I've said before (probably ad nauseum) how important block scheduling is—the creation of immovable, non-negotiable blocks of time on your calendar in advance to get the important stuff done.
Every client I work with gets the speech from me, I've had several workshops on the idea, and I use it myself...mostly. Like the cobbler whose children are always barefoot, there are times when I, the most ardent advocate for block scheduling in the world, allow my schedule to become chaos and mayhem, overwriting my sacred time, forgoing the important work in the face of the urgent, agreeing to meetings during my deep work time, and generally just ignoring my own good advice.
Last quarter, that absolutely happened. I had a lovely, orderly block schedule that worked beautifully for about six weeks, and then I rolled a grenade into the room and blew it to smithereens. I was taking meetings during my writing time, skipping lunch for networking calls, literally never working out, and basically steamrolling my calendar with my own good intentions.
Over my Q2 planning weekend, I realized I had to knock that shit off. I read somewhere on Twitter that the key to never feeling overwhelmed is recognizing how much work you can get done in 90 focused minutes, and it was the bucket of cold water to the face that I needed.
I sat down, opened my calendar app on my phone, and immediately cleared out all my old block scheduling and created a new one, that gave space and time to the work I had to do at both my companies, left me time to exercise, and corralled my email and admin work into two shorter blocks every day.
It was a relief, and incredibly freeing, to see how much time I still had left in every week for those meetings that inevitably pop up, for networking, for client work, and for lunch. (Lunch is important, folks.) Now that I'm re-organized, I also feel re-energized, and ready to tackle whatever comes my way this quarter.