My 3-7 Time Blocking Method to GET EVERYTHING DONE

If there was a time blocking method that could help you get everything done, would you use it? Here's the thing. Deep down, you know that you are that girl incapable of being that productive woman fulfilling her potential. You just need a system that helps you bring her to life. The problem is so many of us get obsessed with setting up the perfect, most pretty time management system, but then never actually use it. My 3-7 method is unlike any other time blocking system on the internet and it will take you from overwhelmed and hustling backwards to efficiently getting things done. In this video, I'll teach you my unique 3-7 time blocking method, the key to successful hybrid planning, and how to actually be consistent with this system. After years of trying a zillion methods, I developed my own. When I became a working mom, that was desperate to not give up on my dreams and stop burning out. This is not like any other system on the internet and it isn't created by It was created by me, a neuropsychologist with a deep understanding of motivation and overcoming procrastination. But I'm also a mompreneur that has used this method while working both in corporate America and now also working for myself. And I've even taught many women with much success how to use this method for themselves so you can trust you're in good hands. To start, let me show you how to stop killing your productivity with this huge time blocking mistake. Imagine waking up Monday morning. As you open your eyes and push back your covers, you feel a lump in your throat knowing now is the time to get things done for your big goals, your family, and maybe even for yourself. The Sunday scaries has turned into Monday dread and for some reason you feel behind even though the week just started. You think to yourself, okay, let me look at my calendar so I can get an idea of all the things that I need to get done this week. That'll calm me down. However, the pretty and rigid time blocking schedule you set up for yourself in your iCal that was supposed to bring you so much peace has only made you feel more overwhelmed and overstimulated. That's because you're doing time blocking the wrong way if you're just using it in your digital calendar. The magic happens really when you use a hybrid system which is what I teach in my course, Systemize Your Goals. Here's why. Time blocking in your digital calendar is too overwhelming to the eye. Although it starts out pretty, it quickly comes overstimulating in your day-to-day use especially when you're trying to take action using it. Also, your brain eventually will start to ignore preset time blocks because it's just too much to process and actually not having to write it out each day makes it easy for you to just gloss over in your mind and really not take in what it is that you're looking at. So the act of physically writing your time blocking for each day is going to help you actually be more likely to implement what you have written down and be more aware of those important times. Another crucial point is that digital calendars are for scheduling, not time management. I see so many folks on the internet suggesting to manage all your to-dos in your Google Calendar. This is a recipe for disaster. Trust me, I've tried it before. And I cringe when I hear people on the internet instructing to plan out a project in a Google event. It just isn't efficient and it doesn't set you up for actionability or referencing important factors of a project in the future. And trying to schedule every to-do in your calendar is just asking for things to fall between the cracks. Also, putting in a rigid ideal schedule in your digital calendar doesn't work in real life. We need a hybrid system, paper and digital that accounts for real life while also providing structure. But how do you do that? Well, let me show you so you can finally have a system that helps you get everything done. The key to efficient time blocking is very much like organizing a home. Everything has a place and there's no guessing where to put things. And in my 3-7 time blocking method, there's no guessing on where to schedule something. It's all about compartmentalizing for success because what's killing your productivity is not having structure. Letting work bleed into your personal life or vice versa and the decision fatigue of constantly having to decide where to schedule things. So here's how to use my 3-7 time blocking method to compartmentalize for success. Let's start off with the three blocks. So the purpose of the three blocks is it contains your priorities and puts boundaries around work and it helps you save brain power so you know where to put things. And it also protects your energy. So let's talk about those three blocks. The first block is the morning block. That is going to be for routines for you and for your family. The second block is your work block and that's going to be for your career and your business. And the third block is your evening block and that's going to be for you and your family again. And it's really the way these three blocks are set up like a sandwich with the most important pieces being on the ends like bread pieces of a sandwich that hold it all together starting it in in your day focusing on you and your family. So let's dive into the seven part which are the seven routines that go into the three blocks. Hence my 3-7 time blocking method. So in your morning block you're going to have your early morning routine and your morning routine. Your early morning routine is for you. That's when you get to wake up and do self-care like journaling for me. That's when I'm writing my book or maybe you just get up and watch a tv show. Whatever it is just to have some time for yourself before the rest of your family especially if your mom your kiddos or if you're a pet mom. You know you have to walk the dog and all those kinds of things. This is a good time for you before you have to answer to emails before you have to answer your family. This is your time to yourself. And the second routine in your morning block is going to be what I just call your morning routine. That's to send off your family. So that's like getting your kiddos off to school and then I also things like your cleaning routine to kind of set up for the day. That's when I do like my first cleaning routine which for me is just like unloading the dishwasher and kind of doing clutter check that kind of thing. I also follow up my morning routine going back to myself with my workout. So you can kind of devise these two routines for yourself. If you can't get everything done in your early morning routine you might have to do a little bit extra for yourself like your workout or getting yourself ready after kids leave. But those are going to be your two main routines in your morning block. Then in your work block the first routine is your a.m. work routine. This is when you're going to do the work that you have decided to batch for that day. You're going to have a work routine that really includes for that morning a.m. routine no more than three to do's or tasks. And it's really ideal is to set up yourself when you're time blocking in that like 8 to 12 before lunch routine. One to two deep work tasks is really ideal in what you want to set up. Then you're going to have your lunch routine where you're going to eat and I usually also run errands during this time. This is kind of break up the work day and also have making sure that you are stopping to take care of yourself stopping to eat stopping to take a break. And then the last two routines in your work block are going to be your batch work for the afternoon. So you're continuing your batch work which you've decided to batch for that day. And this is your block to do either two to three to do tasks or one to two really deep work tasks during this block. And that's followed by ideally a 30 minute but anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes is going to be great for you. Actually I got this idea from Ashlyn Carter but a wind down work routine. So that's where you clear off your desk you capture anything you maybe wrote on post-its or your little whiteboard and you put that into your second brain or wherever you log your running to do list. You capture that there so that way you can clear your desk of to-do items. You plan your day for the next day and you kind of set up your desk so when you walk in the next day to your desk it's kind of singing to you. It's like an inviting place to start work again. And then we have one routine in our evening block our evening routine that's going to be again for you and your family. So you're going to do your cooking your cleaning routine you're going to do your bedtime routine with your kids you're going to do your self-care routine evening routine when you put your kids down. And those are your three blocks in your seven routines that are going to help you be more efficient and get everything done and have containers for things everything's going to have its place so you can have energy conservation you're going to have boundaries and you're going to make sure that everything is going to be getting done in the appropriate time. And then let's talk about those batch days within your work routines. I actually have batch days for work and home and this really takes away the to-do list dread and anxiety and panic because even if let's say you forget to plan your week or forget to plan your day you know what to expect because this is my Monday this is when I do all my CEO admin tasks this is my filming day or this is my report writing day or this is my meeting day even if you don't have everything time blocked to a tee because you have those batch days you know what you're going to be working on that day even if you have to flush it out a little bit later. So to help you out I want to take a look at my weekly ideal batch days. I have been going to put it up for you on the screen just so you can have an idea of what I do in my a.m. and p.m. batch days. Monday is kind of like where I do my admin tasks I call it my CEO day. Tuesday is like business development and also like self-development as far as business education. I will do that on Tuesdays. Wednesday is reserved for scripting my YouTube videos. Thursday is like a neuropsych day mostly and then I also save some time for any catch-up of things that I haven't got done usually it's scripting videos. Friday is a filming day and then at the end of my p.m. batch on Fridays is my weekly review and planning. So my weekly review is when I go through my second brain and all the tasks and to-do items I've captured in my second brain in my running to-do list and schedule everything out and also plan my week. Saturday is family fun day that's also when I do my zone cleaning my weekly home blessing kind of resetting for the week and Sunday is renew your spirit day that's when I try to get in some self-care take things a little bit easier sometimes we have a babysitter come on Sundays for a couple hours so I can kind of do some self-care for myself so that is kind of an idea of how I do this for myself but you're going to set it up for yourself in a way that works for you in your life but just make sure that you are batching like tasks and items together this is going to help you be more streamlined and put your life on autopilot when it comes to using this 3-7 time blocking method and I will say if you feel like these batch days don't give you enough time to do all that you want to do I want you to accept your limitations and streamline and focus instead of bleeding into expanding your work into your morning and evening blocks this is going to be crucial for your success even though it's not work those two pieces of bread are crucial for you to keep this system going so if it's not fitting in those batch days that you have maybe you have too much set for yourself to do either you need to streamline you need to delegate or you need to set something for another season and really accept where you are and it doesn't mean you give up on things but it does mean that you're going to be more realistic so you can be more lethal when it comes to achieving your goals so some tips for success in using this 3-7 method is to time block daily I like to do it at the end of the day also be flexible I use erasable pens when I'm doing this and I include things like breaks and buffers because I know things usually take longer than I think they're going to take I also use things like the pomodoro method when I'm working especially on deep work so that I can make sure I have a good amount of time before taking a break I also have like that catch-up block that I mentioned before that's going to help you troubleshoot any things that are taking longer and any urgent tasks that may come up where you just need some wiggle room in your schedule to account for oh there's a daycare calling my kids are sick I just lost a whole day or half a day whatever it is but here's the thing most people fail here because their days are only time blocked with to-dos putting out fires or emerging urgent tasks without anything to maintain themselves or the system but when you add the next step you're able to build a time management system that you can stay consistent with and take care of yourself and your family in the process so some of you know when I became a new mom I really struggled my home was frequently a mess I'd scramble at dinner time and I was of course sleep deprived like most new moms and my to-do list was running me and not the other way around I had big goals that I didn't want to give up on just because I was a new mom now but I didn't have the time or the energy anymore to just push through plus I had a husband and a family now that needed me to run the household and be present with them and not just my goals before I had survived really on manic hustling and push through and usually when I was crushing it at work or in grad school my home and my personal life suffered but that just wasn't working for me anymore as a wife and as a mother my husband actually had to sit me down one day after one too many days of bringing my laptop to the bed and say look I know you have big ambitions but we need you too the word stung because I felt so guilty knowing that he was right this was not the type of wife and the type of mother that I wanted to be I wanted to be a present mom with a peaceful home for my family and I knew when it was time to work I had to show up as my best self my most energetic self if I was going to reach these big goals that I set for myself at first it was really hard to find a system that worked and after researching endlessly trying to figure out how other working moms were doing it all like the organized money fly lady cat the lazy genius maddie james chelsea joe just to name a few I came up with my own weekly non-negotiable system that is the maintenance companion really to my 3-7 time blocking method to keep it all going so now I can step into each week with me and my family fueled and fed and without the mental clutter and the overwhelm really and this simple strategy super simple is truly what helps me set a foundation to be more productive and efficient because I have the capacity to do so so let me show you exactly how to do this for yourself weekly non-negotiables first of all you're going to do this in your digital calendar these are going to be in your digital calendars as recurring events because this is going to act as placeholders so that when you go to plan your week and you're looking at what appointments that you need to pull from your digital calendar to your paper planner those will show up like appointments those are those things that are non-negotiable like those appointments which I call must-dos and they will have a place in your life even when life gets busy to bring you back to like I said they're going to be that container for those so there's two types of things that you'll have as weekly non-negotiables your must-dos those are things like appointments things like taking your kids to the doctor if you don't show up to there will be a consequence okay your must-dos meetings, appointments and then there will also be your weekly routines those are your weekly non-negotiables that will be in your digital calendar then when you're doing your weekly review you're going to transfer your non-negotiables from your digital calendar to your paper planner in the weekly planner so if you use the modem mission planner you have all types of planning pages you have quarterly you have monthly you have weekly and you have daily and that really is to keep you on track you don't have the modem mission planner you're just using your favorite planner make sure that you have some sort of way to do weekly planning and daily planning if you don't do anything else the most important is weekly you're going to transfer those non-negotiables to your weekly planner and then around those things that you have already said these things have to get done at these times they're non-negotiable you're going to add in your to-dos where they go and those blocks that you have and those routines that you have around those appointments okay and that's how you're going to keep this system going you're going to transfer your non-negotiables to your weekly planner and add to-dos for your task management system that you prioritize for this week around your non-negotiables for me I capture everything as far as task management in my Notion second brain using my co-task management system which I teach in my systemize your goals course I recommend whatever you use for your task management you do it digitally using a project management software so it doesn't have to be Notion it could be Trello, Asada whatever that you like but keeping your running to-do list and organizing for actionability digitally that way you don't have to rewrite each week because we got things to do we cannot be rewriting a long running to-do list and rewriting projects you know by hand each week if you absolutely prefer it I do offer a binder system of the Notion second brain or if you're looking on how maybe you don't want to get my Notion second brain template and you want to implement it into your own system if you get the pdf version you can just transfer that to your own system because it shows you how to set it up in there but the basic idea if you just want to do this on your own is to capture everything in a running to-do list that you will organize and prioritize each week and add those priorities for the week in your weekly planner when you're planning your week so how do you determine these daily and weekly routines that you're going to be implementing as non-negotiable recurring events I use my habits and routines organizer I do have a habits and routines Notion template that you can use essentially the idea is you want to come up with what you value most and you're going to devise habits for each life domain so in your family in your home at work what habits are going to support what you value most right now and then those habits you're going to transfer into routines meaning when are you going to do them how are you going to stack them together into routines and then that's what you're going to be tracking in your habit tracker so what do you want to add in your a.m morning routine what do you want to add into your evening routine but also what are those non-negotiables that you're going to do each week so essentially your weekly routines that are going to support you in your family so I'll put up on the screen a screenshot of my weekly non-negotiables those are going to be things like obviously my meetings and appointments but things like my weekly home blessing where I refresh my home my weekly zone cleaning which usually ends up being decluttering so I do an hour each I also do things like my weekly planning my weekly review those sorts of things so what is it for you I also have like a bookkeeping meeting that I have for myself those are those things that are just going to keep your system going keep your home going so that you can step into each new week feeling fueled and feeling ready I also have things like meal planning and meal prep just to name a few I want you to decide that for yourself so you can know okay I have this 3-7 time blocking method I also have these weekly non-negotiables that are keeping my system going keeping me and my family fueled and you don't want to just raise chickens on paper as Fly Lady Kat says through planning all these habits and routines you really want to be focusing on initiation and consistency in my course Systemize Your Goals I do have a bonus module called Neuro Spicy and Productive and a discipline system module that really helps you focus on staying consistent and initiating tasks if you are neurodivergent some of my favorite things to do that I teach in the course are using timers also sticking to the rule of just 5 minutes so saying to yourself I'm just going to do this 5 minutes and if I want to stop I will most of the time you won't but you don't have the guarantee that you have to continue and that just gets you initiated and doing the thing that you set out to do each week as your non-negotiable if you're having trouble sticking to what you set out in your batch work working in a different room that can kind of make give you like a little dopamine boost using accountability especially using other people with a negative consequence or habit tracking with a negative consequence that type of accountability research has shown is to be most effective in helping us build new habits and sticking to our goals so any way you can effuse being accountable to another person is going to be helpful I do have an accountability group so it's the VIP accountability group shout out to the women in that group that we go over our goals each week we hold each other accounting I do goal coaching from me a neuropsychologist these are people that have taken my program systemize your goals and then upgraded to the accountability coaching the group is closed right now but I will be opening it again at the end of the year in Q4 so if you're interested I will put a link to the wait list for the accountability coaching below so you now know how to time block the right way but if you don't know how to manage your to-do list this is going to all fall apart so watch this video next and I'm going to show you how I do my weekly review to tame the mental overload that comes with managing all the to-do's and just as a friendly reminder that you are that girl and your most productive self just needs a system that supports her to fulfill her greatest potential I hope this video helped give you just that cheers to planning, manifesting and enjoying your dream life namaste