving you true piece of mind.
Blueprinting your diary shows you a best-case scenario of your upcoming week, but we all know things can change! Meetings get postponed and you might be relying on someone else to supply some information for you to be able to complete that project – so yes, a blueprint diary does have to have wiggle room, and it will be adapted every week. But if you have a plan, you can change it, if you don’t have a plan, you’ll never be in control.
How to do it?
To keep it simple, we recommend blueprinting and colour coding (for those that like to be able to visually see the difference in blocks) your diary into four sections,
Meetings – With other people
Projects – Your main, bigger tasks that may take days/weeks or even months to complete
To do – Your smaller easy, day to day tasks
Emails – This is the only time you’re allowed to check your emails!
If you like detail, you can go deeper into your time blocks e.g. assigning time blocks for specific to dos such as “calls” or “social media posts”. But as a starting point, the above four will increase your productivity and reduce your stress levels.
Below is a screen shot of my blueprint diary. From this you can see, I check my emails first thing every day and respond to anything urgent, anything not urgent gets added to my to do list along with sporadic tasks that arise. We have team meetings at the same time reoccurring, and project work blocks get spread throughout the week. I go a little deeper on my time blocking than the original four categories suggested, however I’ve found this is what works best for me and allows me enough wiggle room to juggle any changes that arise, yet enough structure that ensures everything gets done each week.
After completing your blueprint on a spread sheet, you can upload it to your live calendar, remembering to send out invites to those who will also be attend meetings and project work blocks so you’re all aligned. Remember when you originally blueprint to speak with those who will be involved in your meetings and blocks to make sure the times also work for them, it might take a few back and fourths initially – but in the long run makes both your lives so much easier as you will never have you ask “When are you are next week” again.
My favourite, and secret time blocking tip – is to add a fifth category “The close down appointment” which although might seem a little unnecessary to some, is possibly the most important block of the day! This 30minutes allows you to review the day, push any unfinished tasks/projects into slots later in the week and also note down anything and everything still whirling round your head, ready for tomorrow when your return to work. Allowing you to finish your day, doing whatever you like, unbothered and not still thinking about any outstanding tasks as you know, it’s all planned in and blueprinted in the dairy 😉.
People often think the hardest part of working to a blueprint diary is sticking to it, but honestly, that’s the easiest part! It takes away all the stress of wondering when you’ll have time or if you’ve forgotten something.
The hardest part is writing the list of everything you do! Once you’ve done that – it all falls into place. You’ll finally be in control, and your weeks will run so much smoother.
Click here to download our blueprint template and get on top of your diary now!
