As business owners, there is a tremendous benefit in reading.
Reading biographies, reading industry-related pieces, reading entrepreneur articles … the list is long, and it’s a worthwhile list. This reading time gives us inspiration and valuable insight into how others approach roadblocks and challenges, how to grow, ways to develop teams, and a plethora of other concepts.
We are in search of the nugget … the light bulb … the ah-ha moment that relates back to us, our business, our team, and/or our clients.
One such article for me was an interview with Shonda Rhimes. Yes, that Shonda Rhimes – the writer and producer of amazing Thursday night TV shows. Talk about a full plate, this talented individual is a wearer of many hats from Shondaland to her home life.
Here’s the magical excerpt
“The writing is still my favorite part. The thing that I work hardest at is carving out time to write every day—four hours that I can shut the door to my office and put on my headphones. I tell myself that that’s what ABC pays me for, in a lot of ways. I’m the storyteller. Our job is making sure the stories are told.” -Myers, Robbie. “Shonda Rhimes on Power, Feminism, and Police Brutality.” Elle. Sept. 23, 2015. Shonda Rhimes Year of Yes.
S T O P!
For months, I’ve been working on figuring out how to do time blocking to maximize the hours in my day. The approaches I’d tried just weren’t right for me. Instead of helping me, they frustrated me. Then all of a sudden, completely out of the blue, while reading a casual article about Shonda Rhimes, I see my brightly lit light bulb!
Although I can’t block off four hours of undivided time in my environment, I possibly could block off two hours.
I CAN block off two hours.
I WILL block off two hours.
Days are filled with emails, phone calls, and questions, so projects that require a heavy dose of my attention can be waylaid as a result. For my two hours, I will focus on the projects that take more of my concentration to complete. And so the test of the Shonda-inspired, two-hour time block began in October, 2015.
Eight months later, I can happily report that this approach to time blocking is what works best for me.
It’s effective and extremely beneficial to many facets of Juice that fall in my purview. From Monday through Thursday, my time block primarily is dedicated to writing for Juice clients and creating proposals. On Fridays, my time block is dedicated to invoicing.
These changes have been instrumental in creating a daily flow that takes care of the quick tasks and the highly-focused tasks that are within each day. It’s been a wonderful thing to find and successfully implement this approach … all from reading an article about an entrepreneur.
Here’s your encouragement to take the time to read and open your mind to the possibilities, solutions, inspiration, and ideas your brain is ready to develop for your environment.