An Alternative to Block-Scheduling || How to Plan Your Day by Rhythms

A few years ago I got really interested in block planning after seeing the success that some other influential people were having with this way of scheduling their days. For a while I found it helpful, until real life started getting in the way. I still acknowledge some of the pros to block scheduling, like dividing your focus and making less decisions, but also see some downsides that affected myself and others. If this method, or others, has felt too rigid or required too much energy to maintain, I want to introduce rhythm scheduling and how a more flexible approach can feel like a better fit for you.

Through my own personal examples, as well as the examples of several different types of women that I have worked with, I'm going to guide you through identifying your own seasons and guideposts for this method. Rhythm scheduling is meant to be flexible, it's allowed to change throughout your year, and it has an emphasis on your actual priorities.

About a few other things...

Do you struggle to create habits that stick? It's not your fault. The truth is simple: you've been trying to form habits using methods designed for perfect robots--not real women living real lives. It's time to change that. If I could help you gain confidence in creating habits AND guide you to uncover the ONE supportive habit to deeply care for yourself, could you commit 21 days to learning this method? The Sticky Habit Method is a 21-day course that revolutionizes the habit-formation process. It's real habits for real women.

Sign up for the Go Getter Newsletter to get Progress Pointers in your inbox every Tuesday.

SHOW NOTES
Try me FREE Class and check out my NEW Habit Course
Leave a rating and review for the podcast!
Lend your voice and experience + be featured on the show HERE
Join Monica on Facebook and Instagram
Songs Credit: Pleasant Pictures Music Club

TRANSCRIPT

Monica: Welcome to About Progress. I'm Monica Packer, a regular mom and recovering perfectionist who uncovered the truest model to dramatic but lasting personal growth. It's progress made practical. Join us to leave the extremes behind and instead learn how to do something to grow in ways that. Women love to blame themselves when they fail at habits, and I am here to tell you that it's not your fault to learn the number one reason why women must do habits differently.

Sign up for my free class of the same [email protected] slash habit class. Again, it's totally free.

I know a lot of people really love YouTube, and I have to admit, there are some things I really love to watch on YouTube. I've brought up Architecture Digest videos where celebrities tour their homes and other like English cottage kind of type channels that I love to watch when I eat lunch sometimes.

But there was this one time where I really got into watching some videos about day planning, and this was after years of, you know, not day planning and then gradually getting back into the goal and day planning world. And as I was collecting momentum in that and getting better at it, I was curious about lots of other method.

And there was this one woman who was really, really popular and for a very good reason, who loved to teach about how she, as a mother of eight, was able to keep up with everything she had to do, both with her children and with the home and at work. And she swore it all came down to a certain type of day planning called Block Scheduling.

And her tutorials were awesome. She has her own planners. I'm even sure many of you know who I'm talking about. This is not me bashing her at all. I was really impressed by it and inspired to try it myself. And I gave it a go for a while. I had my day planner and each night I would block out how my next day would look an hour to maybe two hour segment, sometimes less about, you know, what those hours would entail and what kind of tasks I would do within that time, like that certain block.

While I found it helpful in, in some ways, I also found that pretty soon I was not able to either do the things I said I was gonna do during that block schedule or I would over estimate what I could do or just life would happen. Like a kid would get sick, I'd have to suddenly drop something off at the school.

I had to edit an interview really quick all of a sudden and pretty soon all the energy I put into planning for that day felt like it was pointless. And not only did I lose the energy to maintain block scheduling. I also lost the confidence in myself in being able to do it. Now again, this isn't me bashing how people do block scheduling, nor how this particular YouTuber was teaching it.

It, it really worked well for her and many, many others. And it can really work well for people. And I think why that is is because block scheduling helps you divide your focus in a day. You know, we all have that feeling. We, and, and I think we've all had the experience too, of feeling like a chicken with its head cut off and just running around and not being quite sure where your focus should lie and how terrible that feels, and also how draining that is too.

And block scheduling can help with that. It, it, again, helps divide up your focus so that way you, you take out a lot of the guesswork of what you need to do and when you need to do. And as part of that, another great positive is that you, you can make less decisions. When you have fewer decisions to make then you have more energy to give.

Because decision making takes a lot of energy. So again, tons of positives with the block scheduling. But in my work with women and also with their own time management, which comes up in our coaching, I've also found block scheduling doesn't work for many. And why that is seems to be because it can be too rigid.

That's when you know we have these really specific timeframes that just are too specific and maybe those timeframes, those time blocks rather, are too specific with what duties need to happen during that block, and that can set us up to fail when we have lives that have responsibilities that require us to be more reactive.

And another word for that is we have to be flexible. We have to be able to show up differently in the moment than even we had planned because of these responsibilities. And I think one other reason why is just because there's this hurdle of keeping up with planning so often and so intensely, it requires a lot of energy to maintain a block scheduling system.

So this is when we go back to that image of a chicken with its head cut off and just the frantic running around and it feels like, is that our only alternative then? That we just like be that chicken and not have that focus and, and just always feel like we have to be reactive and put out fires and, no, actually I don't think that's the case.

I don't think that's the only option, either block scheduling or chicken with its head cut off. So I wanna ask you a question. What if we can take the pros of block scheduling without the cons? What if we can take the pros of having more division in our days, less guesswork, less decisions, and more energy, but without the rigidity and the energy of being so intense with planning.

And just that sense of failure that comes when we can't keep it up, like, you know. So if we could do that, would that be something we would all want to do? And my answer is yes. And guess what? I know what it is. Are you ready? The pros of block scheduling without the cons is something I call rhythm scheduling.

Rhythm scheduling to me is definitely a play of block scheduling, but done in ways that fit more of a realistic life. So let me define what rhythm scheduling is. Rhythm scheduling is a way to focus your time management based on the natural daily rhythms of your season. It takes out the guesswork of how to focus your time while maintaining the flexibility you need to show.

I would like to point out a few parts of this and how it makes it different than block scheduling. Rhythm scheduling is seasonal, so one, it matches where you are right now, but two, what's so great about it is you can decide once a season what your rhythm scheduling will typically look like, and you don't have to rewrite it every day in a planner or plan out every single day to the minute it's seasonal, you decide once.

Okay. And when I say seasonal, that can be literally seasonal, like fall, winter, spring, summer, or that can be season of life. You get to decide what that looks. . Another reason why this is different is because within these rhythms, the rhythms are not super rigid like they are with block scheduling. I'm gonna teach you more about that in just a moment, but the timing is not like 8:15 to 9:00 PM That's a block, and this is what we always do in this order.

That's not what this. So tied to that, so it's not rigid with the timing. It's also not rigid with the tasks, meaning you can only do certain tasks during certain blocks or else the whole block scheduling falls to pieces. Rhythm scheduling is different. Not rigid with time, not rigid with tasks. But the third part to this that is a little bit more advanced, but I do want you to adopt with time, is that within rhythm scheduling there are things I call guideposts.

And these guideposts are kind of like ways that we can get centered within our execution of the rhythm scheduling. And those guideposts are that there is still a sense of timing, and meaning we have a general timing that we can focus on and be aware of with rhythm scheduling. Another guidepost is that there are focuses within those rhythms. Focuses?

Focuseses? That's hard, I don't know, we'll just say focuses guys. There are focuses within that, those, those rhythms. So again, the guesswork is not like there, you're not always wondering what am I supposed to do during this kind of rhythm of a day. You have more of a focus and within that you also have tasks that typically go within that time. So that can include other guideposts, like supportive habits, routines, and systems that help each of those focuses thrive. And I'm back to saying focuses now, so we'll just go with that from here on. I think rhythm scheduling would be best illustrated by first teaching you how to do it and applying that to an example of a rhythm schedule that I had before I had my newborn.

So this is kind of the order that you take on as you are sitting in a season. Maybe you've had a shift in responsibilities, maybe you have a shift in health needs that you're facing or someone in your life is facing. Maybe you have a shift in a literal season, like your summer changes the the task you need to do and when to.

So you are in a phase now where you get to sit down and plot this out, and this is how I would do it. You follow these three steps. The first is to identify the rhythms of your typical day. What would a typical day rhythms look like? When I say rhythm, I'm saying a rhythm is a pocket of time. That your day is naturally broken up by the simplest version of rhythms would be morning, afternoon, night.

It can be that broad. In fact, when you are first doing, doing this, I recommend having broader periods of time, pockets of time as your rhythms versus like 30 to 60 minute increments, cuz that can turn more into block scheduling. Although there are some things that that's, that's fine. If that's your rhythm of, of 60 minute increment, that's totally fine.

So again, the first step is to identify the rhythms of your typical day. That's the first step. Before I share the second, I want to give you an example of what this looked like for me when my season was being pregnant with three bigger kids in elementary school all day and one four year old, being in preschool most mornings, and me also working from home.

The natural rhythms my day was broken up by, looked like this: early morning, morning, mid-morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, and night. Now, this has since changed for me, and it's actually just simpler. But then during this season of my life, that's, those were the rhythms of my typical day.

Now, let's do step two. Once you've identified the rhythms, then you match these rhythms with priorities that best fit within. Priorities to me are just general focuses of areas in your life. Okay? And I'm talking about really general, I'll share my examples here. My early morning rhythms priority was me. That was the focus of my early morning time, the morning rhythm.

Its priority were my kids and. Mid-morning was work early afternoon, home and errands, late afternoon to early evening, home and family, and nighttime, me and Brad. Now you'll notice that some of these have more than one priority, a general focus during that rhythm, that pocket of time, and that's okay, but the fewer the better.

I wouldn't do more than two. So we've done the second step, which was to match the rhythms with priorities that best fit within them. Now, the third step to this is to know what task tasks typically can be grouped underneath those priorities. And when I say typically, I mean typical. For me. I didn't even have to sit down and write that out.

I just knew intuitively what types of tasks would go within a certain priority that matched a rhythm of that day. I'll just share half of my rhythm schedule for the time that we already shared. So early morning was a rhythm. The priority was the tasks that went within that priority, usually for me, involved movement, just that getting up and moving my body.

The second rhythm of that day was morning, and the priorities I had within that rhythm were kids and me. Now again, these tasks were not necessarily listed out, but I know in general most days that priority of kids to me were getting my kids ready for school, feeding them, helping them brush their teeth, all those kind of things.

And then as part of it, finishing my workout, cuz I actually spread out my movement and as part of the me focus getting ready too. And then the next rhythm that day was mid-morning was my work time when my preschooler was in school. And work was like, you know, it could range on the tasks. Like some days that meant, you know, checking email, interviewing editing a podcast, coaching someone, every day honestly looked different.

But I knew work was my priority and that also helped me know what tasks to say no to. So I'm not gonna go through the rest of that rhythm schedule for that period of my life. But again, I just want to emphasize here is that there are guideposts to this. Even though I'm not being super rigid about them, I do have a general timing.

So even though it would look kind of different, like some days, the early morning rhythm was me getting up at six 30 and then getting my kids up at seven 15 and shifting to the morning rhythm. So I had like that much time. Other days it would look like me waking up earlier or later, so I had less time, but I still knew the focus was me and I knew what general things I would do within that time.

So we had that guidepost of a timing. and also the focus within that timing and the tasks that went with with them. But one other thing I wanna make sure you're hearing here is that included within those focuses, I knew which supportive habits I need to have during certain times of day to help me feel grounded.

So like, my morning supportive habit would just be the movement, like I knew no matter what I'm getting in some form of movement. The, the morning rhythm with my routines and systems for my kids, those got pretty nailed down over time. But in, in the beginning, you're really just focusing on the more general stuff of timing, having a priority and tasks.

And with time you can add in more of the specificity as needed with making sure you hit other guideposts, like supportive habits, routines, and. I want to briefly review those three steps to creating your rhythm schedule for a certain season. The first was to identify the rhythms of your typical day. The second was to match those rhythms with the priorities that best fit those rhythms.

And the third is to know what tasks typically can be grouped within those priorities. Now I have more tips for you and I actually have real examples from women in this community and their versions of what rhythm schedules look like. But first, let's take a quick break.

Are you realizing that you are at a plateau in your growth and development because your habits are just not supporting who you are and who you want to be? If that's the case for you, I want you to check out my transformational course, the Sticky Habit Method. Here's what one student recently said. The sticky habit method has been the missing piece for me and habit form.

I know it will still not be a smooth road, but the mindset shifts and practical tips will keep me on the path that will help me form habits aligned with my values. Friends, it is time to prioritize yourself by prioritizing. Just even a few ways that you are helping support yourself via habits, you can check out the sticky habit [email protected] slash sticky habit method.

Let's talk about tips before we dig into those examples that I wanna share with you. The first is just to know that your goal in installing a rhythm schedule is to be a little broader and a little bit more flexible than you even think you should be, because the goal is to execute this with flexibility in mind.

That means that we're allowed to still have focuses count, but to have them be done differently depending on what's happening in our lives. In the, in those days, the goal is to execute with flexibility, so it's okay if you start a little bit more broadly. and in fact I would call this rhythm scheduling.

If you start with just morning, afternoon, night, you have one focus during each of those areas and you know, in general what type, type of tasks can go within that. That's your baseline for schedules. On your worst of days, you know that in the mornings you're taking care of things in the house. In the afternoon you're taking care of things with work or your own self-care.

In the evening you are all about family and you know, what kind of things typically go within that. That's all you need to have for your rhythm schedule. You can break it out more over time, but you need this baseline just like we do with habits. You need this baseline for your worst of days or for the times where things are less than ideal or to even just to start to learn this.

So have that base. But just like we do with habits in their baselines, you'll also have highlines too. You'll have more ideals and with time, that's something you can do within rhythm scheduling. You can gradually have more the rhythms broken down a little bit more. You can also have more of those guideposts I talked about, like making sure that you hit certain habits and routines and systems during certain rhythms of your day.

For example, I talk about here having bookend habits that really help you feel supported so that you can show up to everything in between. Feeling more like yourself. So if you had a morning and a nighttime rhythm, you'd wanna make sure that you hit on a certain supportive habit in the morning and one at night for your booking habits.

But you might also have other things, like you need a system for getting the kids ready. You need a system for meal management. You need a system for laundry that you want to make sure you hit during certain rhythms. And you also know typically what day those might be on. So it's okay. It's okay to get to that point where you get more specific and that can honestly be your goal.

But in the beginning, start more broadly and execute with flexibility, and that baseline of this rhythm schedule can build to be more specific and more broken down. Now I get to share some real examples. The first is going to be my own because it has shifted since, you know, before when I was pregnant to now I am working less right now.

I'm actually recording this even before, I've had the baby, but I already know I'm working less. I'm on maternity leave, but there still needs to be some work involved. But, you know, my big kids are at school. I have one kid in preschool half the day, and I have a newborn all day. So this is how, what my rhythms look like.

My rhythms are broken in to morning rhythm, early afternoon, late afternoon and night. And those rhythms to me kind of are marked by transitions and responsibilities. My morning priorities are kids and self. That's when I wanna make sure I'm gonna shower and move somehow and really just take care of the newborn early afternoon.

My priorities are home and kids, so this is when I might be cleaning, doing laundry, doing things around the house and making sure I'm being present with my preschooler and the baby of. My late afternoon rhythms and to early evening rhythm is about family, cuz my big kids come home as well as home and that can involve dinner and food, food preparation and clean up all that stuff.

And nighttime, my priorities there are me and Brad. So that again might be my book in habit at night of having a nighttime routine and me and Brad hanging out. Now you'll notice I didn't put work in there, and that's because that's some of the flexibility for me. My guidepost right now is that when there are naps, I'll try to fit in a little work as needed.

So if I need to just hurrying and insert an ad somewhere in an ad I already prepped, I might do that during, I know when I'm doing that and it's during nap. So that is my current rhythm. That's my rhythm schedule. Now what I'm gonna do is move through some examples of progressors, and I'm going to, these are kind of done categorically, and I will say though, that these are based on real women that I have worked with.

So the first one is the working mom. Her rhythms were naturally early morning, morning, mid-morning, early afternoon, late afternoon and night. And her focuses early morning were, it was listed as self, so she always focused on herself and she had some guideposts there to stretch, to read some scriptures to get ready, her morning rhythm was about her kids and she knew what tasks needed to be there including carpooling and taking her kids to daycare mid-morning. For her at work were her creative work tasks and these were energy creating kind of tasks that would take a lot longer for me to explain, but we'll just say with that, right? Like, we'll just leave it there right now.

Her early afternoon priority was to do depleting work for her. These tasks involve things like emailing and meetings like work that depleted her, her late afternoon rhythm to early evening. The priority was home and family, and she knew what tasks needed to go there, and her nighttime priority was herself again, and that's where she had some guideposts of baseline habits of reading and connecting with.

That was the working mom. I'm gonna move through a few others and I'm gonna do this a little bit more rapid paste. This category is the retired grandma, and I'm just now gonna do this based on the rhythms, her morning rhythm, her priority were her grandkids. Everything that entailed taking care of her grandkids that she would watch in the morning.

Her early afternoon rhythm, her priorities were home, home management and friends. She liked to connect with her friends and she knew which tasks went within that. Her late afternoon rhythm was about herself, and that for her included things like spirituality and movement. Her evening rhythm was all about her spouse and connecting with him, including making and cleaning up dinner together.

And then her nighttime rhythm was about herself again, but in different ways. So that was the retired grandma.

Now let's go to the college co-ed. Her rhythms looked like this and their priorities. The morning rhythm, for her, the priority was all about school. She went to classes. She would go to different study groups, all that kind of stuff.

Her afternoon rhythm was about studying. , her late afternoon rhythm through evening was all about herself. This is when she got in some movement and she took a break. All that, all that kind of good stuff most of the days and her nighttime rhythm were either, her priorities were either going to work or hanging out with friends.

So that was the college co-ed. And again, I didn't break down the tasks of each of those, but she knew like what study looks like for her, what school looks like. . The last one I'm gonna share is the work from home woman. She had her early morning rhythm being focused on spirit and self, and she knew what tasks went with that typically, and they could be flexible.

Again. Her morning rhythm, they were prioritized with home and hobbies. Her afternoon rhythm was about. and she didn't even break down the work there. Like the other working woman we did had hers or just more general. Her afternoon was prioritized by work and the task that went with that, her evening rhythm was family.

Her connecting with her spouse, making dinner and all that, and her nighttime rhythm was back to self and having some guideposts there to help her feel like he. , I hope this examples were helpful. Maybe they would even be better suited if they were visual. So I'm gonna try to figure out how to do that, make that happen on Instagram so you can kind of see that a little bit more clearly.

But no promises because I might be like in the middle of mastitis or something. So if best case scenario, I'll try to break that down visually for you guys on Instagram. If you are following. now, in addition to nailing down what your rhythm schedule will look like for this time and season of your life, I want you to be aware of the cycle of what this will look like initially.

I want you to try it, tweak it, then set it. When you try it again, go back to my advice of being more general, more broad than specific, and then when you try it, you're gonna get some information back that will help you. , tweak it. You can then tweak what your rhythm schedule looks like and that try it and tweak it.

Part of the cycle might be something you do a few times before you do the third part of the cycle, which is to set it. That means you say, this is it. This is typically what my rhythm schedule looks like for this season of my life. , set it, forget it. , that means like you have it there as a guide, you can take away away the guesswork.

You have these guideposts of having general times, general focuses and and tasks that typically go within things. And also having guideposts like with time habits, routines, and systems that can help you too, but you don't have to sit down and plan that out and plot it out every single. . That's the goal of rhythm scheduling.

Again, if we're gonna go back to why this helps, it's the pros of block scheduling. It's, it's, it's helping you divide your focus and take out the guesswork and have less decisions and more energy to give without the cons, which largely resides in the rigidity. That is hard to maintain. And one final note, when you are doing rhythm scheduling, does that mean you can still day plan or should you not?

Or does it mean you should most definitely day plan and don't ever skip it? Guess what? That depends on you, boo . For me right now, I am not day planning. This rhythm scheduling is freeing me up to have that divided focus and those guideposts and, and not have that chicken with its head cut off feeling, but without having to have the energy to do day planning each day because I'm still recovering in maternity leave, trying to get used to having another child and, and I need that ultra flexibility right.

But before this new, this new rhythm schedule of mine, yes, I day planned most days. I usually do the night before. And the way that looked for me was not planning out the block schedule, but it was knowing what my days like appointments were, maybe what things were coming up. And also knowing what specific tasks I would like to make sure I prioritize during a priority, during a rhythm.

So you do you. I would say this is a great way to get back into day planning and it's also a great way to feel focused without day planning . So there you go.

I hope this episode gave you the hug and kick of the pants that you need to grow. I'm gonna share the progress pointers from this episode. This is where I share the notes I took, so you don't have to. And those on my Go-Getter newsletter. Get this in a graphic form each Wednesday. Number one, consider adopting a rhythm.

A rhythm schedule is a way to focus your time management based on the natural daily rhythms of your season. It takes out the guesswork while maintaining the flexibility you need to show up. Second here is the how. Identify the rhythms, pockets of time your day is naturally broken up by. Match them with priorities and know what tasks typically can be grouped under those priorities.

Number three, have a baseline. , a more general focus of your rhythm schedule, and gradually add more specifics known as guideposts, as ready and needed. Things like habits, routines, and systems. And number four, follow the implementation cycle. Try it, tweak it, and set it. Your do Something challenge this week, just one small way you can take action on what you learned is to identify your rhythms, identify those pockets of time.

That's it. Just know what they are. And again, if you wanna start simply just say morning, afternoon, night, before we go. A quick reminder that I'm on maternity leave if you didn't get that already, , and that means that while I did the work ahead of time to make sure this podcast is still going, my own marketing of the podcast is taking a backseat to me, cuddling my baby and doing tons of laundry.

And because of that, I rely on you. The listeners right now to ensure that this podcast is being heard by new people. If you can share this episode with one friend today, I'd be so grateful and to get bonus points if you leave a rating and review on your podcast app. Thank you for stepping up in ways I'm choosing not to right now.

And thank you for listening. Now go and do something with what you learned today.