Hate Rigid Schedules? Meet Your New Go-To Scheduling Method: Theme Blocking

Let me guess…you became an entrepreneur so you wouldn’t have to follow some rigid schedule or set of processes that seemed pointless. You want to do things YOUR way. You want freedom. I get it — me too.

If you hate the feeling of being forced into a rigid schedule, you’re not alone. Techniques like time blocking can feel like the freedom you value so highly is being snatched away from you. Not fun. 

Often I see entrepreneurs swing from the extreme of planning only what has a true deadline (e.g., meetings and deliverables) on the one end to trying to plan every minute of every day on the other. It’s not all that surprising that neither of these are the right fit.

Unfortunately, this leads to a severe lack of productivity and efficiency, which in turn often results in having to constantly put out client fires, working odd hours, and always feeling like you’re playing “catch up”. In other words, it leads to being reactive in your business instead of proactive. This is also…not fun. Furthermore, it doesn’t feel very free, does it?

Enter theme blocking

Theme blocking is a far more flexible way to plan your days (or even weeks or months) and I’ve seen a lot of success in business owners that know they need to plan more/better and have better control over their schedule…but they also kind of want to do what they want to do when they want to do it.

Theme Blocking in Short

Theme blocks can be any length of time. Sometimes they are an hour long and sometimes an entire day. You might even find that you prefer to set a theme for the week or month. Some inner circle members do morning and afternoon theme blocks as well. 

This system is completely flexible and is really meant for the schedule-haters among us. 😊

What should your themes be?

Working in your business vs. on your business. Working in our businesses is usually pretty easy…so easy that it can often take over every minute of your workday (and sometimes more) not leaving any space left for creativity and strategy — in other words, working on your business. The first two themes I would look at are how you are juggling the two right now (e.g., 10% of time spent working on and 90% of time spent working in your business) and how you can improve it. If you’re at 10/90, can you set a theme block goal of “Marketing Monday Morning” and shoot for getting something done on marketing sometime Monday morning?

Themes are not meant to be highly rigid, just provide some mild structure and focus points.

Here are my theme blocks:

Creativity & Strategy: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday

Admin and work in my business: Tuesday and Friday

I add the themes to both ClickUp and my Google Calendar so that I am not distracted and remember what I’ve decided to focus on that day.

This doesn’t mean I never have to work in my business on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday…but those are the THEMES…they’re what I try to focus on.

I try to put any admin items on Tuesdays and Fridays like replying to flagged emails. This has worked wonders for my ability to focus. It allows me to really create the mental bandwidth and space I need to make things happen. Tuesday and Friday are great too because I know I am just plowing through my to-do list and don’t need the creative side of my brain. 

Don’t be afraid to switch things up

As mentioned last week, I’ve been having a few insomnia flare-ups and strategy is really hard those days SO, all I did was switch my themes and I made Tuesday a strategy day. That way, I could mindlessly plow through my to-do list on Monday. This meant I created space for Tuesday to be my strategy focus day.

What theme blocks have you used? (Or are you considering?)

Throw out your ideas below and let’s chat! 

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