Productivity Hacks: How to Use Time Blocks to Grow Your Business With Facebook Parties
Now that you’ve had your Work-From-Home Business Retreat and learned how to practice these 3 Party Planning Habits, you’re ready to jump into creating a schedule that will move your business forward without sacrificing more time with the family.
“Routines are the order in which you perform certain tasks and a schedule is the order you perform those tasks with a time assigned to each of them.” - KellyPaull (Check out her article for more tips)
Today, we are looking at ways you can maximize your scheduling efforts with Time Blocking!
Why Time Blocking is perfect for work-from-home businesses
When you’re working from home, it’s harder to create clear boundaries for your mind to shift from home-mode to work-mode, then back to home-mode.
But scheduling every minute of your day can be intimidating and impractical (especially if you have kids).
Instead, try a technique called Time Blocking. It’s basically a bigger chunk of time that you would assign a task and just work on that task for as long as you can during that time block. Then you take breaks and prepare for the next block.
The beauty of this technique is there’s less pressure to accomplish a billion little tasks in a given minute, and then feel guilty that you didn’t finish them on time.
You can also be more flexible with your Time Blocks. For one day this chunk of time might be focused on meal planning. But the next day, it can be focused on Party planning.
Similarly, this makes it easier to account for things that come up randomly that have to be taken care of right away. Just switch this block of time for another moment in your day, or scootch it to tomorrow, because this moment is happening now. It’s all good!
We learned how to set up a basic schedule for keeping your Facebook Parties organized in our last articles, so be sure to pin these to check out later:
- Successful Online Party Advice for Top Producers
- 11 Paper Planner Tips to Keep Your Facebook Parties Organized
- 6 Digital Tools to Keep Your Facebook Parties Organized
How to Use Time Blocking Effectively
- Once you’ve gone through your calendar and marked all your important appointments and dates with family and personal activities, you can see the time blocks available for working on your business.
- Now you can look at all those time blocks, go over those monthly goals you set during your retreat, and begin assigning tasks.
TIP: Plan out goals and projects by rotating tasks in your Time Blocks through the month.
- What do you do after your block of time is up? Take a breather! Take a short walk, drink some water, listen to music, stretch, etc. Taking a break to disconnect from the previous tasks, allows your brain and body to shift from one assignment to another.
Let’s say your Work Block is Mon/Wed/Fri from 10-12. You might plan for your Facebook Parties like this:
- Monday: Hostess Coaching - contact hostess and let her know how excited you are about her Party, and what steps she can take today to get things rolling.
Maybe mail out the hostess packet, and ask for her guest list, etc.
- Wednesday: Set up the Facebook Party Group with initial posts and instructions ready-to-go.
Reach out and message friends and potential customers/hostesses/team members, to say hi and build relationships.
This also boosts your posts on their feeds when you’re conversing.
- Friday: Prepare social media posts for the next couple of weeks-month for your communities and up-coming Facebook Parties.
Prepare notes and items for any live videos for the Party.
As you can see, any of these tasks can roll over to the next day if needed. Or if you finish up early, you can get a head start on the next assignment. But having these tasks listed out in your planner or organizing app, is a great way to stay on track.
Remember, each week might look a little different, too.
During the same work blocks for Mon/Wed/Fri from 10-12, each week’s tasks might look like this for the month:
- Week 1: Create graphics and posts for new monthly specials and products. Focus on booking with incentives. Build relationships with your communities. Start up new team members.
- Week 2: Hostess coaching, social media posting and videos. Customer care.
- Week 3: Prep for and run Facebook Parties and community activities. Showcase monthly specials in fun videos and games.
- Week 4: Follow ups, customer care, close Party orders, and love on your hostesses. Reach out to potential team members, and bookings.
Similarly, each month might have different goals.
One month might be heavy with personal Parties and customer care.
Another month might be all about cultivating new team members and their Parties, etc.
But the secret for making progress is keeping your time blocks consistent and just keep rotating those tasks.
More Tips to Build Your Time Blocking Skills
- Spread your blocks apart to give you extra time between tasks during your day. This helps you adjust to a new assignment.
- Remember to have an easy day during the week to relax and recharge.
- Similarly, create an easy week every month to help catch up on tasks or focus on more family time.
- Create a space in your home that is energizing and triggers a mindset shift to be productive for your business. Appeal to the senses to switch to work mode. You can try:
- Smell: candle, incense, flowers, oil diffusers, etc.
- Taste: chew gum, grab an energizing snack or drink, or just water.
- Hear: listen to calming music such as instrumental classical, or a productive flow playlist on Spotify or Pandora. Wear headphones and keep the volume low, just enough to help your mind stay on task,
- See: calming colors for your workspace can cut back on distractions, or feeling anxious. But also colorful accent pieces can make you smile and feel happy and uplifted. Word art is a beautiful way to remind you of affirmations or values for your business. Lighting is important not only to make sure your eyes are cared for as you work, but also to engage your senses to feel more alert.
- A quick meditation or prayer before starting work tasks help to quiet the mind and focus on the assignments ahead.
- Also, having a quiet moment or going on a short walk when you finish work tasks helps transition your mindset to home life.
- Try working for 30-60 min. At a time to get focused, intentional tasks done. Take breaks for only 10 minutes to stretch, drink water, walk around, etc. But not too long before returning to work, so you don’t lose that focus.
- Focus first on the most important 20% of tasks that will move your business forward.
With Facebook parties, that is usually about creating connections with hosts, customers, and team members, as well as new contacts.
This also includes creating fresh content for social media that highlights your products in a conversational way.
Continue to build your work-from-home business skills by checking out the other articles in this series:
Next Steps
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