Be in the Know
- Would you rent out your living room for a few hours? This startup is counting on it.
- Spotify is offering podcasters something they can’t get anywhere else.
- YouTube tests bigger thumbnails. Apparently, users aren’t feeling it.
- Dasani is rolling out aluminum packaging for water.
Time Blocking for the Win
Who doesn’t want to be more productive?
🔉Crickets.
We all do.
Enter the world of time blocking. Time blocking is pretty much like it sounds. You set aside chunks of time devoted to specific tasks. Instead of working by the clock, you can focus on finishing big and small tasks one at a time.
Time blocking in the wild: Lauren is a social media manager. She sets aside 2 hours every Monday morning (say 8a-10a) for her content calendar. That’s all she’ll focus on every single Monday from 8am-10am.
The goal of time blocking is to help you limit distractions and get laser-focused on the task at hand. No more random to-do lists, but rather a well-oiled machine filled with time blocks.
Here are a few simple tips to get started:
- Determine the tasks you to need time block: Start by thinking about your long-term and short-term projects. Make a list of your daily tasks. Examples: responding to emails, posting to social, customer service, etc. Identify and list two or three of these types of tasks for your week ahead.
- Determine how much time to block for each task: If you’re new to time blocking, it’ll take some time to notice patterns. Do your best to note how long it takes to complete your tasks.
- Block time for your hardest tasks: A majority of folks feel most productive at the start of their workday. Set aside at least one hour to your highest-priority task at the start of your day.
- Schedule your blocks: Once you have a handle on your tasks and the time it takes to complete them, it’s time to put time blocking into action. There are a lot of options when it comes to time block scheduling. We prefer Woven. It allows you to easily create templates for each task block and reuse them based on your week-by-week schedule.
A Smarter Calendar
Now that you’re ready to start time blocking, we have a tool for you.
It’s called Woven. We featured it before and got some amazing feedback.
If you use Google Calendar or G Suite, the new Woven calendar is a time blockers dream. Track your time, color code, add colleagues and more within templates for each task block.
The best part? It’s free. Sign up today. Your productivity will thank you.
Watch
Serious Delivery
Jimmy John’s is serious about delivery.
So serious that they’re running a giveaway for a $250k house within a 5-mile radius of a Jimmy John’s location.
The restaurant “can’t deliver sandwiches to our customers who live outside of our delivery zones, but we can deliver our customers to our sandwiches,” says CMO John Shea.
To enter the sweepstakes, folks are required to submit a 250-word essay. Feeling lucky?
