Plan with Me 📝 My Block Schedule Example for Teacherpreneurs | 16

When my son was first born, I struggles a lot to balance motherhood and finding time for me. Over the past 2 years, I have tried a variety of schedules and finally found something that works for me and our family. I am now able to plan my days in a way that is flexible enough to give me a balance between motherhood and working mom that keeps me sane.

I use a modified block schedule to plan out our days. Each day contains the following 6 blocks that ebb and flow based on the sleep/wake times of my two mini-me's.

1. Morning family time & breakfast

This block starts when the kids wake me up (any time between 5:30am and 7am) and includes morning snuggles, playtime before breakfast and breakfast. My focus during this time is 98% on my kids and 2% on getting dressed/brushing my teeth, so I’m ready for the day.

2. Morning work block

Almost immediately after breakfast, my 13 month old daughter goes down for her morning nap and usually sleeps for 1.5-2 hours. While she’s sleeping, my son plays independently and I work. My focus during this time is daily reports and identifying what my next steps are for each client.

3. Midday family time & lunch

After my daughter wakes up, we go for a walk that almost always ends at our neighbourhood park before heading home for lunch.

4. Afternoon work block

After we eat, both kids go down for their afternoon naps and this is usually when I get some real work done. I take a peek at my planner where I schedule my daily 3 tasks and I also look at the list of next steps I’ve identified for my clients to figure out exactly what I’ll be working on. I love to work on our front porch with a cup of tea (yup, even in the summertime)

5. Evening family time, dinner & bedtime routines

When the kids wake up, we play some more until my husband wakes up (he works nights). Then he makes us dinner (#spoiled) while the kids and I usually head back outside. After dinner, my husband heads to work and the kids and I usually watch something together until bedtime.

6. Evening choice block

This block starts after my kids go to bed and often starts with a glass of wine. I listen to my body and decide what I’ll do based on my needs. Sometimes it’s self-care, sometimes it’s more wine and sometimes it’s work.

The best part about this schedule is that it’s extremely flexible and allows me to get solid chunks of work in while also spending quality time with my littles. I especially like that there are no times attached to the blocks, so if my kids are having a hard day or sleep a bit longer I’m not tied to a clock. I just ebb and flow with them.

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Episode Transcript:

Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow. A podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers. Just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.

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Hello and welcome to Market Scale Grow. I'm Jenzaia, and this is a Saturday strategy session. Today, I'm going to talk to you about how I plan my days when I am also full-time momming and I want to get some work done on my business and I obviously want to spend time with my babies and be present with them.

So, I use a modified block schedule, and the reason I call it modified is because they don't have any times attached to it whatsoever. It really ebbs and flows based on my kids. So, there are six blocks in my day. I have morning family time, morning work, middle of the day family time, afternoon work, evening family time, and bedtime. So, here's how it kind of breaks down a little bit more specifically: I don't wake up before my kids, ever. They wake me up between 5:30 and 6:30. Some days I get until 7:00, but that is a rarity. I am not in a place right now where I'm interested in waking up before them. So I am happy to have two beautiful children be my alarm clock and just hoping every morning that it's going to be a 6:30 wake up and not a 5:30 wake up. That is the season of life we are currently in.

After they wake up, we head downstairs, we get some milk, we hang out, and then we eat breakfast. Then after breakfast, my daughter goes down for her morning nap. So when she goes down, my son has independent playtime and he is such a great little player. He loves his little cars and his trucks and all the invitations to play that I set up and he can keep himself busy for hours. It's amazing. So it's perfect because I really strongly believe that kids, you learn so much from playing when you're that age. So it's almost like his work time because he's playing and learning and growing. I get about an hour of work done while my daughter is napping. Her nap time is an hour and a half to two hours. So I do spend some time hanging out with my son, and I also do some work.

When my daughter wakes up, we go for our daily walk and then we eat 1:00. So that's our mid-day family time. Then after lunch, both kids go down for a nap and I will get a good two to three hours of work done during their afternoon nap. My son will nap a little bit longer than that, but once my daughter wakes up, I will spend some quality one-on-one time with her because of course, I had one-on-one time with my son in the morning. So she deserves that too. Once my son wakes up, we have some more playtime. Usually, my husband will hang out with us for a little bit as well before making dinner. Then eat together and hang out after dinner, bath time, bedtime routine, and then the kids go to bed.

After bedtime, I get my evening block and this one's a little bit more variable. So it really depends on how much work I did during the day and what other activities I need to do, and whether my husband is home or at work because my husband does work nights. So there are a couple of nights a week where he is at work and I'm home alone. So depending on that, I'll either do some work, like tonight, it's actually 9:00 PM as I'm recording this and getting some work done. So that is one option in the evenings. Then other evenings, I'll spend with my husband. Other evenings, I will just hang out by myself because no one else is home and I'll watch some trashy TV, you know how it is.

So, those are the six blocks that I have and they are so, so, so dependent on my children because I ebb and flow with their ebbs and flows. Since both of them were pretty young, we've been on a good, I don't want to say schedule with them, but routine where they will wake up, and then they have X amount of time awake, and then it's time to go back to sleep. So we've kept that up, and so now that my daughter's about a year old and my son is two in a bit, they're on really good sleep routines and it's fairly consistent when they're going to nap. But I don't take it for granted that every single day I'm going to get two hours of work time. Sometimes my daughter's naps are only 45 minutes. Sometimes my son refuses to nap. He's starting to get to that age. So I really do just take it as it comes and I ebb and flow with their needs. It works super well for me and I feel like it works well for them. Like I said, I get time with both of them together where we're playing. I get time with each of them individually. And I really feel like with these blocks, where I have specific family time and specific work time, I don't get my wires crossed and try to be entertaining them and then also working at the same time.

So, that's how I plan my days. I would love to hear from you. Do you also use block planning or a block schedule? Is that something that you would like to implement? It was revolutionary when I started blocking my chunks of time and saying in this block, I will work on X. Totally life-changing for me. So I highly recommend that you try it and see if there are blocks of time in your day that you can do that similar ebbing and flowing so that your day kind of flows in a way that you'll expect and that you can kind of grow accustomed to because seriously, love it.

This is a bit of a shorter episode. I really appreciate that you came and along with me on the journey. Don't forget if you did take something away from this, to tag me on Instagram. I'm @heyitsjenzaia and I will catch you next week.

Thank you for listening to today's episode today was brought to you by Dubsado my absolute favourite customer management tool. If you're looking to streamline and systematize your service-based business, I highly recommend Dubsado for 20% off of your first month. Head to marketscalegrow.com/dubsado that's D U B S A D O and use the code Jenzaia at checkout. And don't forget to head to our community at marketscalegrow.com/community where you'll find inspiring, ambitious teacherpreneurs who are looking to grow and scale their businesses just like you... See you soon.