How Time Blocking Helps Grow Your Business

As a marketing coach, I work with self-employed professionals who are looking to better their businesses. It could be that they want more clients, more profits, or more time to enjoy their lives. No matter what their goals are, however, they must gain control of a particular facet of their lives -- time management.

I was recently speaking to an entrepreneur who acknowledged that he could not consistently find time to effectively market his business. While discussing this, I brought up the idea of time blocking -- putting aside time in his schedule specifically for marketing. He responded by telling me that he can't make time blocking work. Even when he puts time aside in advance, he told me, he often uses it when other things arise. This is not an uncommon reaction to time blocking. In fact, it's the one I hear more than any other.

I suggested that we go over his schedule and see if there might be an hour or two in the week that he could steal and use to grow his business. Everything that at first seemed promising resulted in a reason it wouldn't work. I asked that he indulge me, and we looked at the time before and after his usual business hours. I noticed that every day he was at the gym at promptly at 7:00 and worked out for an hour before heading to his office. When we talked about this, he said that nothing got in the way of his workout -- that that time was "carved in stone." I asked why this was so, and he responded by telling that his health is important and the exercise also puts him in the proper frame of mind for the business day.

It was then he realized that he was already using time blocking and that he is good at it. All he had to do was convince himself that the activity during the time is valuable. As a result of this, he has vowed to put aside a specific time each week and use it to work on his business. I truly believe he is going to make this work.

Odds are that you already time block. For instance, do you take the kids to school each day? If so, you're time blocking. Perhaps you walk your dog each night at a particular time. Yes? Then you're time blocking. Do you watch your favorite show each week, have season tickets to a sporting event, bowl on a particular night, have a date night with your spouse? Answer yes to these or things like them, and you are indeed an expert time blocker. Now all you have to do is determine how you are going to make your expertise in this time management skill work for your business.