The Time Blocking Hack That Changed My Business

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0:32I can't wait to see you there. One of the very first things I did in 2025 is quarterly breaks. Three days vacation, so my brain comes back to itself, is relaxing and vibing. And then we get into some time to talk about business because we're vibrating at a different business frequency. Welcome back to the Jasmine Starr Show. Today, we're going to be talking about productivity, but even more specifically, time blocking. Time blocking for personal and business development. Y 'all, this is what I love. If you've ever felt like you've been doing everything in your business and not working on the business, like your days are filled with all the things to do, tasks, Zooms, meetings, and you find yourself exhausted and you are running on steam, then this show is for you.

1:17Also, if you're a person who runs a business or multiple businesses, and like me, is also building a personal brand and creating content, you're expected to create new thoughts, ideas, and podcasts, videos, newsletters, and content. Okay, doing this on an empty tank is nearly impossible. Welcome. This show is for you. Before we move on, I want to shout out KLO67 for leaving the following review and ranking this show. Needs 10 stars. Absolutely amazing. It always keeps me listening. Definitely excited for the next one. End quote. I appreciate that. And if we can get 10 stars, I'll take them. Today, I'm going to quickly go over how I time block my quarters for personal development before I create my annual business plans, aka me first, business second.

2:07Back on January 30th, I aired episode 514, where I walked you through how my team and I spent a few days in Park City, Utah. We did that in December to set business plans for 2025. Now, I'm going to link that in the show notes for you to watch it on YouTube because it was a vlog that I turned into a podcast and we got a lot of great feedback about it, but the vlog actually shows things that the podcast didn't. Ooh, okay. What I did not say in that episode was that before the leadership team arrived in Park City, I woke up at 5 a.m., I turned on the fireplace and I started blocking time on my calendar.

2:44In 2024, I read entrepreneurship books and I listened to entrepreneurship podcast and I noticed a common theme. Founders need to take time away. They need to get away. They need to see the business from the outside. They need to focus on big picture strategy. While I did take time to get away on my own in 2024, it was last minute, wherever I could squeeze it in. I would kind of like squeeze in two or three days here and there, but I was just responding to my calendar demands. I wasn't in control of it. This year, I made three changes to my calendar at the start of the year, and I wanted to share them with you.

3:21So maybe you can add them to your calendar as well. The first is quarterly checkouts. This is a five-day minimum. So I'm doing three vacation days and two work days. I'm doing this every quarter, but I am blocking out five full days, three vacation, two working days. And so what I do is I set my intention before the trip. I am telling myself and my business partner, we're gonna take three days off and we are going to just enjoy. We're going to relax. We're going to hibernate. And then two days after we've kind of turned our brain off and like defritzed, what we can do then is think about the business from a different perspective.

4:00Now, I'm also taking these like quarterly checkouts because I'm committed to journaling through the process. And I know that it sounds very much woo and people are like, I'm not much of a journaler. Neither was I. And I wasn't a journaler until I started working with my mentor and she had explained, you need to write it down. The easiest way to actually think about it was you're just documenting the process so you can look back. But quite honestly, what happens is there is a mind-body connection to actually seeing your words and taking time to slowly write things out. It changes the cadence of your brain.

4:31It changes the cadence of the frequency, and you start thinking and doing things differently. So last year, my husband and I went to Cabo San Lucas. It was September 2024, and it was our anniversary. but I also journaled business non-negotiables and our new core values for the businesses that we were gonna build. And that was a strictly personal vacation, but we had taken some time off and I realized that my brain kind of softened. If I was being honest, my brain just started vibrating at a different frequency. So what happens is I've noticed that my brain keeps on going and thinking in a certain way and a pattern when it comes to business.

5:10But when you take a step back, When you go slower, but you're not stopping, things happen to unfold in a different way. And I had to leave myself open for it. So even though it was a personal vacation, I woke up before my husband and daughter and was able to think about our business. Now, I don't know if I would have had so much clarity about our new core values, about the direction we were moving in 2025, had I not taken a step back. So I began understanding how important it was. But if I don't build time into my calendar for those moments, I won't be getting those moments. So that was one of the very first things I did in 2025 is quarterly breaks, three days vacation.

5:48So my brain comes back to itself, is relaxing and vibing. I call this the Mai Tai brain. And then we get into some time to talk about business because we're radiating, we're vibrating at a different business frequency. Now, the second thing I have done for productivity and time blocking is what I call deep dive days. Now, deep dive days are denoted on my calendar one day a month where I have no meetings and I have no tasks. This is where I do deep work. I'm working on ideas for 2027, not 2025. I'm keeping the big goals, the big goals. And what I want to do during these deep dive days is outside of doing tasks that keep the ball moving forward, I wanna reflect on how we're trending for our goals in the future.

6:39These deep work days are a time for me to go to a co-working space. Maybe I'll go to the beach. And what I'm doing is I'm breaking up the norm and saying, I need to think about the big goals, not just the goals that are here in this quarter or in this year. That is what one day a month is dedicated for. How are we trending and how are we going to be achieving those big goals in two or three years? The third and final benefit that I have seen by making these changes is that by not having meetings before 11 a.m., I've found myself doing a lot more concentrated work faster. I'm not getting distracted by having multiple thoughts competing for my attention.

7:18And one thing that I unexpectedly noticed as a great thing was that these morning hours have empowered me to create different types of content for LinkedIn. So in 2025, a big push for me has been moving to creating more content, deep written content on LinkedIn. And so does it feel messy? Does it feel scrappy? Does it feel all over the place? Perhaps. But I also know that when I can do concentrated work, I'm building out my personal brand. So Instagram has always been my main platform. But as I move into serving different and a little bit more advanced markets, I know that LinkedIn is going to be a really great way to expand my personal brand.

7:56So I can't abdicate that responsibility. I can't abdicate my thought leadership or things or my perspectives to a copywriter. I think it's possible. I just don't think it's likely for me. So one of the benefits have been able to expand my voice and brand by way of having concentrated information. So let's go back and distill down what we're talking about productivity and productivity specifically for time blocking from personal perspectives and business. A quarterly break that has been planned in advance. We know all of our quarterly breaks for 2025. These are do not touch zones. This is when we're going to go on vacation and we're going to work on the business.

8:34In addition to this, we will also be taking personal vacations and those are going to be a little bit more ad hoc. We're going to throw those in where we can fit them in. Secondly, we have deep work days. These are days where I'm working on 2027 and 2028 goals and not just working in the business that is in for 2025. And the last thing I'm doing is no meetings before 11am. Yes and amen. Super excited about that because what it's done is concentrated my working hours and that has caused and empowered me to expand in different directions. I hope more than anything, you are getting more done with the precious time that you have.

9:08Time is our most precious commodity. It is something that must be defended and protected because it is not a renewable resource. You can always make more money, but you can always have more time. And so I hope that with these productivity tips, you are building your business in a strategic and different way. I wish you all the best. If you have any questions, reach out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram. If this show has meant anything to you, please, a five-star review and sharing it with a friend would be amazing. Have a great and beautiful day. Thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Starr Show.