1. Use calendars for both your personal and work commitments.
Most of us have a calendar or day planner for work commitments, but some people try to remember all their personal commitments out of their own heads, or rely on jotted down on post-it-notes on their desk or even on their spouse/partner’s memory. These tactics might work if you never schedule anything much in advance, but if you’re a busy person, you really need a calendar for your personal life too. Or, depending on your lifestyle, any applicable company rules about resource usage, and your own philosophy about work, some people will use just one calendar for all of their work and personal commitments. However you choose to do it, using a calendar well is a key piece of effective time management.
There are lots of ways you can set your calendar(s) up. Whatever you do, though, don’t try to keep your time commitments in your head or store them haphazardly. You have better things to do with your brain than track all of the information about where you’re supposed to be when without a reminder.
2. Actually check your calendar!
Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But it can be easy to forget or put off, especially if things are getting busier than usual. Make it a discipline to be extremely consistent with checking your calendar – otherwise, it can’t help you! Check your calendar before you make a commitment or an appointment, every single time. Otherwise, you will a) accidentally overbook yourself occasionally and b) try to store your appointments in your head instead of in the calendar where they belong.
Review your calendar at least once per day, if not more, to make sure that you show up where and when you’re supposed to be.
For example, here is my routine. I check my personal calendar once in the morning and once after work. My husband and I also generally review two weeks’ ahead on our calendars together each weekend, to make sure that we stay synchronized and organized. I check my work calendar when I get into the office, after each appointment and towards the end of the day. I also do a higher-level review of the next few weeks when I prepare for my one-on-one with my manager so that I can check in with her about preparation for any upcoming meetings we have.
Your needs might be different, but the principles will still apply. Checking before making commitments and doing general reviews to make sure you are on top of your appointments are both essential to using your calendar successfully. Remember, your calendar can only help you if you both put things into it and get things out of it at the right times. Simple stuff, but doing it consistently can make a big difference.
3. Access it on the go.
Whether you prefer a paper-based system or an electronic system, find a way to make it mobile and have it with you wherever you go. For paper, choose a calendar small enough to keep in your purse or briefcase or if you are really fond of a larger paper calendar, make a photocopy of the next week or month to keep in your purse – it may not be fully up to date, but it’s better. For an electronic calendar, obtain a device such as your phone or a PDA . If you can’t look at your calendar wherever you are, you will inevitably not be able to check it when you really need to, and you will dramatically limits its usefulness.
4. Block off chunks of time for getting stuff done.
If you’re busy, time to work on your projects won’t just magically materialize. Entropy has a way of filling up your time seemingly by accident. If you work only in response to the demands of the moment, many meaningful projects will languish forever in your zone of good intentions. To combat this tendency, I suggest setting up time blocks for yourself during which you’ll work on the most important projects on your plate. These projects can be anything that you’ve identified as important, both at work and in your personal life.
These time blocks should be times when you will be able to really focus. Project time at work may involve sending your phone calls to voicemail (if you can), limiting how often you check your email, shutting your office door (if you have one), or wearing headphones to cut out sound distractions. At home, if you have young children, for instance, plan your project time blocks for times when they will be asleep or someone else will be in charge of them. Ask your roomate, spouse, or partner not to interrupt you. Turn off the ringer on your phone and turn off distracting internet stuff like IM, Skype or whatever else tends to steal your focus. Ignore the temptation to work on things that suddenly seem pressing but aren’t important in the long run – don’t look around and decide to catch up on the housework, for instance, if you’ve booked yourself two hours for work on your projects. Obviously a real crisis would take priority, but don’t let the normal press of the seemingly urgent masquerade as a crisis. The vast majority of things can wait, and the world won’t come to an end if you let them do so.
Depending on how much progress you want to make on your projects and how many other demands you have on your time, you may dedicate as little as one two-hour chunk per week to your project time. Or, you may be choosing to focus a lot of time and energy on a project, in which case you’ll need to schedule more and longer work chunks for yourself. Keep in mind that more is actually less with this tactic though – don’t overdo it. You can always work on your projects for more time than you’ve budgeted yourself. Keeping this time to a small amount makes it easier to treat it as sacred and make absolutely sure that it really happens, instead of being tempted to blow it off.
You’ll find that setting aside even a little bit of time proactively and honoring those time commitments will help you get a whole lot more done… not to mention feel great about what you’re accomplishing.
5. But be sure to leave plenty of time open.
Don’t fill every waking minute on your calendar with appointments and blocked-out work time, though. Even if some of the things you’re scheduling for yourself are fun and relaxing, you will want time to take care of the basic life stuff that you won’t schedule: time at home, time for dealing with the unexpected, time for doing things spontaneously.
At work, I guarantee that fire drills will happen or something that should go smoothly will run into unexpected stalls and occasionally take ten times longer than normal. When that happens, it’s a real lifesaver to have left space in your schedule to deal with the unexpected.
6. Use all-day reminders.
For things that must happen on a specific day but not at a specific time, I make all-day appointments and put reminders in them rather than tracking those reminders in another system. For instance, if I want to be sure I call my friend on Monday to wish her luck on a job interview the next day, I will put an all-day appointment into my calendar. I don’t try to plan at what time I will call her, just the fact that I want to make sure to do it that specific day. If I just wanted to call her when I next have time, I would track it on my to-do list. I also have follow-up notes tracked in this way – for instance, if I want to contact someone if I don’t receive a document by a certain day, or know that I want to start planning a project about two weeks before it’s due. Most of my days have 4-5 all-day reminders on them. In the morning, I’ll add these items to my daily to-do list and be sure to take care of them.
7. Consider tracking fun possibilities on a calendar, too.
My husband and I have a Google calendar set up just for tracking fun stuff that we’d love to do. Every time we find out about a cool music performance, art opening, special movie showing or festival, we add it to that calendar. We would never have time to go to all of these events, and don’t want to clutter up our main personal calendars with them since they are not actually commitments but possibilities. However, being able to view them helps us plan our schedule better and gives us a quick place to look for fun ideas on our date nights or a free weekend day. It also means that when we find out about nifty stuff, we don’t have to try to remember it or make a decision then and there about whether we’d want to go. We just add it to the calendar if it sounds fun, and know it will be there for future reference.
8. Don’t forget time for yourself, and time for your loved ones.
If you are finding that you never have time to take care of yourself, or that you spend very little time with the people who mean the most to you, consider scheduling in that time and defending those commitments. I recommend that everyone with a busy schedule set aside time in their calendar for “date time” with just yourself, your spouse/significant other (if applicable), your kids (ditto) and anyone else who is in your closest circle of loved ones. (If you’re not sure what you’d do on a date with yourself, keep an eye on my blog – I’ll explore the date with yourself idea more in a future post.)
Harness the Power of Your Calendar
Your calendar is a powerful tool. Used thoughtfully and consistently, it can really enhance your use of time and quality of life. Do you have any great strategies for making the most of your calendar to manage your time well? Drop me a note or leave a comment with ideas that have worked well for you.
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