How to time block based on your CAPACITY | Planning for Spoonies
If you have less spoons or usable hours than an able-bodied or neurotypical person, and you struggle with time management, this video is for you. You'll learn how to manage your time and energy through time blocking in a way that meets your needs because personalization is key.
Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript.
If you struggle with chronic illness, trauma, or depression, and want to go from stuck to unstoppable, subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when I post a new video every Tuesday.
Helping my clients make informed and empowered decisions about how to use their time and energy is one of the main things I do inside my coaching membership. And now it's your turn, so let's go!
First, I'm going to tell you the details of how to time block and what elements to take into consideration when you're time blocking, especially if you have limited capacity. Then I'm going to show you several days worth of examples so you can see how this kind of time blocking works in practice.
Time Blocking Order of Operations
First, let's quickly review my order of operations for time blocking, which I talked about more in depth in this video, where I shared with you my minimalist time blocking planner. Spoiler alert: it's a whiteboard.
So the order of operations is to first block in any actual appointments onto your calendar for that day. So for example, if you have a doctor's appointment at 2, that goes in your time block calendar first. If you have dinner with a friend, that should also go down first. Basically, any non-negotiable appointments with other people or yourself, those go onto your time block calendar first.
Next, you simply block in time for rest and self-maintenance like food, water, movement, a nap if you need one. It's so important that you consider rest and recuperation one of your big rocks in life that you prioritize ahead of other things. And if you're not familiar with the big rocks analogy, it's the idea that if you have a jar and you've got big rocks and you've got pebbles and you've got sand, if you were to put the sand in first and then the pebbles, the big rocks wouldn't fit. Whereas if you put in the big rocks first, then the pebbles, then the sand, the sand can actually filter through and disperse and fill the rest of the jar in between the cracks.
So when you're time blocking, you want to put down your big rocks first, and as someone with multiple chronic illnesses, mental health issues, and neurodivergence rest is definitely one of my non-negotiable big rocks.
So after you've put your non-negotiable appointments and your rest and self-maintenance and self-care down on your time block planner for the day, next is to put in time blocks for your work and your joy, and which one you prioritize over the other depends on how you want to balance your life, because work-life balance isn't about just trying to arbitrarily aim for 50/50. You get to choose what the ratio is, and the ratio can fluctuate from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year.
Right now, in my life, I am actually working a little bit more than I would like to for the rest of my days in order to get ahead in my business, so that way I can work less, more consistently, later.
The Three Gas Tanks
Now that we've done a quick overview of that order of operations for time blocking on any given day, I want to share with you a few other things you can take into consideration when you're time blocking. The first, which is the idea of the three gas tanks.
This is something I use with my clients all the time, and it's the idea that your energy isn't all in one gas tank. You have a physical gas tank, a cognitive gas tank, and an emotional gas tank.
And you're not necessarily running on empty on all three of those at the same time. If you are, that's burnout territory and you need a lot of rest. So for example, after I've done a two hour video editing deep work block, I'm usually pretty cognitively exhausted, but that being said, I have likely been sitting for those two hours and even someone such as myself with multiple chronic illnesses, I benefit from getting up and moving around a little bit. So, if I have enough gas in my physical tank to help me recover from such a cognitively-taxing task as doing all that video editing, I'll get up and do something physical, like maybe a, a chore I didn't get to in my morning routine, I'll go and do that chore. Often, it's not more than five minutes, but just those five minutes of movement do wonders to help me recover from all of that intense work.
I plan on doing a more specific video in the future on how to choose how to recover during your breaks throughout the day. So definitely subscribe, so you don't miss that.
Icky vs. Fun Tasks
Another thing to consider when you're doing your time blocking is which tasks or appointments or things that you have on your plate that day feel icky versus fun and fulfilling. And it can be really helpful to sandwich icky things with good things and have a higher ratio of good things to icky things.
I realize not everyone has the privilege to micromanage their schedule, but hopefully you have the capacity to at least apply this idea in some way, shape, or form.
For example, one of my clients was struggling with a particularly icky task. She was using Pomodoros and we've developed a plan for her where she would do five minutes of the icky task, take a short break, and then she'd do more of a 20, 25 minute Pomodoro on a more fulfilling and fun task. And she would alternate that way throughout the day. So, while she's not getting like, a lot done, the thing is, without that technique, she had been avoiding that icky task for days, and was getting nowhere.
So if you're in that kind of situation where you're procrastinating so hard on something that you're not making any progress whatsoever, you're just beating yourself up the whole time over it, alternating your icky task in tiny increments with larger Pomodoros of more fun and fulfilling work can be really helpful to get you unstuck.
Under vs. Overstimulation
The last thing that you can consider when time blocking your day is whether or not certain tasks or activities leave you overstimulated or understimulated.
Those who are neurodivergent, have a history of trauma, and/or identify as a highly sensitive person or HSP, we have to micromanage how much stimulation we receive. Too much noise can throw us off. Too many people can throw us off. It can be really easy to get overstimulated, but conversely, especially if you have ADHD, you can find yourself being understimulated in one area and overstimulated in another area. And coming to understand what balance of stimulation and removal of stimulation is helpful for you, not only while you're doing a task, but afterwards, in order to recover from it, can be a really useful tool to manage your time and your energy, so you're living your life instead of running on autopilot or dissociating from it.
Comment below aand tell me about a task that seems small and doable on the surface, but in reality is big and exhausting for you. Let's normalize this subject so people can go into the comments and not feel alone.
High Energy vs. Average Energy vs. Low Energy Time Blocking
(This is the part of the video where I'm screen sharing my google calendar and showing how I time block based on my capacity.)
Hello and welcome inside my calendar for next week. I have things blurred out for privacy, but that won't affect what we're about to do. I'm going to show you time blocking inside my calendar based on my capacity, basically walking you through my thought process.
The thing to keep in mind is that I do my time blocking in reality on a day-to-day basis. I time block in the morning as part of my morning routine for the rest of the day. And I do it on a whiteboard like I talked about in a previous video. But the main idea of using a whiteboard is, it's in my face all day long, because I can see it past my monitor in my main workspace. And because I can erase it at the end of the day and start with a blank slate the next day when I wake up, which has been really great for my mental health.
So, first of all, remember your order of operations. First, you put your appointments down on your time block planner. Because we're working inside my Google calendar, that's automatically done for me. Yay. Next, you schedule in rest and self-care. And that includes things like lunch and dinner, preparing food, doing chores, boring self-care, that kind of stuff, not just the luxurious things like taking a bath. After that, you put in your work and your play, and which one you put down first depends on how you're prioritizing your work-life balance at this point in time.
But this video is all about how to time block based on your capacity. So let's go through time blocking this week with varying levels of capacity.
So right now in my life, my priority is work. So during my daytime, I'm basically juggling work and self-care, and I leave things like play to either my rest periods or the evenings when I can spend time with my partner. So I'm not going to be talking about necessarily blocking in play. It's all gonna be rest and work just because that's what's going on with me these days.
Let's pretend this is a high-energy week. I've already got my appointments down. The next is rest and self-care. So if this is a high-energy week, I can probably start working by 10. But knowing myself, even when I have lots of energy, my brain needs a break after three hours. So a three hour block would put me at one.
The reason why I'm not putting anything down on the calendar yet is I want to see if like, that break is long enough and a one hour break for lunch and to relax. That's great. So I can go ahead and put in a break here.
And then I look down here and I see this appointment. I want to make sure to be able to have time enough to cook dinner and eat dinner and spend some time with my partner before that call. I want to give myself time to cook and eat dinner. I've got my break scheduled in.
Now I can go in and schedule my actual work for the day. And again, this is like a high-energy day, right? So I start at 10 and I go to 1, work.
Micromanaging time blockers would probably break up this three hours into much more specific blocks, but I actually find that counterproductive, personally. I have such an efficient system for managing my tasks and my projects and prioritizing them effectively, that it would just be busy work for me to go in and break down this time. I already know what I'm going to be working on and roughly what ratios of time I'm going to be working on them. It makes it easier for me to just be like, okay, I am moving my high priority tasks forward during this time block. For me to break down these time blocks any further, especially since I time block by hand on a white board, that would just be tedious and time-consuming. Instead, I'd rather just do one great big work block, and then get to work!
Because planning can be really helpful in so much as it makes the work easier to do. But, if you're planning for planning's sake, that's procrasti-planning, and you're actually avoiding doing your actual work. Which I talked about recently. I'll link that video here.
And after my break, I have a call, which is part of work, but then I actually get dedicated work time afterwards. So this is me on a high-energy day, right?
If we look at the next day, you can see I have already blocked off a huge period of time to work on something that day. And that's because, normally, at this time every week, I have a meeting with my dance teaching partner to plan our content, and to get on the same page with things. But, we're taking a few weeks off. And because I have a high priority project--I really want to get a lot of time in--I decided to block off this time so clients can't book calls with me during that time.
So the only reason why I time blocked that in advance is so my Acuity scheduling knows not to allow my clients to book appointments with me during that time.
And then you can see, I have two other calls. This is a lot. On a high-energy day, I could probably survive this, 'cause this is social, this is social, and then this is head-down work. That's fine. But even high-energy for me, that's probably it for the day. I would probably, if I'm waking up early, I would do some admin, and then I would take a break. Right? 'Cause I'm taking into account my energy. I would like to get my ducks in a row, but I would allow myself a huge break. And then like, I would not do anything after this work block that day.
Let's skip ahead to Thursday. I work out once a week to increase my strength, and it's a very long process for me to ensure that I don't get injured and that I'm properly warmed up and I'm properly cooled down afterwards. It's a very long process. Usually it takes me about three hours. This is blocked off as four so I have plenty of time to shower afterwards. So that way I can be camera ready for the show. Oh, I don't need to. So I just realized I can, I can, I can delete this! 'Cause we're not doing a show next week. I'm so excited!
But let's pretend that that was a normal week and that show that I host was going to happen anyways. I would need this time to warm up, workout, cool down, and bathe. And I have that blocked off on my calendar again so clients can't book time with me during that time. I am prioritizing that on my calendar. And that is the only reason why time blocks that aren't actual appointments end up on my Google calendar, is so that my clients can't book time with me during those times.
All right, now let's look at Wednesday. So as you can see, I have a long call and then I have a short call (that's actually a client call later in the day). If this is a high energy day and I am able to get to work by 10, that's awesome, but even if I'm high energy, I know I'm going to need a break before this call. So I'm going to put in my break here. Then I'm probably actually going to add a short break afterwards. I'm going to sandwich this really long call with breaks, and then the rest of the time I can work. And then after that break, I can work until my client call. Awesome.
Now let's look at an average energy day for me. Because I have such a late start to my workday, my first break of the day tends to actually be mid to late afternoon. And that's okay for me because I actually really like front-loading most of my work, taking a break, and then wrapping up with a little bit more work at the end of the day. That seems to be my sweet spot. That is sustainable, yet keeps me afloat in all of my work, and on some occasions allows me to get ahead of things. I'm actually planning on my break being after this weekly reset (for this Monday on an average day). And then my next break would be to cook dinner like normal. So, so dinner. And now we fill it in with work. So start at 11:30, go 'til two, and then I can work here.
When I'm doing this on my whiteboard I actually color code things. Work tends to be black, and breaks tend to be blue, but again, I don't time block in Google calendar. So the color coordinating isn't as helpful for me in this instance.
So as you can see, we've got like two and a half hours here, hour and a half here, but we've also got this half hour call here and an hour call here - that fits in my sweet spot of four to six usable hours a day.
And I often now get help from my partner to cook dinner. So this isn't, this isn't me cooking for an hour and a half. It rarely is. And when it is it either truly exhausts me or I have planned for it in advance, and I have not spent spoons elsewhere in the day, which is really helpful. Like I plan for this as much as I can.
Now on an average day, if we look at this Tuesday, I am just exhausted by looking at this Tuesday: call, call, writing. What is likely to happen for me is on the day I'm going to end up prioritizing one of these calls over the other. It's probably going to be the first one because I can actively meet people and participate in that one.
Whereas the second call is something that I just view and I know it gets recorded so I can watch it again later. This is probably actually going to be a break for me on Tuesday, unless I get to that time and I realize I'm okay to like kind of multitask where I rest and kind of passively watch the call. So there's my break.
And like I said, on a normal day, I usually start work at 11:30, so I maybe have 30 minutes to do some admin before this call. And then all of this is work. And because it's just like, ugh, this, this project in particular is all writing and it's really cognitively taxing writing. I'm going to be doing Pomodoros to get through this three hours. "But it's gonna be worth it!" I say to myself.
But as I've gotten probably to the two hour mark, I might reevaluate and figure out if I need to take a break and not fulfill that commitment to myself, because prioritizing my ability to keep going tomorrow is always crucial. I am not going to sacrifice my tomorrow-self for my today-self, because I would rather have consistency and sustainable productivity instead of really short, bright bursts that burn me out for days.
And then on an average day, because this movement and strength takes a lot out of me, like it's me physically taxing myself to a large degree, I want to make sure I'm taking it easy the rest of the day. So that means I'm working here.
And this is one of those interesting things because the movement and strength is not cognitively taxing for me, it's just physically taxing. And the warming up and the cooling down, I use the Yoga Tune Up therapy balls for self myofascial release and muscle prep, and then cooling down and massage afterwards. That part of my workout is actually really regenerative and fun to do, and it feels really good. It's kind of like as a part of this, my warmup, even though it's technically a warmup, it's relaxing and it's rest. So a part of this is rest for me, even though it's my warmup, but that's how it functions. And then the cool-down and then a shower afterwards kind of is also more rest. But then I recover from the shower by lying down. And then I do an easy dinner after all of that, but that's like, that's my Thursday.
That's all I got on a good average day. Hopefully you can see how I am really thinking through my capacity as I time block.
Now let's look at if I am on the damn floor all week: if I am flaring, all my symptoms are going crazy, I'm in a lot of pain, I have a lot of fatigue, I have a lot of brain fog. It's just a rough week. That's when it becomes a bare minimum week. And I choose to say no to a lot of things so that I can recover as soon as possible and get back to my sustainable amount of productivity that's my average.
So the first thing I do is I look at this calendar and I see the things that are absolutely non-negotiable for me. And those are calls with my clients. So this weekly reset here, this group coaching call here, this private client call here, this weekly reset here. Those are non-negotiable. They are happening whether I'm on the floor or not.
And actually one of the things that I love is that I encourage my clients to show up messy in the program, and I can actually role model that by showing up messy myself when that happens to me. And showing them that I still have value when I'm showing up messy, and that can be really, really meaningful to see role modeled for you. So it's kind of sneaky 'cause then if I'm feeling bad, I can still do my work, but really it is a part of my integrity and a part of my values to do that.
So those things are staying there and the rest of my existence is to make sure they happen. So one is turning off my alarm or setting at significantly later. I might push my alarm to 11 and then do my two hour morning routine after that. If I'm in really bad shape, sometimes my morning routine goes longer than two hours. I might only have time to do a little bit of admin right before this call, just so I'm on top of things. And then I might do a little bit of work afterwards. And then I would take a break!
This is where your big rocks, your self care and rest big rocks, kind of swell to take up a lot more space. And then you've got your can of sand over here, and if and when you're ready, you pour out a few grains of sand.
So I probably wouldn't actually time block more on this if it's a floor day. I would be like, "Okay, yeah, I take a break. I got this." And I would be continually re-evaluating throughout the day as I'm pushing towards two o'clock it's like, "Can I do some admin? Sure." And then I throw in some admin work. Cool. So I'm on top of things before that call. And then I have time for the call to go long, if I'm up for it, if that's just how the call is going. And then I schedule a break and this is a non-negotiable break.
Even if I'm feeling like, "Yeah! Jazzed!" that's probably because working with my clients has refilled my emotional gas tank, which can help refill my physical and cognitive gas tanks. But when I get tired, I have a harder time making good decisions for myself, so I make them ahead of time. And that's this, it's taking a non-negotiable break at three, even if I'm feeling good, because I was on the floor this morning, the feeling good is likely a ruse.
And then after this break, I can reevaluate. Can I do maybe like a half an hour of work? Can I do maybe an hour of work? But I see this call. It's like, "Oh no, I've got another call tonight. I have to be there for that." So it's likely I'll maybe do a half an hour to an hour of work tops, but likely if it's a really, really bad day, it's only going to be half an hour. And that's just the reality of it.
And then if it's a really bad day and I'm looking at this, probably both of these calls would go out the window. I would have a long morning and then I would just start slowly chipping away at this writing one Pomodoro at a time (25 minutes of writing, five minute break), and just keep going until I can't go any further. So I might do one Pomodoro, might do two. If I make it to all six, it's not actually a floor day.
But you get the idea. I want to make sure that I'm pacing myself in a reasonable way based on my capacity.
And then if it's really a floor week and we look at this Thursday, I'm not working out. I'm just not.
I would probably still do the myofascial release and massage that I normally do. I would do it to a much lesser extent, but that would help rejuvenate my body and probably help reduce pain. I would focus on the areas where I'm experiencing a lot of pain. Or if I'm having a lot of sympathetic nervous system activation, I'll do positions and movements that help with vagus nerve arousal to help encourage the parasympathetic nervous system to take over. That kind of stuff. So I would turn this into like the spa afternoon instead of actually working out. And I do that because, while it is important to me that I work out once a week, it is not so important that I'm, if I'm having a really bad week, I'll work out anyways. Because if I do that, if I work out when I'm on the floor, I know I won't be able to work out for the next few weeks.
I would rather skip one week and then be back on the train next week, than force myself through this week and then be on the struggle bus for the next three to four weeks. Those are my boundaries.
So that was a lot of information, but hopefully that helps you understand my thought process when I am time-blocking based on my capacity. And I wasn't able to get into all of the different types of capacity, but remember when you're doing this for yourself, you've got your three gas tanks. You've got physical, cognitive, emotional, and then you've also got to consider whether or not you're being overstimulated or under-stimulated.
And again, I will do a video on how to recover from various combinations of those in the future, so subscribe if you want to see that. But hopefully this is just enough to get you started, so you can truly consider what your capacity is on a day-to-day basis and set yourself up for success, so you're actually living the life you want to live and doing the things you want to do.
Now you know how to time block based on your capacity as someone with chronic illness, mental illness, neurodiversity, and trauma.
If you're someone who really struggles with procrastination, however, these tips might feel like they're five steps ahead of you, but don't worry 'cause I've got you covered. I highly recommend checking out my free Masterclass where I teach you three mindset shifts and one simple three-step system to help you get procrastination to the curb. All you have to do to get access is go to this link and sign up.
Check out this video next to see my super minimalist time-blocking planner that I use every day.
If you liked this video, hit that like button and subscribe, and be sure to share it with your friends. I'll be back next week with another video. See you then. Bye.
