Summary
I’ve noticed that a lot of people who have it together are masters at managing their schedule. They live and die by it. It’s more crucial in some roles than others, but even without a calendar full of meetings, there are many steps you can take to get the most out of your schedule, helping to maximize the productivity of yourself and those around you. Here are some key takeaways from this article:
- Habits of people with great schedule management
- Common Calendar Traps
- Tips for success
- Tools for efficiency
Habits of people with great schedule management
I say this a lot but it’s worth repeating. I’m a big fan of building good habits – actions that are so ingrained in your behavior that you do them without thinking or questioning them. To build habits, I’ve found applying the five P’s helps: 1) Purpose, 2) Plan, 3) Prioritize, 4) Practice, and 5) Patience. With those in mind, here are schedule management habits worth working on.
Habit #1: Schedule everything you can
Start with your biggest priorities and work around them. Are you in school? Schedule your class time, study time, project time, and any related time (commuting, etc.). Schedule your exercise time. Schedule date nights. Schedule errands, meal prep, picking up the kids, kids’ activities, doctor visits, etc. Add items to your calendar right when you schedule them (including that catch-up lunch you never seem to remember!). Schedule important dates like holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. The simple act of scheduling makes you that much more committed, and makes it that much more likely that you’ll get it done and in a timely manner. By scheduling the big things (as far in advance as is reasonable), it makes the rest of your calendar that much easier to manage because there’s less of it available. Are you overwhelmed by the prospect of scheduling everything? See the tools section below for an easy way to manage schedule items in bulk.
Habit #2: Plan out your schedule a week at a time
Each week, decide what stays and what goes. Schedule important items when your mind works best if you can. For backburner items that you defer, schedule a specific date/time to complete them, not just adding to your to-do list (this helps your subconscious!). Be realistic and focus on a little bit at a time. Stick to a routine the best you can but be flexible because you know, life happens. Look over your schedule at the beginning of each week so you can see what’s coming and mentally prepare. You’ll often find conflicts you didn’t know were there. When you’re proactive, you have plenty of time to phone a friend for help.
Habit #3: Communicate your schedule
For spouses and even more so for families, this is an important one. Make sure the crucial tasks are covered, especially those that are out of the ordinary routine. For teams, discuss projects, events, upcoming out-of-office time, etc. to ensure you have the right amount of coverage. Many teams share the details of their schedules with one another so they know not just when they are busy, but what they are working on for shadowing/training purposes, covering last-minute, etc. Just share carefully so people don’t try to over-control your schedule!
Habit #4: Include cushions and breaks
Do you ever have days with back-to-back meetings several hours in a row? Simply scheduling breaks between them can help. Your brain works best when it has time to rest, even if just for a couple of minutes. Do certain meeting types often run over? Add cushions around them. Do the same thing for commute times – aim to be early because traffic can be unpredictable. I’ve built tools to automate this – cushions are automatically added based on different meeting types.
Habit #5: Be specific with calendar entries
Include a detailed subject line. When it’s something for a family member, I include their initials just so I know whose activity it is. Include the location – a label and the full address. Trust me, you’ll need this at some point and your calendar is a great, centralized place for it. I also like to use calendar color-coded categories to help keep things organized. I’ve automated things around those too! Using them consistently as a team makes it much easier to find things and cover one another. I use a “flexible” category to indicate which items are easy to reschedule. Attach or link to relevant documents, websites, phone numbers, or other references. You’ll spend more time later looking for them if you don’t!
Habit #6: Be aware of your time and where it tends to go
Some people track virtually all of their time, whether or not it’s a necessity (i.e. lawyers or consultants). I’ve done this in spurts or for big tasks, but I could be better honestly. Tracking time helps you make improvements, helping you see negative trends or when it’s more than you expected. But just having a general awareness of where you spend your time is a good start. Reflecting on the Henry David Thoreau quote above – is time being spent meaningfully on the important and the urgent? Making sure you’re aware of where your time goes – big things, small things, and everything in between – is crucial for getting the most out of it. Set limits on the things you tend to let yourself go with. If you have a super-productive day, take some notes and see how you can replicate it, and how others can too.
Habit #7: Batch tasks
Batching tasks – completing tasks in big chunks or completing related tasks together – has many benefits, most importantly economies of scale and minimizing the time it takes to switch between tasks. It can also minimize multi-tasking. Find the right block of time – enough to get a good amount of work done, but before you get very bored or disengaged. Admin work is great for this. On the home front, consider preparing several meals at once for the week, or several portions you can freeze and reuse later. This can be 3x-4x more productive. Think about it – less grocery lists, trips to the store, prepping, cooking, and washing the dishes.
Habit #8: Hold and attend purposeful meetings
We’ve all attended meetings – many of them even well-intentioned – that were horribly unproductive. The two common reasons for this are a lack of purpose (or agenda) and a lack of focus (which can include having the wrong people there, or the right people not there). Planning goes a long way here and it usually shows. I try to always have an agenda for meetings I hold and I delegate part of this to the attendees – what are their agenda points? Including this with the meeting request helps them prioritize – sometimes they have to send a delegate. I like to put at least the high-level agenda in the body of the meeting request. People are often too lazy to simply open the attachment! Make sure action items or follow-ups are captured and communicated. If catch-up time is important, include that for a small part of the meeting, or schedule it separately. Great ideas come out of social events too!
Common Calendar Traps
Calendar traps – where time seems to disappear into a black hole – are all over the place. We discussed some habits of good schedule management, are some traps lie in the opposite of those habits. Below are some common ones you can quickly tackle. As you practice habit #6 above, try to eliminate the traps you find and improve a little each day.
Trap #1: Saying yes too much
When you take on too much, other things tend to suffer. Maybe not noticeably, but everything takes energy, and we only have so much to use in a day. Spend most of your time on tasks that play to your strengths. Spend a smaller amount of time on the areas you want to improve on. Delegate wherever you can. Politely say no to tasks that aren’t important, urgent, or are better suited for someone else.
Trap #2: Irrelevant work
Have you ever taken a step back from your recurring tasks and asked yourself whether all of them are really necessary? I’ve worked with many people over the years who were going through the motions of doing things the way they’ve always done them. It’s almost like they’re in a trance. Whether or not that has ever been you, make sure you have a clear purpose for all of your tasks. It will make you more engaged and be in a position to challenge whether a task is even needed. Start with your most time-consuming tasks, keeping in mind the 80/20 rule – about 80% of your productivity comes from about 20% of your work. If it isn’t required, don’t do it. This can free up a lot of time on your calendar!
Trap #3: Putting off the tough stuff
In the Mark Twain quote above, he mentions eating a frog, which represents that tough task you don’t want to do. Attack it early on so it doesn’t fester and stew in your subconscious, districting your other tasks. Even if you don’t complete it, making some progress will put your mind at ease. Schedule some time early in the day to attack your tougher tasks so you aren’t tempted to put them off.
Trap #4: Fire drills
It seems like we’ve all had days where we are just running around putting out fires – urgent tasks that weren’t really planned for. These issues can relate to employees, vendors, customers, facilities, software, hardware, equipment, etc. I’ve had to run checks across town because a key vendor wasn’t paid on time. A new regulation was enacted that no one knew about and we had to drop everything to comply with. While you can’t eliminate these, you can do two things: 1) be proactive rather than reactive – plan ahead the best you can, and 2) build some cushion into your schedule to deal with them. Have something less urgent available to work on when that cushion isn’t needed. And when fire drills do happen, make a note and plan for it to happen again. Maybe set a reminder a couple of weeks in advance.
*Note: true fire drills are important and save lives!
Trap #5: Email, messaging, social media, and web surfing
Have you ever been reading and responding to email, messaging back and forth, scrolling through social media, or surfing the web, then all of a sudden you look up and there went an hour? It’s way too easy to do. Reflecting on the habits above, there are three ways to combat this that I’ve seen work well. 1) be aware that these are traps, 2) schedule some time for them, and 3) set a timer so you don’t lose track and miss your responsibilities. Side note – I wrote a separate article on managing email alone with some efficiency tips because of how much time we all spend on it alone.
Tips for Success
Here are a few other tips for success in managing your schedule:
Use the right technology
If you run an appointment-based business (salon, dog groomer, doctor, pest control, etc.), use an application that allows customers to book and change appointments without having to call. It’s significantly more efficient and cuts down on errors (often people answering the phone are multitasking!). Incentivize customers to use this approach first. Even other types of businesses are taking this approach with apps like Calendly that expose the calendars of sales reps, consultants, etc. to customers and prospects so they can book a convenient timeslot. If you take this approach, habit #1 above becomes even more important – make sure you have blocked off time so that people can’t steal it!
Use reminders intentionally
Do you always tend to leave the default 15-minute reminder when you set up appointments? While that’s helpful for some things, it wouldn’t be enough to need to drive across town, thaw out a big frozen dinner, or adequately prepare for an important meeting. Be conscious of the reminder time. Set it to 30 minutes, 60 minutes, or even 12 hours ahead of time – whenever it would be most helpful to be alerted. I often book duplicate appointments or “ghost appointments” (where they show up as “free” on the calendar) just so I can add a second reminder. Adding a separate block for “prep” time also helps. Sometimes I’ve found two prep blocks helps – one of them hours or days before and the other one just before a meeting.
Be organized
It sounds simple, but when you think about how much time we all spend looking for things – especially files and information at work – it’s worth the upfront investment. Schedule an hour or two each month to get a handle on organizing. If you think the organization of your personal life has nothing to do with your professional life, think again. They’re more inter-dependent than you might think, including the subconscious stuff. I like to digitize as much as I can and leverage the cloud so I can get to pretty much anything at a moment’s notice. Tackle a little bit at a time, and before you know it, you’re set up for success. Almost all of us could be better about this!
Optimize your order of operations
Sometimes refining the order in which you do things can have a big impact. Minimize bottlenecks and anything that keeps you waiting – tasks can often be done in parallel. When something requires rework, consider whether it’s being done in the right order. Consider the inter-dependencies between your tasks and those of coworkers, and make this a part of how you prioritize. In accounting and finance, we often have to estimate and work with imperfect or incomplete information so we can make timely decisions. When appropriate, this is often a solid way to eliminate bottlenecks. There’s a delicate balance between accuracy and timeliness, so make sure to think it through and get everyone on the same page.
Follow the four D’s
When you’re presented with a task (often this comes in an email, text message, chat, etc.), follow this flowchart – in this order:
- Delete it – if it’s not relevant to you or there is nothing further to do, delete it (or file it).
- Delegate it – if it’s more appropriate for someone else (down, sideways, or up), delegate it.
- Defer it – if it takes longer than two minutes and you’re actively engaged in something, defer it and set a clear time block or reminder.
- Do it – if it’s quick to tackle or if it’s truly urgent, go and do it, then get back to your previous task.
Tools for Efficiency
Managing my calendar is currently one of the most important parts of my job. I’m constantly referencing it, updating it, and sharing it. I’ve built some tools to automate a lot of the effort of managing it, many of which are included in the XLEV8 add-in suite. Below are some of the specific tools that help me the most. The video that follows gives a quick demonstration of them.
Bulk Edit Appointments
This lets you add, delete, update, or just export your appointments in bulk between Outlook and Excel. Easily import a sports schedule, list of holidays, or anything else in seconds. I’ve built templates in Excel around this and saved dozens of hours. We have kids in school. At the beginning of each school year, I tweak a couple of inputs, make sure the holidays are reflected, and I add hundreds of appointments to my calendar in a minute or two. Then my wife uses the same file to add to her calendar. You probably wouldn’t even think to do something like that without the ability to manage it in bulk. While using the native recurrence function is nice, often the time, location, or other details change. For example, some schools have a block schedule (A day, B day, A day). The calendar recurrence can’t handle that, but I was able to build that logic into Excel, then import it.
Create/Send Meeting Requests
Similar to managing appointments in bulk, this lets you create or send one or more meeting requests. Using formulas and references in Excel, you can build in logic so that dates or other inputs drive the date, time, length, invitees, and even files you want to attach. It’s embarrassing to send a meeting request with a wrong date, time, location, attachment, etc., and this helps prevent that by reusing previous effort. There is a similar feature for just creating or sending emails, which is great for distributing a lot of messages or files to a group of store managers, department heads, etc.
Show Schedule Availability
I’m often asked what my availability is for a meeting. This feature exports your schedule for the upcoming week or two into Excel in a calendar grid format. From there, you can highlight some suggested blocks, then copy as an image into an email. Note that you can use multiple categories for calendar entries. If a meeting or appointment has a category of “Flexible,” it will show up with a different color and a “Flexible” label, communicating that it is easier to move than other meetings.
File Email Messages
This is a big one. It saves me 2-3 hours every week. I keep my inbox tidy and I file or flag items 1-2 times a week. This feature lets you pre-define which folder a message should be filed in based on the sender, their email address domain, the subject line, or even attachment names. Then a similarity index is run between the folder names and subject lines, and a filing folder is suggested. Review those suggestions, then have it file everything for you. Note that Outlook has “rules” available that can automatically file messages for you, but this happens as they are received or read, which is often not when you want. Personally, I like the suggestion approach much better. I can review the suggestions and file about 300 messages in less than 15 minutes. If you are in a client-serving role like I am, this works really well.
Email Upcoming Appointments
Before I was so on top of my calendar, I’d often miss things. I was on top of email, but not my calendar. So, I built a feature that would list out my calendar for the next 7 days and email it to me each day at the same time. You can change that time if you’d like – I’ve found that around 5:00 pm or in the early evening is helpful.
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