KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Conquering Time Blocking Understanding the Pitfalls and Overcoming Distractions!

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

SummaryThis episode is a masterclass in making time blocking actually work for you. The discussion goes beyond the simple act of scheduling and reveals the psychological and practical pitfalls that sabotage even the most well-intentioned plans. You'll learn how to overcome common distractions, deal with unexpected interruptions, and build a resilient system that helps you protect your most valuable asset: your time.Key TakeawaysRecognize the Pitfalls: Understand that time blocking often fails not because of the method itself, but because of a lack of preparation and an inability to handle interruptions. The episode highlights common mistakes like over-scheduling, not building in buffer time, and a failure to communicate your plan to others.Overcoming Digital Distractions: Learn tactical strategies for minimizing distractions from your phone and email. The discussion emphasizes the importance of turning off notifications, using a dedicated focus mode, and batching tasks like checking email and social media to protect your deep work sessions.The Power of the Pomodoro Technique: Discover how to maintain focus and energy throughout the day. The episode provides a blueprint for using the Pomodoro Technique—working in focused sprints followed by short breaks—to improve concentration and prevent burnout.Communicate Your Boundaries: Understand that your time is a valuable resource that you must protect. The episode highlights how to set clear boundaries with clients, colleagues, and family members to ensure your scheduled work sessions are respected and you can maintain your productivity.Topics:Time blockingOvercoming distractionsProductivity tipsTime managementFocus techniquesCall-to-ActionReady to take control of your schedule and your day? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and master the art of time blocking!

Do you actually remember the first time that you tried time blocking? Well, let me ask you this. How did it actually go? Did it work for you? Well, you probably didn't master the time blocking the first time that you actually did it. And that's no fault of your own. You see, we know that time blocking is something that we all need to do. In theory, it's actually quite straightforward and simple.

piece of paper, time blocked it out and do X at this particular time on this particular day of the week. But in practice, it's actually quite difficult. Now, working with so many individuals across the world, one thing that I have come to experience is how to help individuals to master time blocking. And what I'm going to share today is really going to help. you to start to get to that point of mastery. And it all starts with this. One of the stats that I've actually come out is individuals that do not time block, they seem to get to a point where there's high levels of frustration, anxiety. In fact, those levels of frustration isn't anger to the outside world.

It's actually anger on themselves because they seem to procrastinate way too much. And at the end of the day, they have this little bit of regret, oh, I wish I'd done that. Or end of the week, if only I had done that, this would have actually happened. And that ultimately boils down to time blocking. So through the stats of what I've actually come to realize is if you can time block in an effective manner, it's actually going to increase your productivity by nearly 73%. and that is actually something that's really going to help you grow in your business because ultimately productivity is what helps you to move forward.

But there's a little factor to it. And this actually surprised me when I was speaking with so many of the clients and even the ones that are trained in our time block mastery course is their optimism for the future increases. You see, once you put time blocking and you make it part of your day-to-day, day. Ultimately, when you start looking at the future, you actually see things in a more optimistic manner. So that's why time blocking is just so important. Now, one of the big things that comes across is why? Why is it that so many of us almost restrict ourselves from actually

time blocking anything? And this got me to actually start to do a little bit more research. And this is what are actually uncovered and it's actually going to blow your mind. You see, when you're at school, early hours or early days of your life, you actually would go to school and they had a timetable, something where early morning you had this lesson and that lesson followed by this particular lesson, you'd be in this particular classroom with this particular teacher and you had that structure for 10, 12, 13 years of your life. And that was really rigid for you. Now, it was almost forced upon you. But just guess what? That in fact was time blocking. The purpose of that was to get you through your early years and later years of education to get you to the point of

where you are right now. So what happened? If it worked then, why did we just throw in the towel? Well, you see, when we leave school, we're in a rebellion state. And the last thing that we want is control from somebody else. Now control through time blocking feels like control from somebody else. So what happens is when we leave school and college etc. We actually go, there's that timetable and we throw it away. Never again are we going to put that into place.

And that was one of the first mistakes that we actually make. We should have embraced that. We should have brought that into our laugh and said, hey, wait a minute, this is going to help us. However, the failure is nobody told us that that structured timetable will get you to pass. That structured timetable is actually going to help you in your life moving forward. Nobody told us that. All we were told is you will be in this classroom and this time doing this particular subject.

And we didn't like that. So that's why we threw it away. But then something else happened. We get into the working world and we're told that we need to start work at 8 o'clock and finish at 4 o'clock and we've got these structures. And if we're not there, we get reprimanded. So again, we don't like that outside interference that over controls us. So when someone says to you, hey, why don't you time block? All you're thinking of is, well, I've got somebody above me trying to micromanage me and we resist it.

So I want you to throw that away. I want you now to hear the words. That little timetable that you've been doing or if you have already done for 10, 12, 13, 14 years is one of the greatest success tools that is already ingrained inside of you. And I want you to start to implement it. However, what's actually happened over the last couple of years, because you've resisted it, because you've thrown it away, and because you just don't want to get into that place where you've got somebody micromanum,

managing again, there's a little bit of internal resistance. So I'm going to just give you some quick little tips to show you how to overcome all of those things. And one of the first things is when somebody wants to time block, and I want you to eradicate the micromanagement, because it's not micromanagement. In fact, it's just planning your day. It's planning what you're going to do when you wake up in the morning at 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock, etc. That's all it's going to do. It just gives you a bit of a plan. And that plan actually helps you. feel a little bit more relaxed. Now, one of the first things that we need to establish is the activities that we put into

our time block. You see, now that we get to a certain part of our life, we now feel that time blocking is essential. And then we start to implement it. We start to have that 9 o'clock session running for an hour and a half. And we're feeling great that we've set it up in our calendar. However, after about two weeks, suddenly it disappears. Now, let me share this as an example.

You see, you have an idea that you want to go to gym. You want to either lose weight or you want to put on muscle. And ultimately what you do is for that first two weeks, you've got, I'm going to be there at 6 a.m. every single morning. And you put that into your calendar. Now, that's time blocking. You've got yourself a purpose and you've got yourself a reason. However, as we all know, going to gym for two weeks, you're not going to see those results immediately.

And ultimately, after two weeks, we're going to see that we maybe have lost a little bit of weight. Maybe we've put on a little bit of muscle, but nothing that stands out. And ultimately, our brain goes, is this really working? You see, what we've done is we've set a task that's actually quite high. we set an expectation to lose a huge amount of weight, to put on a huge amount of muscle. And in two weeks, we're not seeing those results. So we start to question ourselves. Week three comes about.

And ultimately what we then do is we then go, you know what, I didn't have a good night's sleep. And six o'clock, the weather's not so great. I think I'm going to skip it today. And then tomorrow comes and you feel, well, you know what, I didn't do it yesterday. I'm still not feeling 100%. I'm going to miss it today, but tomorrow definitely I'm going to jump onto it. But tomorrow comes and it doesn't happen. And then we say, well, we'll start it again next week.

And ultimately, that time blocking disappears. So the question is, why does that actually happen? Well, as a coach, I break that down and I look at what was the activity, what was the desired outcome. You see, for many of us, when we time block, we time block with a big outcome. come to happen in a short span of time. We want to go to gym and we want to see the results straight away. Now what you should be doing is saying let me break that down into something smaller. You see, going through to gym is a great exercise.

It's making me feel good. But maybe there's a different purpose. Maybe the purpose is when you're going to gym, the short term is to network with people. Maybe you just have a conversation with a friend. go into that particular gym and get embracing that environment. You see, when you can break down that activity to a short-term milestone outcome, that when you get there, you actually feel satisfied with it, that's when you're going to find that your time blocking will start to continue for longevity.

So, when you're looking at what you're going to put into your particular calendar, don't set that outcome to be massive. I want to make 10 calls and set up 10 appointments. Have it that you want to make 10 calls and ultimately you want to speak to 10 individuals and have a conversation. There's your outcome. There's your milestone. You're doing that.

You're going to feel great with yourself. Why? Because it's these small daily goals that if we can achieve them, these small successes every single day, what happens with our time blocking, it then just carries on. So the big thing is we set that outcome for that particular activity too big. And ultimately, we don't see the results. So we feel we need to change it and we need to move on to something else.

And the time blocking suddenly starts to disappear. So number one, make sure that you actually set those activities that you can do that gives you that level of success once you've completed that activity. It's something that's absolutely great. So when I was in real estate and I used to make my calls, I used to lead generate for a two hours straight. And straight after that, I used to reward myself with a chocolate and standing outside. Now, most people say, hey, you're having chocolate every day.

It's bad. But that was my reward. That's what I was looking forward to. But I needed to build that habit into that activity every single. single day. And by doing that, it actually led me to those greater successes in my real estate business. So have a look at your time blocking. Have a look at the activities. Don't set it as activities that are far too challenging. Make sure they're simple, they easy and it has a success that you can recognize at the end of that particular time blocking. Now, how do we get to these small and easy

activities because if we just say, well, I just need to make two calls, we don't have a long-term goal, well, then ultimately we're going to run out because we're going to say, well, why are we doing these calls? While we're doing these activities starts to jump in your mind as much as they're easy. So this leads us on to the second point. You see, we need to think big. Now, what I mean by thinking big is we need to go, hey, I need to lose. this weight. I need to put on this muscle. I need to make X amount of appointments or sell

X amount of house or close X amount of transactions. I need to think big. I need to see what that bigger picture is. And then what I need to do is I need to then bring it back to all those small activities. So when we're starting in a coaching, we think what that big goal is, what that big outcome is. And we start breaking ourselves back, step by step, until we're getting to those small easy activities that once we accomplish it, we've actually got an output that we can say, that was brilliant. We've actually done that. So thinking big is starting with that goal because that's going to give you the reason why you're doing it.

If you don't have that goal, when you start putting it into your time block, ultimately, it's just not going to happen because you're going to go, why am I doing this? It just does not make sense. So get that big goal, break it down into the small activities, and then make sure that you allocate those particular times of when you can do it. Now, I've said to a lot of my clients, when you're setting up your activities, make sure that you're setting your activities where your energy level, both physically and mentally, is at the highest potential level. and that is generally earlier in the morning before noon before lunch.

That's when you've got that highest amount of energy. Towards the end of the day, that's when it actually, your energy levels are low, whether it's mental or physical. And to actually have that drive and that motivation to do it becomes less and less. So time block in the mornings, start small, focus on those activities that are simple and easy that can give you an outcome. almost immediately once you've completed it. But make sure that it has the focus and alignment to that big goal that you're wanting to achieve. That actually starts to give you everything in line and you're going forward. Now, there is something that comes into all of this.

And this is when you start to set yourself up for failure. So what you ultimately do, and it's a cautionary when we start these big goals. goals. We make the goals very, very big. And when we start breaking them down into smaller activities, we don't go small enough. So if we use the gym example, we want to lose weights or we want to put on muscle. And ultimately, what happens is when we go through to gym and we say, hey, I need to do 10 reps at this particular weight. And what you actually do is you say, you know what, I want to expedite out this. I want to do 20 reps and you double the weight. And ultimately what happens is just setting yourself up for failure. You see, that particular

activity you just can't do. You actually, you almost hurt yourself in the process of doing it. So even though the activity appears to be small, we always ask the question, can you do it? is it in your capabilities of doing it in that time span? And for a lot of the salespeople that I work with, they say, but Stuart, I need to make 150 calls in two hours. And I'll look at them and I go, 150 calls in two hours. If you just look at the amount of minutes that you have, are you actually going to have a real conversation with anybody?

If you get into a conversation with the potential clients and that last 15, 20 minutes, how are you going to do another 149 calls in the last hour and a half? It just doesn't make sense. So it does sometimes. You can set yourself up for failure when you see those small activities, but you push it. I always recommend start smaller on your first couple of days. Even something if you're making calls, start out day one, make two calls. and then go, hey, I've done that. That's checked off.

Day two, add a call or two more calls. And take it to that point of you actually saying, hey, I can actually do in my one hour or two hour calling slot, I can make 15 conversational calls in those two hours. And there becomes your number. And what's so amazing about this is once you go over this over and again, those 15 calls, you're going to find that you're going to master it. Your skill is going to go up and you're going to find 20 calls.

I can still do 20 calls. And that'll give you that motivation and drive when you're going through. So don't set yourself up for failure when you're setting these particular tasks because that can knock you down. And when you get knocked down, trust me, distractions will start to replace it. There's time blocks will start to disappear. And ultimately, that frustration level will start to come back in. So don't set yourself up for failure. Make sure that it's not just in your head.

It's on paper and it's shared out. And one of the things that I've mentioned this is distractions. You see, distractions is one of those biggest areas in our life that actually almost eradicates a time-blocking schedule. You see, distractions like your phone being on social media, maybe emails popping up while you're actually doing. doing calls. These type of distractions can really just knock you right off. One of the biggest distractions that's actually in an office environment is people not understanding that you are

time blocking and you're doing a certain activity. See, they don't know that. You don't have a sign outside that I'm doing it. So they just walk in and they'll go, hey, by the way, I've just got a question for you. What is that? And that is your train of thoughts. It's gone. It's knocked you off that focus that you're actually trying to do in your time block. Now, this becomes one of the secondary reasons why people's time blocks just fall away as far as those particular activities. It's distractions. Now, we need to overcome these particular distractions. How do we do that? Well, if you're in an office environment. Just tell everybody. I say enlist the support of the people around you. Tell them that, hey, for the next 20 minutes, 30 minutes, I'm going to be making calls. I'm going to be doing this.

So please, if there's any messages, any calls or anything, come after nine once I'm finished. So tell them. The other side of it is you can also enlist the support of people doing it with you. Hey, we're going to make some calls today. Why don't you join me? Let's see how many calls we can do. together. Get that combined atmosphere where you work as a team and that actually helps you to work forward. That works with people that are trying to lose weight and trying to gain muscle. I've always said work with somebody during those activities. If you're going to go for a run, if you're going to go to gym, go to gym with somebody. Get that accountability partner that has the same mindset as you. because when you go into that time block session to do that particular activity,

even though it's small so that you can enjoy that success, you've actually got the support of somebody with you and making sure that you're going forward. Now, if you're in your environment, another distraction that can come your way is, oh, a pen. I don't have a pen. I need to write down a names. I need to do something like here. So what happens is you then spend the next 15, 20 minutes looking for a pen. And when you come back, suddenly, oh, there's an email that's popped up.

Let me just quickly respond to this. And next minute, your day is gone. Now, these little distractions, you can actually overcome them with a bit of preparation. I've actually said to a lot of my clients, when you go into a particular time block session, make sure you've got everything that you need. Do you need pen? Do you need paper? Do you need a jug of water?

Maybe some snacks because it's going to be a long particular session. Maybe you need a cushion where you're sitting on. Maybe you need a blanket because it gets cold. Have a look at all the provisions that you're going to require when you're sitting down and doing whatever that activity is or going in and doing that activity. Make sure that you've got all those provisions in place because the last thing that you want is to step out of that time block.

Because as soon as you step out of that time block, it's almost gone. And to come back to it, there's going to be something else that's going to become a distraction and that's going to slowly break that routine of doing those particular activities on an ongoing basis. And one of the big things that I say with clients is if you say yes to a distraction, and hear me on this, if you say yes to a distraction, you know what you're actually saying no to? you're saying no to yourself. You're saying no to your personal success. So look at those distractions and start saying no to those particular distractions. Because in your time blocking, in that time when you're focused to do that particular activity, you need to make sure that you're giving it 100% of your focus.

Because once you accomplish that, and remember, that activity, it's in alignment to hit that daily success. It's in alignment to hit that big goal that you've actually worked on, that you've described, that you can see it, you know the impact and you know why you need to achieve it. When you say no to those distractions, it's allowing you to do those activities so that you can get closer to achieving your goals. You see, time blocking, it's not about having a structured life. It's not about saying, well, I know that I need to be there at 9 o'clock and 10 o'clock, etc.

No, time blocking, it's all about helping you become more productive. It's to help you to be more optimistic about the future. It's helping you to be in control of the activities and the path that life. ahead of you. So time blocking is not something that is micromanaged from a school environment. It's not a micromanaged from the outside. In fact, it's one of the strongest productivity tools that you can implement in your personal life as well as in your professional life. So go ahead and start time blocking. Take those big goals, break them down, into those smaller activities.

Make sure that when you finish that activity, you have some level of success that you feel like, yes, I've done it. Even take it as far as enlisting the support of the people, telling them, hey, I'm going to be doing this for this particular time. Get somebody to be an accountability partner that could join you in that particular activity so that you can do it together.

And ultimately, remember, say no to the distractions because by saying no to those distractions, you're in fact saying yes to yourself. This is Stuart signing off until next time. Keep it simple. Keep it real and let's conquer time together. Remember in the battle for productivity, time blocking is your trusty sword. Let's wield it with precision and purpose.