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Episode 82: 5 Tips for Creating a Productive Schedule
206 Plays5 years ago
Vanessa Kynes is back and joining me for a discussion on building a block schedule. We review a blog post I wrote a few years ago on block scheduling, but it was written in a very different season of life than the one I'm in right now; specifically, didn't have a kid then.
Vanessa and I approach this conversation differently, so I hope that's helpful for anyone listening who wants to put some intentionality back into their daily schedule.
For the show notes, go to https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-episode-82/
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Transcript
Task Management and Scheduling Tools
00:00:05
Speaker
For me, I have a lot of repeatable things that I like to do every single week. And I just have a Trello board, which I don't really love Trello, but I will say for this, it's really helpful. And I might just say, like, what do I want to accomplish on Mondays that I notice myself doing every single Monday? And so I take those by day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and I've created a schedule. And there is flexibility, there always is, right? There's always something a client might be like, hey, can you do this? And that isn't in that board.
Introduction to Brands at Book Show
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
Guest Discussion: Vanessa Kynes on Block Scheduling
00:00:49
Speaker
Vanessa Kynes is back and joining me for a discussion on building a block schedule. We review a blog post I wrote a few years ago on block scheduling, but it was written in a very different season of life than the one I'm in right now. Specifically, didn't have a kid then. Vanessa and I approach this conversation differently, so I hope that's helpful for anyone listening who wants to put some intentionality back into their daily schedule.
00:01:11
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at davianchrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode. And I want to hear from you. Let me know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands at Book podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, head on over to the Davian Christa Facebook page and send us a message. You can also DMS on Instagram at Davian Christa. Now onto the episode.
Goal Setting and Productivity Over the Year
00:01:33
Speaker
All right, Vanessa, welcome back to the Brands at Book show. It has been a while.
00:01:38
Speaker
I'm excited to be here. I know you've had such a great collection of new people on the podcast, but I'm excited to get back into it. Yes. I'm Mr. Chats, and I say it's been a while relatively. For most guests, I think I've only had a handful of repeat guests, and you're the basically co-host. The ultimate repeat guest also, January.
00:01:59
Speaker
repeat guest. January was like 400 days long as well. So it's February now, we finally made it through January, thankfully. So I feel like everything has felt like a long time since the beginning of 2020. Yeah, and I don't understand that I saw a lot more in the way of memes around January, you know, in January feeling like, you know, an entire year can be fit in it this year. Then I think I have in past years. I mean, is that how it felt to you as well? Or is that just January for people?
00:02:28
Speaker
I don't know. I think January and this is going to be an important part of our conversation today. It's just such a goal setting year and people really try to make big strides in their life. And then they're burnt out by the end of the month. I think we know that gym memberships hop in January and then the parking lots are empty by February.
00:02:45
Speaker
And so I think that that really like sucks the life out of people. And I think productivity and goal setting is a year long thing. Like we shouldn't put so much pressure on January. I 100% agree trying to be better about that this year. I think it's still a trap that people fall into though, even if they understand that conceptually
Adapting Schedules Post-Life Changes
00:03:03
Speaker
that
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, there is something about January 1 in the beginning of the year, probably just in part because all the marketing messages that we see around, you know, hey, it's time to set goals and whatever that make it feel like this is the time to set goals. But yes, I have been trying to get better at
00:03:18
Speaker
revisiting my goals on a more regular basis, just interviewed catch more about quarterly planning. And so Chris and I have been doing something a little bit different, how cat sets it up, but same principles, I think. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and check out that episode for sure. But Chris and I have tried to build in some more structure, more reminders, even in the way of like our Google Calendar, like we already have time set aside,
00:03:43
Speaker
in the next couple of coming months for us to revisit our goals, revisit planings, you know, stuff like that, which we typically do the well, when March rolls around, we'll, we'll schedule something. Yeah. And that's important, like even getting it on quote unquote, digital paper, I prefer the paper paper and scheduling that in so that you have time to revisit that I am coming off of a launch period. And I need to take some time to kind of review my previous launch
00:04:10
Speaker
to tweak for my next launch and I'm finding that I'm putting so much mental energy and thinking like what I want to do but I really just need to set a time to like dedicate to that and so I think that is a big part of what we're talking about today is just kind of like claiming that time to really go through those things and I think like you I also prefer quarterly planning because a year I mean just so much can change in a year especially as parents and
00:04:35
Speaker
And we all know that we both have big moves and things like that coming up. So you just a year is a long time to commit to one goal. It is but I'm excited to dive into actually setting up a weekly or daily schedule. And that's what we're talking about today is really how to make block scheduling work for you. I wrote a post on block scheduling that was this I got some pretty good traffic still does, but I wrote it and anybody who visits that post
00:04:59
Speaker
if they've been following along with us on any sort of level over the last couple of years, probably realizes almost right away, that that post is pretty outdated. So before I wrote that or when I wrote that post, rather, I was really just running Debian Krista, I'd set my weeks up in sort of this a week be week format where
00:05:17
Speaker
One week was more working in the business, you know, quote unquote in the business. So doing tasks that people have to do like responding to emails or scheduling meetings or just stuff so that actual work like client work or internal projects are being done. Whereas the B week was more set aside for I wouldn't take any meetings. Well, actually, I think I took meetings just one day a week during my B weeks.
00:05:39
Speaker
but it was mostly working on projects for the business, you know, kind of these internal projects that we had set that we'd want to launch later in the year, whatever. So now since then, Oh, pre baby as well. So no kids back then as well. So and I'm sure like I thought like managing your time was like this huge struggle back then. And now I look back to them. I'm like, what? I hope I never complained about it. Like,
00:06:04
Speaker
baby Davies thoughts there, I think about that, like pre kid, Vanessa, just, I had so much more time. And I honestly wasted so much. Yeah, absolutely. So but since then, right, I'm running Davey and Krista, and I'm also running till and both of those are, you know, full fledged businesses. Now, of course, Davey and Krista was when I wrote that post, but till now is as well. We have Jack, we have our son now, he's here in that
00:06:29
Speaker
you know, again, I'm ashamed to say that pre baby I was under I was the kind of person be like, ah, no, it won't really change things. Like, we're pretty disciplined, we have our schedule. And of course, it changes your entire world. So now like looking back at that schedule, I think, oh, that was such a great schedule. But there's no way that would fit my life today. So we're going to talk about some of the principles that go into creating block schedule, because I think that a lot of those same principles still I can apply today.
00:06:55
Speaker
to create a block schedule that will work for me. But that block schedule is going to look a lot different. So I think just to start, if you find yourself in a similar season of transition, where, you know, you used to have this great schedule, and now that's sort of falling apart, you know, take hope you can get things back on track. And I'm in the process of revisiting a lot of these things right now.
00:07:15
Speaker
just because I think till was one of the big X factors over the last six months, let's say, and just the growth that that's experienced. So now I've been forced to go back and look at my days and how I structure them to take some control back over what my daily schedule looks
Exploring Different Scheduling Methods
00:07:30
Speaker
like. I'm really kind of curious, actually do like a weeks, b weeks, I could never do a b weeks because
00:07:36
Speaker
I'm dependent and this is what makes this kind of different on like client's content coming out. And so for me, my A weeks always look the same. They're always AAA. But for you, do you feel like you have an A week for Dave and Krista and then a B week for Till or is there like split down the week Monday through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday? How does that...
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I'm still working through a lot of these things. And that's what why I'm kind of excited to talk about this topic, because it's been on my mind, especially in the beginning of the year here, a weeks and b weeks, like, certainly, if I were to devote one week to Davey and Krista, one week to till that just wouldn't work. Because we have clients and things on both sides where I can't just be like, hey, guys, this is a Davey and Krista week, I'll see you next week, right?
00:08:18
Speaker
That's just not going to fly on a number of different levels. So that setup probably wouldn't work for me. I might still be able to make some sort of working in versus working on a week first B week schedule work, but it probably won't be on a weekly basis. I mean, just the amount of calls that I have to take and some of this can be taken off my plate, not I think in the near term, but over the long term it can. But there's just too many things that on a weekly basis where
00:08:46
Speaker
you know, in the past, I could say, Okay, during this week, I'm going to take all my calls on Thursday, and the rest of my calls, or I'm sorry, the rest of my days are just devoted to working on projects. It's just not the reality anymore. So I'm looking at more of how I schedule like kind of the more granule look at my daily schedule. So in the mornings, I know I'm more productive versus in the afternoon, and so certain tasks you go into certain places.
00:09:10
Speaker
And so we're going to jump into that. So I won't get into that right now. But that's, that's really kind of where I'm heading and what I'm looking at now. But I think for like people, especially people who don't have a ton of meetings, an A week or B week could probably work. And I think it worked pretty well for me for a long time. So do you find Okay, I'm listening to that. Do you think it's because your clients have expectations of hearing from you regularly? Are there just the volume of it that you couldn't do calls on B weeks?
00:09:37
Speaker
That's a great question. I think on the till side, it's we're running ads for people who are spending a significant amount of money on their ads. So if there's something that comes up, I can't just say,
00:09:52
Speaker
you know, get on my schedule for next week, right? It's just not it doesn't serve the client well. And if I was trusting somebody with that aspect of my business, I wouldn't be happy with that myself. So there is more of this you kind of have to be available for certain things. I think that till even though it's grown a ton, I wouldn't say that we're like growth hasn't really leveled out either. So we're still very much in a growing phase. And so I think it requires just a little bit more hustle in places where over the long term,
00:10:20
Speaker
I might not want to hustle. And so I think I said this on a recent episode, but I'm working in the evening sometimes. And that's fine for a season. That is, to me, at least for my life. And I guess what I'm saying, yeah, I don't want to do that over the rest of my life, right? Or even for an extended amount of time. So at some point, I'm going to have to boundaries is the tough word that I was trying to come up with, right? At some point, I'm going to have to revisit those boundaries.
00:10:48
Speaker
Yeah, and honestly like I just admitted to Davey before we hopped on this call that I do sometimes work, I don't work evenings as much because my brain is like fried. But I do work Saturday mornings and part of that flexibility which we're talking about is my husband works a really demanding job but he for years worked Saturday mornings, like years because it just was required of him. But now he's really made a commitment to being with our three daughters on Saturday mornings and I'm like, dude, why wouldn't I use this time?
00:11:16
Speaker
I do use Saturday morning and I always say, hey, after lunch is family time. So we always plan together family times in the afternoon. And so there's no shame in doing that. If you have the mental capacity to work in the evening, I don't know how you do that because by that point I'm just...
00:11:31
Speaker
I put three kids to bed, I'm cleaning up, I'm done. Yeah, absolutely. And likewise, I mean, Jack takes a nap midday Saturdays. And so if I have to get some work done, I'll get some work done during that time. I am a big believer in taking at least one day completely off. And so I really try to make that either Saturday or Sunday, typically Sunday, just because I've noticed a steep decline in the quality of my work and then also productivity if I don't actually disconnect for at least one day a week.
00:11:58
Speaker
So, you know, I'm sure there's a sign somewhere in there that I don't know about. But so we wanted to talk about tools that we use as well before we actually dive into these five elements. And I know that this has been a big debate between us. Paper versus digital planners.
00:12:14
Speaker
Yeah, we stand on different ends here. But I guess the truth is, in the end, what works for you and what makes you productive is what counts. Yes, but digital is better. Yeah. So when I was in college, I didn't have any kids, but I've always been kind of a high anxious person. So I think for people who have a lot of anxiety, this might
Balancing Digital and Paper Planning Tools
00:12:32
Speaker
be better for them. I'm not sure. But I would schedule out every 30 minutes of my day.
00:12:36
Speaker
because I had a really demanding major, and I just felt like if I didn't schedule it on paper, I just needed that freedom to know, yes, I will be able to get to biochemistry, like the exam. And so I've always been a paper person, and so I use a paper planner that allows me to do hours. I'm a lot more flexible now than I used to be. I don't know if that's just my personality has changed, but I do have my daily activities, and they need to be on paper because there's just so much joy in crossing it off with my pen.
00:13:03
Speaker
So, that's how I feel about paper. Digital, I use for podcast reminders, like if I'm going to be on a podcast or meetings, because I like to see the reminders show up in my inbox over and over again. But mostly, I rely on my paper planner. Yeah, I think that there is a ton of value in writing things down. Actually, the research shows that it's better. Yes, yes, I understand.
00:13:25
Speaker
notes, whenever I'm taking meeting notes, for instance, especially during calls, I write them down. So I have this notebook, if anybody opened it up, it would just be complete gibberish, you know, it's not like, nicely written in or dated or you know, what I mean, actually, there are probably some dates in there, just so that I can refer back to notes if you know, we do have like a client meeting. But those notes always make their way into a Google Doc or into my calendar, I just have to have things in part because things I feel like change so much.
00:13:52
Speaker
So it hurts me to look at a notebook where things or a daily planner where things have been crossed out and moved to other days, right? And the other thing too is Krista and I working together and then also now with Till, right? I have shared my calendar with like eight other people, pretty much all members of both the Davey and Krista and Till team, right? And we use tools like Acuities so that people can schedule like time on my calendar without having to do the back and forth like
00:14:21
Speaker
hey, does this time work? No, this time doesn't work. But what about this time, they can just go in and schedule stuff. So because of all that, I have to have stuff in Google calendars. Otherwise, you know, I'll end up committing this stuff. And well, actually, Krista has such and such then. So you know, I have to reschedule that appointment. Actually, that isn't a great point. Because I do think that if you do have a large team, they
00:14:44
Speaker
do need to be aware of when you're accessible or when they can schedule things. So maybe that's just the difference there. But I still wonder, even if you say, okay, this is my like, I'm working on ad creative or something for till, do you still have like a list? I mean, you can have your workflows. You guys use ClickUp, right?
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, we use ClickUp. We should do another episode on workflows and stuff because we use all sorts of fun tools. ClickUp is the primary one. We actually use that for Davey and Krista and for Till as well. Amazing. But anyways, you were going to ask a question. Well, no, it's just that I still feel like let me just say this. I've thought about this many times. And if I had enough time, I want to run an experiment. The experiment would be how much I can get done without having my paper planner near me. And then how much I can get done with my paper planner near me because
00:15:28
Speaker
There's that moment when you finish an activity and you don't know what you're going to do next and you get on your phone, you get a snack and you waste time versus like if I have my planner next to me and I have a two hour block of work, I know exactly what to go to next. And I could almost guarantee the results of the experiment, which would be I'd get more stuff done if my paper planner was next to me.
00:15:48
Speaker
But what would be the difference between that and something like ClickUp? So like, for instance, ClickUp is nice. And this is the other thing about tasks too. And this might be, and we're going to talk about this as well, just different types of businesses, right? So I'm working with two, not, I wouldn't say they're big teams, but they're medium sized for a small business, right? Two about five people teams, right? For us, some of the work is like, I got my part done, but I'm not done with the project. So it's,
00:16:16
Speaker
something like ClickUp is super nice, because then I can mark my part as complete. And that, you know, there's all these contingencies and stuff anyways, and then it creates a task in somebody else's space, right? I'm now waiting on that person to complete, you know, whatever it is that they're working on. So I do think that there is kind of this automatic of, okay, well, I kind of know what comes up and what's high priority, or something comes up during the day and it's marked as high priority.
00:16:42
Speaker
Well, and just to end on that, I agree with you that workflows like ClickUp and Asana do need to be digitized. So my calendar might just say like a general type of task, like whatever client task and I go in there and I am on Teams where I have to utilize that method. And I do like that. Like for my launch, I did that whole planning on digital software.
00:17:02
Speaker
I'm not anti-digital, I just think that for me to know exactly what components I need to be working on, I like it to be on paper. And I think the barrier for me to answer your question is my husband struggles with this because he's all about digital. It's that I maybe just have never really figured out how to make it easy to create the online calendar. I find it easier just to write it.
00:17:21
Speaker
So yeah, it could just be pure, like not understanding how to maximize it. I will say that Google calendars isn't particularly beautiful. It certainly wasn't. It's a lot better now, believe it or not. And there's just so much to it that you can utilize that. If you're not utilizing all of it, maybe you don't feel like you're getting enough out of it. And so a paper planner is fine. But I think it has come a long way. I want to talk about to do, which is another tool that we use. And I also wanted to mention to that Krista, she does a fair amount of journaling. So I should say that to a certain extent, she's a paper person as well.
00:17:51
Speaker
I was gonna ask about Krista. Yeah. Yeah. So but she doesn't use a paper planner because it just doesn't make sense. So it'd be a pretty redundant, I think for either of us, but for Krista, especially to, you know, write down, you know, plans or meetings or whatever in a journal and then have to transfer them to Google. She just throws it straight into Google. And it's nice because it can be an app on your phone, it's, you know, on your computer, you know, kind of wherever you have internet.
00:18:14
Speaker
but she does journal regularly and I know that she likes actually writing in a notebook. So definitely see the value of writing stuff down. One other tool I want to talk about before we move on is called Todo. I've talked about it a number of times. T-U, I'm sorry, T-E-U-X-D-E-U-X.
00:18:31
Speaker
supposed to. I mean, we've used it forever. It's like the one tool that we've used since I mean, I mean, probably almost 10 years now. That's probably how long we've used it. And it's awesome because you can write things down basically replaces like a written list.
00:18:46
Speaker
right? But it's by day. And so this is perfect on like, even on the small like tasks that I know that just I have to get done, you know, or like, even if the other team members waiting on something, but it's high priority for me, I can put that into do and I can go and I can cross it off. And it's kind of, you know, even with something like ClickUp, I can take stuff out of ClickUp that are important for me to get done that day, put them into do. And then once I'm done, I cross it off to do doesn't have any team collaboration features. It's literally
00:19:14
Speaker
I think that's the whole point behind it. It's supposed to replace like simple to do list that you would write down in a notebook, but cannot speak highly enough of it. I shouldn't like be a sponsor for them. Is it free? Yeah, there's a 100% free version. There's also a premium version. Can't remember the differences between the two, but I want to say that I pay like $24 a year or something for it. Whatever the pro version is, it's probably one of the least expensive solutions we use.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah, and you save the time it saves you. You can pay yourself back many, many times. Yeah, it's great. It's great.
Tips for Effective Block Scheduling
00:19:50
Speaker
Well, anyways, I want to dive into kind of the five tips for creating a block schedule, or really any sort of schedule. I prefer block scheduling. I'm assuming that you do too. Yeah, I mean, maybe we all have different understandings on what block scheduling actually is. But I think so because I've got many hats to wear.
00:20:11
Speaker
in my life, one business, but homeschooling is like a whole nother job. Obviously, just household duties. So yeah, I do have to block schedule for sure, especially with childcare. I mean, it kind of forces you to Yeah, for block scheduling, just what I mean by it just for the purposes of this episode, grouping similar tasks together and tackling them throughout the day or the week. Yeah, yeah.
00:20:33
Speaker
So some people do all their marketing Mondays and Tuesday. I don't even know. I can't think of one that alliterates, but they do certain tasks. And I definitely do this because I like to front load. And so we're kind of talking about, well, let's talk about the first point, which is determine what kind of flexibility needs to be built into your schedule. So what does that mean to you, Davey? And how have you done that? Let's talk about post-baby, Davey.
00:20:59
Speaker
Like, yeah, absolutely. I think it's helpful to compare as well. So the first tip is flexibility. I think it's trying to find like that cadence that you want in your life of, you know, when you want to be working, when you want to do things like work out, or if you have a hobby like painting or reading and not necessarily reading a business book, but you just like reading fiction, both those things like Chris has really picked up painting again, which has been a fun and I think kind of a release for her. She loves reading fiction, you know, so things like that. You notice that I never, I haven't named any of my hobbies because like, I don't have any.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, well, you like CrossFit or whatever. So that's like a hobby. Yeah, I mean, I like going to the gym. To me, going to the gym just kind of keeps me sane. Yeah, I go to mass pretty regularly. By pretty regularly, I'm not saying I guess just to clarify, for any other Catholic out there listening, I go every Sunday, you know, unless there's, you know, something going on, like we're sick. But even beyond that, I go to daily mass as much as I can. So
00:21:52
Speaker
Anyways, but I feel like Krista's hobbies are just so much more fun than mine. So painting and reading and all those things. I mean, it is important to have hobbies because if we became entrepreneurs to kind of determine our own schedule, then you know, what would it be worth it if we didn't have time to just mentally focus on something else? So,
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and this is one of those things where you're kind of making some decisions on like what needs to be included in your life and what you don't want included in your life. And so if you want to do those sorts of things, then maybe there is then it's worth noting like, okay, so if you do go to CrossFit, like there's probably classes that you have to go to, you know, because typically CrossFit is set up on a class schedule. It's not like any other gym where you just kind of walk in and work out whenever, right? So it's worth writing those kinds of things down.
00:22:39
Speaker
And I think that when you make the decision that these are things you're going to protect in your life, that you're more likely to get them done. You know, like, it's important to me that I get a workout in almost every day. And in part, just because I am a nicer, more even keeled person when I do, right. So
00:22:55
Speaker
I need to kind of protect that aspect of my day. And I want the flexibility in my life to be able to go and do those things. Some of this flexibility, though, you don't have as much of a say in, right? And so that's, you know, when you think of clients and contractors, and co workers in particular, so clients are going to expect certain things out of you. And like I just said, because of the nature of what we do, especially over at till, I can't just say, Hey,
00:23:19
Speaker
this isn't my week for that, or this isn't my day for that. And you can get on my schedule in the future, right? I mean, to a certain extent, obviously, they're gonna and we have a team so that if I can't get to something, one day, a generally a team member can. But the point being is that your clients have a probably certain level of expectation, you know, that certain things are being handled. So you have to think through those things. And you had mentioned for content in particular, like your your job is very content dependent. And so if
00:23:45
Speaker
people are pushing out new content you probably have to make it i would assume a priority within that day or the next day to get that stuff teed up for pinterest.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, and I really like to be that type of service provider that they know within 24 hours. Usually, I mean, to be honest, it's within hours of it going live that they know it's on there. And I would say the majority of my clients do like, like you guys like to post on Wednesdays and some posts on Wednesday and Thursday. And so I know and that's built into my schedule. And that's grouped in there. And so I might say what other tasks involving their account can I pair with that since I'm already on there, logged into their profile.
00:24:22
Speaker
But there are some that are more sporadic and I have to check their website to see if they posted. So I have to have some flexibility for that as well. I would say my goal is to respond to my clients within 24 hours. Not as good at responding to non-client emails these days, but they don't get my priority.
00:24:42
Speaker
48 hours, maybe, I would like to say. Sometimes a little bit longer, at least recently, with January being 400 days long. But yeah, I mean, client experience is really important. So you need to make sure you're building in that time to communicate with them and make sure they feel heard. That's key. Yeah. And there's other considerations as well, right? Like co-workers and contractors. And there are certain things that you're going to have to be available. You might know each day, right? So my assistant, Emily, who's great, she needs answers from me on certain things.
00:25:10
Speaker
And so I can't just say, hey, I'm not going to check Slack or I'm not going to check email during these times when she might need something for me and it's going to hold her up from doing her work. So those are all sorts of things that you kind of need to think through. You know, I would encourage people to kind of draw the line though in a place that maybe makes them feel a little bit uncomfortable. And what I mean by that is
00:25:31
Speaker
You probably think, and I certainly err in this way, so maybe some of you listening don't, and I'm just projecting this on people, but that people need me more than they actually need me, right? So something I can remind myself is I am actually less important to certain tasks throughout the day than I think I am. Even client communication, most of the time when a client emails us, either for Davey and Krista and Till, it's not red flag,
00:25:56
Speaker
super urgent, they need a response within five minutes of me receiving that email, right? It can be responded to at the end of the day, it might even be able to be responded to the next day, right? So those are the kinds of things that I have to remind myself. So I think it's good. If you are the kind of person that maybe needs to take a step back from email, do something that makes you a little bit uncomfortable. Like if you're used to checking your email, like all day every day, then say you're going to check your email, you know, twice, twice a day, or maybe if it's easier three times a day, right when you get up, you know, at lunchtime, and then the afternoon.
00:26:25
Speaker
And then take away, you know, maybe right when you get up, and then lunchtime and then see if you can go, you know, the whole day without having to get into your inbox until later in the day. Yeah. And that's block scheduling those tasks out too, because if you allow things like email to interfere with what you've actually block scheduled your other tasks, then you're not really serving yourself and your time.
00:26:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, email, I forget who said this, maybe Tim Ferriss, or, you know, I'm sure somebody along those lines that basically email is just when you're in your inbox all the time, you're just letting other people's demands take up your day, right? Every time you get an email, somebody is generally demanding something of you. And so if you live in your inbox, you're just letting somebody else take control of your day. So that kind of stuff is good to to think through, especially when we're talking about flexibility. But there's probably some things that you want for your life.
00:27:16
Speaker
And then, you know, you have to think through like, okay, what does my team, what do my clients, what do my contractors actually need from me and when? Yeah, for sure. Cool. So, second point. Yeah, second point. We're really brief type people. Yeah, right.
00:27:34
Speaker
Really good at gravity. We're good at content, though. We want to provide you value. So we'll give you that. That's right. We want to talk about every little point. So making a list. I want to hear about how you make a list of recurring tasks and what that means to you in your business. Yeah. So there are certain things that I know I need to do every week, every month, and every quarter. Some of these things, again, since Chris and I work together, if you have a team,
00:27:56
Speaker
you can go through some of these things. I think it's helpful to go through some of these things together.
Quarterly Planning and Task Grouping
00:28:00
Speaker
For instance, every month we do bookkeeping, and typically that's something that falls in Krista's court, even though I've been telling her, I'm like, hey, listen, we should just outsource this, you know? But anyways, not the point. There's certain things like that on a monthly basis that you might need to do quarterly for us now, like I just talked about. We want to make time for planning. We also want to make time for reviewing things that happen throughout the quarter and kind of making adjustments for those things going forward. And then weekly, I mean, there's all sorts of stuff.
00:28:26
Speaker
One of my favorite books that I read was The Compound Effect. I believe in the blog post I put the author of that book. I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but he talks about doing a time audit. I think it's helpful as you go through a week. Every time you start a new task, just have a running, maybe in your paper planner, have an ongoing list of things that you've done that week. Just do that for a week, do it for two weeks.
00:28:51
Speaker
And then you'll start seeing things that pop up every single day and maybe other things that just popped up a couple times a week. And it's helpful to start identifying those things and trying to figure out, okay, what are these things is really integral to my day or my week or my month and so on.
00:29:06
Speaker
Yeah. And so for me, I have a lot of repeatable things that I like to do every single week. And I just have a Trello board, which I don't really love Trello. But I will say for this, it's really helpful. And I might just say like, what do I want to accomplish on Mondays that I noticed myself doing every single Monday. And so I take those by day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and I've created a schedule and there is flexibility, there always is, right? There's always something a client might be like, Hey, can you do this? And that isn't in that board.
00:29:35
Speaker
So that when I have my paper planner in front of me on Sunday evening, or maybe I'll do it the previous Friday, I write those things into the planner the following week. So that I know that during my work time, I'm not wondering, oh, what should I do next? I know exactly the thing that I want to work on. I'm not as good at quarterly planning. And I think that's because in my business, I haven't really been focused. I'm really bad about working on my business versus being in it.
00:30:02
Speaker
And but I do know that I have some things that I want to be introducing or even like my digital products. And so I do have to do quarterly planning for that to decide what I want to accomplish for that particular quarter. So yeah, it's important to prioritize that because otherwise you just kind of get I'm really good at focusing on my strength is executing. So focusing on my weekly not as good at focusing on my quarterly and monthly.
00:30:24
Speaker
So yeah, and remember, these things include they're not just business stuff either, you know, so it's home stuff that you have going on. So I'm sure for you, it's, you know, homeschooling among a number of other things. So it might be, you know, things like going to the gym, all of those things. Well, all of those things should be written down. So doing a time audit can be super helpful. It can also identify a lot of waste too. And that's helpful to do. It's so it's helpful to do that time audit so that when you actually start creating your block schedule, you're not actually creating a schedule around things that are wasteful.
00:30:53
Speaker
Yeah, you talked about in the blog post, which I think is useful is like actually courting or timing the amount of time it takes you to do each task. So that when you're organizing and batching those things, you're like, Hey, well, this is really a 10 minute task. But I have three other tasks that are really similar to this. Can I just push them together so that I'm in that mental mode of doing this one task. And I don't have to shift like there's this
00:31:15
Speaker
number this 25% when you shift to another activity or when you shift away and get distracted or multitask. That's what it is. When you multitask, you actually lose 25% of your productivity. So can these things be pushed together since you're already in that, in my sense, like marketing mode?
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. A helpful book, I think to read around that topic would be deep work by Cal Newport. I know we talked about it on the brutally difficult, but it is a good book. Brutally, brutally difficult, brutal. So let's see next point. Talking about like what parts of the day
00:31:49
Speaker
or weak or least productive
Energy Management and Task Alignment
00:31:51
Speaker
and most productive so i wanna mention a book at the outset here daniel pink wrote a book called when i haven't read it it's been or i mean i have read it but it's been so long since i have read it and i don't remember a ton of you know specifics from the book other than it was really helpful read and it really got to things like you know talking about when your morning person or evening person and
00:32:12
Speaker
and how to structure your day. And then also just a lot of really interesting science around timing and time in general. But that might be worth checking out if you're looking for a good book. Well, I was gonna say the big thing for me, and I think everybody is really different is I at one point, we did a like cross country move, we've done many of those in the last couple years. And I just felt overwhelmed like just by all the things we were doing. And I had to create a list of high mental tasks and low mental tasks.
00:32:40
Speaker
Because what I realized is in the afternoon my energy is low. I think that's pretty common I don't drink caffeine except for in the morning So I think it's just gone like there's nothing else getting through and so I'm like, you know what like things like Email or even laundry or just like going to the grocery store those need to happen in the afternoon because that my best the highest mental activity is really between like 7 and 2 and those really need to be reserved like the tasks that require the most mental
00:33:10
Speaker
functioning need to be reserved for them. So don't do your grocery shopping in the morning. Do it in the afternoon. It doesn't require any effort to run your credit card through the machine or do pickup. So I think it's really important to do an audit of that and where those tasks need to go based on your energy levels.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah, and just have a general understanding of what takes a lot of energy what doesn't and then what parts of the day do you have more energy than others. So one of those parts of the day for me, like you said, that I don't have any energy at all is like right around one o'clock. That's a tough time of the day for me. I typically bounce back though around four o'clock 334 o'clock, which is actually kind of difficult because I used to go to the gym at four o'clock in the afternoons.
00:33:53
Speaker
and i keep on finding that it's like four thirty and i'm still working cuz i have that other burst of energy you know i'm like i can actually do stuff but anyways point being is that i think there's probably a few points throughout the day where you find that you have more energy i mean i friends and i know that they really like to work.
00:34:09
Speaker
After they put their kids down at night because that's when they have a ton of focus and maybe the house is quiet but that's when they have a lot of energy and so i think it really is different for people i can't understand that my guess is that you probably can understand that is why we're sitting here thinking like.
00:34:25
Speaker
I think I would rather get up at 530, have an hour and a half of quiet to get really big tasks done, even just that period of time from whenever I wake up to noon, probably is the best time of day for me to tackle high mental energy tasks. Yeah, the same for me. I would never put a major mental tasks after two o'clock. I just couldn't. I mean, I could I guess if I really had to, but it would not be a smart choice for me. So
00:34:53
Speaker
And working in the evening too, I mean, I can do slow mental tasks in the evening, but again, I hate to bring up laundry, but it's just such a big part of your life, especially with kids. Don't do laundry in the middle of the day. Do laundry in the evening and pop on a Netflix show. My husband has to do PT every night. He does exercises for his back. And so that is our wind down time, and that is a good time to do stuff that doesn't require any focus. So be aware of that for your life.
00:35:22
Speaker
Because I think that that would make a huge change on your schedule if you were careful and cautious about that.
00:35:28
Speaker
Yeah, and I think especially these each of these things might be worth doing with a spouse, especially if well, I mean, not especially if I think just in general, I think for Kristen, I it's really helpful that our days have the same rhythm. And maybe this isn't true for everybody. But Chris and I were working on different things throughout the day often. But our days are typically structured in a similar way. So our wind down periods, for instance, at night before we go to bed,
00:35:54
Speaker
they might look a little bit different, but they're at the same time, right? And so I think that there is that time. So just like kind of inherently within the schedule, we've made time where we both can connect with one another, right? Yeah, because I think that'd be really difficult. Like if I was a night person, I want to get all this work done at night, whereas Chris, if Chris was a morning person, and she is a morning person, not if she was a morning person, then it would be really difficult because I
00:36:18
Speaker
you know, I would be wanting to work and I'd be, you know, maybe upstairs in my office working during a period of time when Chris is relaxing and maybe wishing that that we could spend time together. So yeah, I find that helpful. I think it's helpful to have a similar rhythm with it with a spouse. And that might mean some sacrifice to I'm not as much of a morning person as Chris does.
00:36:37
Speaker
you know, I would still say I'm a morning person, just not as much as Krista. But, you know, I started my day earlier, because she starts her day earlier. And it just gives us more opportunity to spend time with each other at different points during the day. Yeah, that's good marriage advice. Like, especially people working together, I think when you have a 95 job, you have a very typical rhythm. But when you work together, you have to be even more careful that you're not going to pop in on her and say, Hey, I need this done now. And she's like, well,
00:37:04
Speaker
Actually, I already have this portion of my time dedicated to this. So yeah, I think that that is helpful. And I think, too, this isn't just about how to get more work done. I think this conversation is more about how to have more life. Because if you don't schedule in your life, there's this great principle called Parkinson's Principle, which is work expands so as to fill, I'm having to read the quote, so as to fill the time available for its completion. So if you don't assign a time to complete a task,
00:37:32
Speaker
It's going to take, I mean, this is what the principal take, it will take longer than not assigning it or than assigning it. And so it's just super important to be mindful of your schedule so that you can go to the gym, so that you can take your kids to the park or whatever, travel, for example, to so.
00:37:49
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think this might be either another Tim Ferriss or Daniel Pink, you know, quote one of these time, you know, productivity books, or maybe it's from the compound effect, you know, this idea of being the thermostat for the, I guess, being a thermometer or thermostat, I guess is the distinction. And one is you just react to, you know, kind of what's around you and what's going on around you, whereas the other actually sets the temperature, right? So one reacts based on what whatever the temperature is,
00:38:16
Speaker
in the room and then the other actually sets the temperature and I always thought that was helpful when talking about actually planning your day. You can either let it take control of you and constantly react to the stuff going on around you or at least what I tried to do is be more like the thermostat where we say, hey, here are the boundaries throughout the day and here's when I'm looking at email and here's when I'm communicating with clients and so on and so forth.
00:38:39
Speaker
you know, just to have a little bit more control over the day. All right, assigning tasks to appropriate days of the week, grouping similar tasks together. And so we talked about this already, just within other points, but tasks that take a lot of mental energy should be assigned during a part of the day. That makes sense for high mental energy tasks. And then, you know, in reverse, low mental energy tasks should be assigned during parts of the day that require low mental energy. If there's things that
00:39:07
Speaker
you can do once during the week and just have it done or once during the month and have it done. I think that those things should be grouped together. I try my best to do that with podcasts. It really hasn't happened all that well, except for recording days. Typically, I record podcasts on either Thursday or Friday. Those are my two days for recording. They're also typically at the end of the week. The reason for that is that typically,
00:39:33
Speaker
I have to just show up with some energy for a podcast, right? Like you kind of just force yourself to do it. Whereas like in the beginning of the week, I have like these big, I typically reserve that for big projects. I don't have as much energy for maybe a big project that requires a lot of critical thinking. So I try to do those at the beginning of the week. However, conversations I can, I just typically have energy for conversations. So I try to schedule those towards the end of the week.
00:39:59
Speaker
Yeah, I'm the same. I really front-load Monday through Wednesday. I really like it to be that way. And Friday can be a little more flexible. I think that's more natural with a normal lifestyle. And this conversation is a lot easier to have on a Friday versus Monday when I'm like, I have so much to do. Not that I would ever feel that way about talking to people. Sure. No, I 100% agree, though. Yeah, for sure. And the same thing about I track my time. So in a tool called toggle, T-O-G-G-L, I'm sorry, T-O-G-G-L,
00:40:25
Speaker
no E. So there's no E on that, right? Yeah. But I mean, even looking at like kind of how, you know, the tasks that I'm doing throughout the week, I just get more done Monday through Wednesday.
Weekly Energy Patterns and Productivity
00:40:34
Speaker
You know, those are my most productive days of the week by Thursday and Friday, regardless of, you know, how much I want to have the energy to really tackle big tasks. I might I might actually start I might work on them. I just don't get as much done because I'm a little bit more worn out by then. I think that goes back to my point of it's really good. I think to have a day where you're just completely disconnected.
00:40:54
Speaker
Yeah, and kind of what we're saying is in all of this is you've got to make all these audits and mini audits like audit on your energy audit on your actual tasks and audit even on your clients needs for you and when they seem to be like perking up.
00:41:08
Speaker
It's good to just get out paper and start or digital and start to like map these things out. And I think it will come together. You will see patterns and clarity over time like we have. It sounds like actually we're really similar. Probably that's true for most people. Monday through Wednesday, kind of front loading, cool down, just like an exercise plan. If I knew anything about exercise, Thursday and Friday a little bit more cool down.
00:41:32
Speaker
We probably share sort of a similar personality type as well. You know, I think it's our days. I mean, just in terms of you being a morning person, us being morning people. So I think our days probably look relatively similar as well. I mean, obviously full of different stuff. You're in a homeschool phase, right? Whereas Jack hasn't started school. So, you know, we don't have that aspect of our life yet. But in general, it sounds like we share some similarities around rhythm of day.
00:41:57
Speaker
Yeah, and also, I think we probably fiercely protect childcare. So when that childcare worker is there, you're like, all right, this is my get it done time. So 100%, 100%. But I think that leads us into to point number five, which is basically reflect on what's working, what's not, and then make changes, you know, and I think certainly, since Jack was born, this has been
00:42:16
Speaker
This has been harder for me. I shouldn't say harder, because it's not hard. I haven't been as good about it. Actually saying, okay, doing the hard part of looking at your schedule and making those changes and kind of taking control of your schedule again. So fortunately, over the last few months, especially, especially since bringing a team member on to kind of help me with that, things have definitely taken a step in the right direction. I mean, we were just talking about before the podcast, you were talking about kind of a lot of fresh faces on the podcast recently. And a lot of that is because I don't have to go through
00:42:45
Speaker
you know, the vetting and scheduling process anymore, you know, Emily can take care of a large part of that, right? And she does a great job with it. So it means that more people who apply to be part of the podcast can be vetted. It means that, you know, I always have a list of people that I'd like to interview. It means that Emily can actually take the time to draft up those invitations and get those sent out. So I can attest Emily is great.
00:43:07
Speaker
She is. She is. Anyways, the point, have some flexibility, have some grace with
Incorporating Personal Time and Avoiding Burnout
00:43:12
Speaker
yourself. This is something that I think that I've certainly learned over the last two years is going to be revisited. If not yearly, or I'm sorry, if not quarterly, then definitely yearly. Yeah. And I think if you didn't hear anything is that in this whole conversation is that you do need to make time for hobbies or exercise or your life because burnout is not a healthy place to go. And
00:43:37
Speaker
I think you're more, I mean, I think we would argue, you're more productive when you assign times and notice those patterns. And so it's really important. Let me just say this, that I have even found it difficult in my own life to take the time to meta analysis, like do a meta analysis of my time. But even if you're struggling in that, like you're like, I don't even have time to think about how to organize my time, like do it for yourself, even if it's an evening, even if it's a Saturday, like, this is a really important task to take.
00:44:03
Speaker
Yeah, one thing I wish that we talked about in the beginning episode was just the differences in business, what that looks like, you know, Davey and Krista and till are a little bit different than the business that you run, for instance, and kind of what that means for your schedule. And I even go as far as saying like, there's a lot of gurus out there and people, you know, in
00:44:23
Speaker
that either run businesses that like to tell people how they should be spending their time and what that should look like. And a lot of it comes down to just kind of making a schedule work for you. And so getting up at four in the morning might not work for you, you can still run a successful business without getting up at four in the morning, because you know, whoever says that you need to run a successful business says so.
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds like really miserable. I think it's actually good to know how much sleep you need. I think you said seven in the blog post. I'm kind of an eight person. I feel like when women are on in science, they say that women need more sleep than men. But you know, I think that too, like if you want to shift from being the just running task in your business to being
00:45:07
Speaker
the CEO and thinking and planning and a little bit more high-level thinking, then your weeks will look different. And I myself am guilty of not doing that for myself. But I think as you shift away and hire a team and start doing that, it's important to take that time and to protect your time too with clients.
Managing Energy in Client Interactions
00:45:26
Speaker
The other thing I was going to say is your business seems like it has a lot of calls. I would really struggle with that because
00:45:32
Speaker
calls are de energizing. I mean, it's I'm an introvert. And so it does take time away from me. And so I think if you're like doing calls, you really have to be protected because I can get behind 30 minutes and pick it up later on. So I am still an extrovert. I mean, I think calls and medians and stuff like that are still exhausting. So that's something that I'm certainly kind of actively working through. I do think that that aspect of things is something that we kind of value, you know, like I want to know,
00:46:01
Speaker
I want to talk to somebody before they come on board. And the reason being is I just want to get to know them a little bit. Are they a good fit? And there's people we get on calls with and we're like, hey, you're just not a good fit for us. And it's not a judgment on that person or certainly a judgment in the way that somebody is good or bad, but simply somebody not being a good fit. And so I think that's a valuable part of our vetting process both for
00:46:23
Speaker
Davey and Krista and Fortill, I mean, there's also a sales aspect to it. We should do a whole other podcast episode on, you know, calls or not calls and communication in general, part of the notes and kind of revisiting this blog post. And we've just gone completely off subject now so I can see people are just hitting like the off button.
00:46:40
Speaker
They're not getting the off button. They're looking for recording about sales calls because I do think that that is a great conversation to have. How to make a pitch without being pitchy. We should definitely record something about that, but I also think there's people who a lot of it has to do with the type of business you're running.
00:46:57
Speaker
And one thing that drives me crazy are auto responders. I hate auto responders. I especially hate auto responders. So if somebody's going to simultaneously complain that maybe they're not booking enough clients or something along those lines, but then also an auto responder say they don't get back to people for three days, to me, I'm like, nah, that's the issue. But it goes back to what kind of business you want to run. If you want to run
00:47:24
Speaker
a business where you're only working with 10 to 20 clients a year or, you know, whatever, and you have an autoresponder. And those are the boundaries you set, right? And you're running kind of a boutique business. That's great. You know, you can make that work, right? But if you want to scale your business, as I think so many people do, and then you also have an autoresponder that just says like,
00:47:42
Speaker
Oh, yeah, you know, I'll respond via email sometime in the next three days and whatever. I'm like, what? You know, this is a problem. So, yeah. Anyways, he's stepping off the soapbox. Now I can. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's just.
00:47:56
Speaker
I probably need an autoresponder. I do not have one. And again, I'm not saying autoresponders are bad. I'm just saying that there are certain things certainly around autoresponders and boundary setting that just drive me a little crazy. And I do think the boundaries are very good. Autoresponders can be helpful, but there's some things that I see people do and then simultaneously see complaints around
00:48:20
Speaker
you know, I just don't get why I'm not booking a thousand clients. And it's like, well, they've moved on. Yeah. And that three days they've talked to four other people and they've made a decision elsewhere. You know, so yeah, anyways, definitely have to talk about that. Maybe we do another episode on we're just doing on client communication. I think we've done one on email already. I'm here for it.
00:48:39
Speaker
All right, awesome. Well, thanks, Vanessa. This is why we only record one episode together now. We used to try to fit two in an hour and that just never worked. So here we are 55 minutes later. But thank you. I'm sure we'll chat again soon. All right, thanks. Thanks for tuning into the brand set book show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to Davey and Krista.com.
00:49:16
Speaker
you