Time blocking like a human being: Why it's so important
If you keep finding yourself wondering where your time went, I deeply know how frustrating that feeling is.
At this point, you’re questioning if there’s really a solution out there that will help you accomplish what you want in the time you want, without sacrificing your health, freedom, and joy.
There is, it’s called holistic time blocking!
Many people agree on how powerful it is. Time blocking is the most common time management system used (via timewatch).
However, one of the main critiques for time blocking is it’s inflexible and doesn’t capture the reality of being a human with ever-changing energy and responsibilities.
Holistic time blocking is here to help you finally feel in control of your day, get a better sense of where your time is actually going, and follow through with the things you need and want to do while being human.
In this article, you’ll learn why it’s so important to approach time blocking as a whole, human being and the immense benefits you can experience too.
What’s time blocking?
Time blocking, also known as calendar blocking, is a planning strategy where you proactively dedicate certain tasks to a certain time frame.
I personally call the time frames that contain my tasks: Time containers, rather than time blocks.
What most people don’t talk about is time blocking can also be used as an execution strategy. You can use time blocking to stay accountable, live with integrity, and be flexible.
How? Here’s a time-blocking process laid out in simple terms.
Choose what you want to work on.
Decide when you want to work on it.
Add it to your digital calendar or planner.
Follow your time containers as best you can.
As the day goes on, update your calendar in real-time with what you actually do.
Of course, we’re human beings. Nothing is as simple as that. If life was as easy as “just doing it” the world would be a totally different place.
This is where a holistic approach to time blocking works wonders.
What does holistic time blocking look like?
A holistic approach means looking at time blocking as a whole human being with physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs.
Holistic time blocking drastically improves your chances of following through with your tasks while also staying flexible.
Traditional and holistic time blocking are different from both a planning standpoint and an execution standpoint.
One big difference? Holistic time blocking builds out your time containers in a way that honors your unique cycles and life circumstances.
Not some magically different “fixed” version of yourself.
For example, let’s say you are currently waking up around 7 am but you want to be a 5 am-er. If you put 5 am as a wake-up time in your calendar, it’ll be really challenging to actually do, and many people blame time blocking.
However, when you acknowledge where you are today, it’s much easier to come up with a more realistic solution making it easier to create momentum and progress.
Next, holistic time blocking makes sure to include time containers that help you be and stay healthy–not just to do’s and work.
Finally, from an implementation standpoint, your execution strategies must work, make sense to you, and feel good to your mind, body, and soul.
For the example above, if you tell yourself you’ll “just force yourself to wake up at 5 am” when you have a history of not doing the things you need, or want, to do isn’t going to work. Maybe 6:30 am is a better step, or maybe you just need sleep and that’s ok!
If you are someone who keeps telling yourself you’ll “just do it”, it would greatly benefit you to find what’s preventing you from doing the things you want to do, and heal it at the root. That’s what I help my clients do in 1:1 holistic time coaching.
What are the benefits of holistic time blocking?
The most important benefit of holistic time blocking is that it protects your health and well-being. As we know, health and performance are directly related. A 2017 study confirmed people are 25% more likely to perform better at work when they eat healthier.
When you’re healthier, the regular benefits of time blocking increase. Some of which are:
Feel in control of your time, day, and destiny which just so happens to decrease our anxiety too.
Distraction-free deep work on meaningful goals, because you’ve preemptively prioritized and decided what to work on.
Experience greater levels of follow-through, flow, focus, self-accountability, and time awareness.
Decrease decision fatigue, saying yes to things we actually don’t want to do, and negative impacts of urgency.
Replace your never-ending to-do list and learn how to plan ahead while focusing on the now.
All of this to say, when you’re healthy and following through with everything you want to do… abundance! Fulfillment! Satisfaction!
Personally, I’m not sure what’s better than that.
Want to make sense of your rhythms and patterns and build a schedule that feels good to your whole self?
Meet Digital Calendars For Humans.
40+ different and surprising ways you can use your digital calendar
Almost every client I’ve ever worked with are shocked to learn just how much they can do with their digital calendar.
For this reason, a blog entirely dedicated to all the ways you can use your google calendar. (Plus, I’m sure that I am missing some, hence the + sign in the title, so I’ll be adding more as time goes on.)
I truly believe if more people used their calendars in a holistic, human-centric way the world would change.
We’d be healthier, happier, and wealthier humans! We’d make the money we want to make! We’d be a force in our communities!
The biggest thing keeping that from happening?
People NOT using their calendars.
Or worse… using it to overwork, overcommit, shame, and guilt themselves. 😣
In this article, you’ll learn 40+ different ways you can use your calendar for a healthy mind, body, soul, relationships, and business.
From your mind and body to your relationships and business…you can do so much with your digital calendar!
Ways you can use your google calendar for a healthier mind
According to The American Institute of Stress: 73 percent of people have stress that impacts their mental health. Just by using your digital calendar, your stress level will decrease.
In 2019, a study from North Carolina State University found that people who manage to balance living in the moment with planning for the future are best able to weather daily stress without succumbing to negative moods.
You can use your calendar to…
Schedule therapy, meditation, journaling, and other meetings.
Create daily affirmation reminders throughout the day.
Realistically plan your days and weeks to heal the tendency to overcommit, time scarcity, toxic productivity, and feelings of uncertainty.
Practice keeping time boundaries with yourself and others by saying no.
Set reminders to keep yourself on track throughout the day and build greater time awareness.
Move events around to live in the moment while also healing procrastination, shame, perfectionism, or other forms of self-sabotage.
Add time for focus work helps you to feel good about how you spent your time at the end of the day.
Habit track by adding your habits and deleting the habits you didn’t get to that day.
Spread out predictable events that tend to be more stressful.
Ways you can use your digital calendar for a healthier body
One in four adults worldwide don’t get enough exercise (source). The heart foundation says, “ I don’t have enough time” is the third most common reason why people don’t exercise.
Of course, exercise isn’t the only way to have a healthy body, so here are many different ways to have a healthy body using your google calendar.
You can use your calendar bestie to…
Set time aside for movement and attach tailored workout plans to the events.
Plan time to meal prep.
Make sure you don’t work through meal times. Looking at you lunchtime!
Track seasons, astrology, and hormonal cycles for more aligned planning.
Schedule conscious time off + rest.
Reminders to take vitamins or medicines.
Add and manage appointments with doctors.
Ok, you got me. I’m ready to feel healthier and balanced.
Dive into Digital Calendars For Humans today.
Ways calendar management allows you to have a healthier soul
Stark contrast, but it’s true! Everyone has different definitions of the word soul. I think of it as my heart, my joy, my essence, my truest self. I am a deeply spiritual being, and connecting to that part of me in my calendar is essential.
You can use your digital calendar to…
Keep your purpose at the forefront as you move through the day.
Set aside time for your passion projects and hobbies that bring you joy.
Acknowledge and celebrate yourself for all that you do get done.
Travel feeds my soul, so you can use your google calendar to schedule vacations, flights, and important travel dates.
Schedule time for a spiritual connection with the natural world, your higher power, source, or God (whichever word you prefer).
Build self-trust by experimenting with whitespace in your calendar.
Add time to learn new things you’re passionate about.
Learn to trust your intuition and gut instinct.
Ways you can use your calendar for healthier relationships & community
The Mental Health Foundation gets right to the point, “Relationships are one of the most important aspects of our lives.
People who are more socially connected to family, friends, or their community are happier, physically healthier, and live longer, with fewer mental health problems than people who are less well connected.”
You can use calendar management to…
Share a calendar or specific events with your partner, team, children, and/or friends to facilitate better communication and have time to be present with them.
Schedule your house care for your home or with your housemates.
Make a difference in your community by scheduling volunteering opportunities, calling your representatives, and voting dates ahead of time.
Set reminders to call friends and/or family members you care about.
Add and manage events you want to be a part of, with the people you care about.
Ways you can use your digital calendar for a healthier business (or work-life).
We all know using our time wisely helps us be productive and achieve our goals at work. Google calendars are known to substantially increase your ability to accomplish the things you want.
You can use your google calendar to…
Plan more effectively (I saved over 37 hours and $2500 every quarter by planning more effectively using my google calendar).
Establish a work schedule that feels good to you and integrate it with apps like Calendly so other folks can make appointments with you while respecting your boundaries.
Create marketing and content plans and schedules.
Manage project deadlines or launches with ease.
Plan ahead for admin time, which I find most folks usually don’t account for.
Collaboratively schedule meetings with your team, clients, and other collaborators.
Create a reference calendar for networking events, programs, masterminds, and more groups you’re apart of so you can pop in when they fit into your week.
Use themed days to juggle the many responsibilities you have.
Block time to work on a workflow in your project/task management software.
Invoicing (if you aren’t using auto invoicing).
Reminders to help keep you on time for your meetings and appointments.
Keep track of payments. This one can work for your home life too!
Yeah, mind-blowing is right!
Info is just that. Without integration, your digital calendar won’t be as magical as it can be.
Let me help you organize and simplify every area of your life.
Digital Calendar 101: Everything you need to know to get started today
A life on my terms is what I’m after.
What does that look like for me?
Right now it looks like growing my business, traveling the world with my husband, taking really good care of myself, and enjoying every moment I can.
Of course, living life on your terms will look different from mine.
I expect that!
No matter what your vision for a "good life" is, how you organize and structure your days and weeks is the foundation for making that vision a reality.
The problem? We haven't yet learned how to use tools like our digital calendars in a supportive, nourishing, healing, and human way.
If you've been looking for a flexible tool to help you stay organized and feel in control of your time, your digital calendar is the answer.
Throughout this post and the Digital Calendars for Humans series, you’ll learn how to use your digital calendar to reclaim your power and agency and create the life you want.
The magical powers of your digital calendar
A digital calendar, in my opinion, is one of the most powerful tools that anyone can use in their lives.
On the surface, your digital calendar is a time management, planning, and execution tool for work and your life. Deeper, it’s a tool that supports you in being flexible, adaptable, and intentional with your time, energy, attention, and life force.
Most use their digital calendar to keep track of work events and appointments only, but there are so many more ways you can use it.
It breaks my heart that many people use their digital calendars to shame and guilt-trip themselves. It’s possible to use it in a gentle and nourishing way making it much more effective and successful.
I want the world to know how supportive and life-changing a digital calendar can be.
By becoming more aware of the potential and capabilities of your digital calendar and taking the time to learn how to use it in a way that feels good to you, you can unlock the full potential of your digital calendar and radically change your life.
Want to explore a new way of working with your digital calendar. Click here.
What did approaching my digital calendar in a human way do for me?
My digital calendar is now my home base. No matter what I have going on in my life, everything goes in it. And it’s created a massive positive ripple effect in my life.
My digital calendar helped me…
Prevent loads of mental overwhelm, stress, and anxiety.
More easily recognize and meet my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs.
Plan so much more flexibly and realistically allowing me to stop overcommitting and saying yes to everything.
Find more self-acceptance and compassion for myself. Huge for my self-critical self.
Stay focused on what’s most important to me and my priorities that I would tend to put last (aka my health and rest).
Take my power back and start following through with what I said I wanted to do.
Acknowledge and celebrate me for what I did get done, creating more feelings of satisfaction and purpose.
What did all of those things give me? Who I am and the life I live today.
Not only that, but I’ve helped dozens of busy business owners and professionals do the same. Even for folks who really struggle with managing their time in a traditional sense.
The key is making your digital calendar feel good, and work for you.
How to make a digital calendar work for you
The Digital Calendar for Humans blog series! After reading through this series, you’ll have everything you need to get started on the right foot.
Or if you’re already using your digital calendar, the series will help it become a more supportive tool and work better for you.
Committing to your digital calendar
Paper planner vs digital planner vs digital calendar: Which one is best?
40+ different and surprising ways you can use your digital calendar
10 Best calendar apps that make time blocking a breeze
Time blocking 101
Time blocking like a human being: Why it's so important
The 5 Surprising kinds of people that time blocking will help
5 Common time blocking mistakes that you can start fixing today
Making your digital calendar feel good
7 Magical Google Calendar settings that allow for intentional planning
4 Mindsets to heal for a more supportive digital calendar experience
Calendar Management: Why your intuition is more important than you think
How a weekly schedule template saved me 37 hours every quarter
Cultivate a sustainable schedule that joyfully honors your plans and cares for your whole self.
Buy Digital Calendars For Humans Now.
5 Life lessons learned as a full-time traveling entrepreneur in 2022
This year was an adventure.
I started 2022 dancing in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. We spent the winter venturing through Italy–Trieste, Venice, Florence, and Rome. We went on to meet great friends in Porto, Portugal in February.
Took a trip to the US to visit family (and a short detour in Mexico) over the spring. Hopped back across the pond to spend the summer in Madeira, Portugal with said friends from Porto.
For the fall season, we checked out of the Schengen Zone and to Croatia where we visited Dubrovnik, Hvar, and Zagreb.
Now I’m writing this from Greece where we’ll be celebrating Christmas, and ringing in the first two months of 2023 in Cyprus.
This year I will have traveled to 11 countries, and I would say lived in (trips longer than a week) 5 countries.
All while running a successful online coaching business.
After taking a moment to pause and reflect on 2022, here are my life lessons learned this year. (In no particular order).
As well as how I’ll take each lesson ahead into the new year with me to continue growing and thriving.
Life lessons learned in 2022
This is the third time I’m doing a yearly recap, which means I’m approaching 3 years as a holistic time management coach this upcoming January! Woohoo!
As someone whose main passion in life is to just be more of herself, it’s really cool to be able to go back and read past life lessons. It’s amazing to see my healing and progress and say, “Yep! I’m still living and now teaching these lessons I learned two years ago.”
<<Read my life lessons learned in 2021 and 2020>>
Here’s to all of us becoming more of ourselves! 🥂✨
Life Lesson One: Get comfy with uncertainty.
As a digital nomad, I have no idea where I’ll live two months from now. As a business owner, I have no guarantee of a paycheck. When I first started traveling full-time back in July 2020, the uncertainty was absolutely terrifying. To the point of losing hair, tears, and many sleepless nights.
I wanted to be in as much control of my life as I feel like I could be. I wanted to feel at home within myself, no matter where in the world I was. Most importantly, I wanted to get out of my box and see the world. And all of those desires continued to outweigh my anxiety and worry, so I kept on.
It took about 2 years of traveling full-time to get to the place where I landed this summer: Comfortable with uncertainty. At one point, I had no idea where I was going to live the next week. I’ve learned how to be okay with not knowing where I’ll live or where my next client comes from.
I trust that no matter what, I can and will figure it out.
This is a huge, massive, ginormous life lesson that’s taken a lot to learn. However, the amount of peace that I live with is totally worth the effort. So with this, I plan to continue to travel in 2023, let the places I want to live call to me, run my business, and see what happens.
Though, if you’re like, “Yo, you went to an extreme for this life lesson…” you’re right. This leads me to lesson number two.
Life Lesson Two. Find the gray zone.
Black-or-white thinking sucks.
For example, hustle culture and anti-hustle culture. Hustle culture tells us we are worthy if we work all the time, feel exhausted, disregard needing breaks, and neglect our health. Anti-hustle culture says if we’re working hard, we’re doing it wrong. Success in business is somewhere in the messy middle.
Another example, oppressive society and culture tell us we have no agency over our time. Spiritual gurus gaslight us and tell us we have complete agency over our time. The agency we have is somewhere in the messy middle.
Want another? Rigidity versus openness. We’ve been taught time management, structure, and schedules need to be super rigid. Due to anti-hustle culture, many of us have tossed out all structure in the seek for freedom. Structure that truly benefits us is somewhere in the messy middle.
Everything we do and are as humans are in the messy middle ground. The balance between masculine and feminine or yin and yang. As I approach the new year, I want to use this life lesson learned to be even more creative with solutions to any frustration, new ideas, places to travel, and just life in general.
Life Lesson Three. I create my own time paradigm.
As I travel across time zones and cultures, I realize more than ever how deep the societal construct of time runs within us. From what time we should wake up, eat meals, work, and go to bed… it’s all made up. And vaguely changes depending on what country you’re in.
You could make your new year tomorrow if you wanted. Literally.
Of course, with a “normal” job and external constraints, the more you’ll live in society’s construct of time. However, over the last 2.5 years, I have been reclaiming more and more agency over my time (see lesson 2) by choosing how much I want to subscribe to society’s time construct.
The more I define and live within my own time construct, the more manageable my life feels.
So as of now, I’m taking this lesson learned by fully stepping into cyclical planning with my astrological chart. No more going back and forth between the moons and the gregorian calendar.
What this looks like is: I’ll be essentially letting go of months in the traditional sense and planning completely aligned with each new moon. My “new year” will be celebrated on July 23rd, the Leo (my ascendant) new moon.
I’m allowing things on a day-to-day level, and a macro level to take as much time as they want to take. I’m learning more about mother earth and indigenous wisdom.
Life Lesson Four. This shit really works.
As I enter my fourth year of developing holistic time management and coaching people, I am still astounded every time one of my clients creates literal magic.
From starting podcasts, writing books, making tons of money, starting businesses, traveling the world, managing teams more effectively, healing deep wounds, and creating trust and safety within. I’ve witnessed so many amazing humans accomplish deeply meaningful goals and finally be the person they want to be all because they teamed up with time.
Absolutely magical. ✨
Not to brag or anything, but on a personal note, I feel like everyone right about now (late Nov/early Dec) is t.i.r.e.d. where I’m feeling really energized and good. I’ve taken lots of breaks, short and long, throughout the year. I’ve imperfectly stayed balanced while focused on and aligned with my priorities.
I knew this before, but this year I feel like I finally understand it on a deeper, more holistic level with each day and with each person I get to work with.
With this life lesson, I plan to continue healing my own time misunderstandings and doing this deeply meaningful and important work of holistic time coaching.
Life Lesson Five. My home is inside of me.
In November this year, as I traveled on a Bus from Croatia to Bosnia, it finally hit me. There are buses, trees, roads, dogs, construction, and clouds everywhere on this planet.
The only thing that stays constant throughout is me. My heart. My mind. My body.
This life lesson may seem obvious, but it wasn't to me as someone who sought her worthiness and fulfillment through productivity and achievements. My happiness and peace were dependent on my external success and the approval of others.
If this year has taught me anything, what keeps me healthy and makes me successful is listening to myself, my joy, and my gut. Period.
I can leave places and situations that suck. I can speak up for myself. I can do what I need to do to feel safe.
It’s my job to build a strong home for myself, and protect it at all costs.
This is what holistic time management is all about, and I’m excited to see what the next 6 months bring as I now celebrate the new year in July!
What lessons did you learn in 2022?
I’d love to hear in the comments below or send me a DM on Instagram.
Is 2023 the year you get more intentional around your time?
Click here to learn how time coaching can help you thrive in the coming year.
A timeline of my life: Why I became a holistic time management coach
My ancestry and how I grew up deeply impacted me & my time.
The legacy my immigrant entrepreneur family left me wasn’t just a strong work ethic. In my family, there was also workaholism, alcoholism, and perfectionism.
My worth was so tied up in my achievements, in 2013, I finished a college term paper from my hospital bed, sick with a deadly intestinal infection (the same one that kills 30,000 Americans every year and would kill my Holocaust-surviving grandfather two years later) because under no condition could I settle for anything less than an A.
My illness and four miserable months of recovery didn’t cure me of my addiction to hustle and achievement.
After college, in 2017, I got a prestigious engineering job working for the US government, just like my grandparents.
But that time did open a crack in the matrix where a tiny, unexpected seed of another way could silently germinate beneath the ongoing chaos.
First I got into yoga, meditation, reiki, and other healing modalities, and then I started my own business teaching yoga.
I continued to go above and beyond for my work and my beloved to-do list and I said yes to everything that promised to maximize my efficiency.
I passed on hanging out with my friends.
I got annoyed with my husband when he tried to hug me because I needed to get shit done.
I injured myself doing yoga trying to relax.
If only I could be more efficient, I thought, I could catch up with everything I had to do, and THEN I could breathe and enjoy some time off. Right…?
Except I was unhealthy and unhappy and I knew what I was doing wasn’t working.
That seed of awareness had germinated, taken root, and was beginning to sprout.
Me hustling for time off was like that bombing for peace saying. It just wasn’t possible.
There was never going to be space for that new life, for the how of making real, lasting change until I let go of what was draining the life out of me.
One day at a time, over the course of years, I healed what fed the hustle and feelings of unworthiness.
I simplified my life and business and gave that sprout what it needed to grow. And grow. And grow…
It took time but my priorities slowly shifted away from proving my worth by some toxic, external definition of success to an internal one of a simple, authentic human experience.
From a tiny seed in a tiny crack, real change began and ultimately led to my work as a Holistic Time Coach and Educator in 2020.
Time is the most precious resource we have. Capitalism and other oppressive systems exploit all of our time and lives in unequal ways.
Traditional time hacks and management systems are built to work with these systems. They are not the cure for our real time-related problems because they’re not designed to help us lead a more fulfilling, more human life.
They’re designed to make us a more productive commodity in the labor force.
Healing individual and collective time wounds is cultural and intergenerational healing.
I'm still on my journey, peeling back the layers of overdoing in order to reclaim the agency I do have over my time and life within the systems we live in.
My thoughts to those of you who’ve cracked open the matrix but don’t yet know the how?
Breathe.
Continue to breathe space into that crack, even when you feel like you should be doing something “more.”
Know that you are worthy not only of your goals, but also of your dreams and the boundaries, priorities, and self-care that will help you realize them.
Then exhale.
Release the hustle, chaos, and control.
Let go of toxic productivity and achievement-based worth that’s been force-fed to us our entire lives.
Working with me is not just about managing time better (though we definitely declutter your calendar and get realistic about your capacity).
It’s about real change.
And real change requires more than a crack in the matrix, more than quick-fix hacks and bandaid tools on deeper wounds.
This is about believing you, just as you are, are worthy of a life well lived, whatever that looks like to you.
All of the clarity, skills, and steps required to create the fulfilling life you desire emerge from here.
If you’re ready to get real about your calendar and your healing, let’s revolutionize your relationship with time and yourself so the life you want–and deserve!–can flourish.
Learn more about working with me.
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