This article comes from Entrepreneur.

The Benefits of Blocked Times on Your Calendar

There’s also a psychological benefit from what is known as the Zeigarnik effect. This basically states that “we remember what we haven’t done better than what we have done, and uncompleted tasks weigh on us.”

But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here are even more benefits of blocking times on your calendar.

Blocking time gets you started and maintains motivation.

Getting started is often the hardest part of completing challenging or unpleasant tasks. Thankfully, It only takes a moment of motivation to stop wasting time. Seeing that a task is scheduled for a specific period of time on your calendar is motivating — you’ve made a commitment that makes procrastination vanish.

If the task wasn’t important in the first place, then why did you even bother blocking out the time for it?

Focus on and efficiently complete your most important tasks.

At the end of the day, you probably sit back to ask, “What exactly did I do today?” When we don’t plan how to spend our time we are more vulnerable to being distracted by less important things.

By planning ahead and blocking out adequate time for the important tasks in our lives, we’re better track and complete our priority tasks.

I’ll say this over and over. Multitasking doesn’t work — numerous studies have found that multitasking actually results in us gets less done because you’re draining the energy reserves of your brain.

Encourages a healthy work-life balance.

Maintaining balance in my daily life is a challenge — as I’m sure it is for you. But, maintaining that balance is crucial to staying motivated and productive. Blocking out times allows me to schedule “me” time to reflect, recharge and improve myself both mentally or physically. It also permits me to leave certain blocks of time out for unexpected events, such as family emergency or finishing a project that’s taken more time than expected.

This way I can attend to that unexpected event while not pushing aside another important task that’s previously been blocked out.

Improves your physical and mental health.

Our health is obviously improved through exercise, eating healthy, getting enough quality sleep, reducing stress, and taking breaks. Of course, that’s a challenge when we overcommit ourselves.

Not only does that increase our stress, but it also limits the amount of time that we have in a day to attend to our health. That’s why you need to schedule times for exercise, eating, and sleeping so that you stay in tip-top shape.

Block out times for you to stay mentally sharp. Block out times from reading, harnessing a skill, or learning something new.

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