Death by Calendar

Do you ever think: I’m tired of managing it all?

The demands for my time are out of control.

I’m more accountable to my calendar than I am myself.

I want to do all these things but have no time.

I’m booked out for weeks.

You may think this’s because of a run-away calendar.

But that’s just a lie you tell yourself.

In truth, it's a reflection of a runaway mind.

When your mind is cluttered, messy, and full of drama, it shows up in how you spend your time. 

That’s why I say your calendar reflects your mind - not the other way around.

You might think, “I’m in back-to-back meetings that have to happen, and when I’m not in meetings, I’ve got sh*t to do!”

When you say ‘yes’ to something, you say ‘no’ to something else.

When the mind is messy, it looks at everything the same. If it’s all important, then is anything important? If everything is a 'yes,' then there are no 'nos.' That’s the messy mind at work.

Your mind will start blaming it on circumstances—which are often outside of your control—but a circumstance doesn’t create the thoughts that say you can never get anything done! You cannot change a circumstance, but you can change how you think about managing your time.

You are the owner of your time. Show up by design, not simply by default due to your calendar.

Your calendar reflects your priorities and future; if it doesn’t well, that's on you.

Your calendar can be a crutch or a foundational tool for mindfully crafting your future.

Some people use their calendars as an organizing system and put today's calendar before the future of the business. It’s what I used to do. 

I’m going to share a saying with you now that I’m sure you’ve heard in some version:

“How you show up for anything is how you show up for everything: business, goals, and everyone in your life.”

If you want to create the time to make your future, here's an exercise that my clients find both enlightening and empowering.

A Calendar Audit

Owning your calendar begins with understanding where you are currently spending your time and then deciding how you want to spend your time in the future.

1. Create 'time buckets' for different types of activity, and color code each one (meetings, networking, client service, finance, marketing, bookkeeping, partnerships, product development), and don’t forget to add your exercise and meeting prep time. Color coding will help you quickly recognize the kind of day/week ahead of you at a glance. I use green for planning and blue for low-value work.
   

2. Examine and analyze where you are spending your time. Look for your time leaks and the amount of time you spent on low-value work. Go back one to two months and move your time into the color-coded buckets. From these weeks of color-coded time, you’ll begin to see patterns emerge. Average it out into one week and call it My Current Time Spent.
   
   After doing this, clients tell me that they knew they were spending time doing low-value work and didn’t realize how much time they spent each week on work with little longer-term impact or the amount of time on work that was simply distractions.
   
   To see how you value your time, come up with your hourly rate—based on the revenue you want to make this year or your salary divided by 1,920 hours—then multiply it by the number of hours you spent on low-value work. 
   
   Was that hour of admin work worth your hourly rate? Would that time be better spent by someone on your team or your VA with a lower hourly rate? Every hour you spend on admin or low-value work ready for delegation costs you money, time, and, therefore, your future. That is not an overstatement after you’ve done the math. 
   

3. Now, take back your time. Using the same color-coding system, map out the calendar you want and call it My Future. What would your ideal calendar look like, with dedicated time for working ‘on’ your business versus working ‘in’ your business?
   
   You get to decide when this future calendar will be achievable: is it three weeks or three months from now? Begin by calendaring the must-haves: exercise, planning, strategizing, and super-thinking time.
   
   This is where the CEO mind kicks in—it is where your thoughts get organized and serve your future. Determine what you want to do and what is best for the business's long-term future, and be ruthless about what you can outsource to reclaim your time.
   
   With the remaining time, you will want to prioritize what you’ll do with it based on high-value/high-impact work. This is where belt-tightening comes into play. If you spend 10 hours a week on low-value activities and want to reduce it to 1 hour, do it. From that decision, evaluate the steps needed to make it happen. This could mean hiring a virtual assistant—which was life-changing for me—or delegating in another way. Awareness is a powerful thing, and with it, planning gets easier.
   
   Seeing these two calendars will empower you to think differently about what you want and what needs to happen for your time to be more impactful.
   

4. Lookout to next week and the week after - My WIP Calendar. What can you change today about how you want to spend your time?  This is your work-in-progress calendar that looks different from the current calendar and looks closer to the future calendar. Each week, continue to work on owning your time to achieve the future calendar that will have you spending time working on high-value work with a higher degree of happiness.

Stop leaving your calendar up to chance and allowing someone else to book your time without your permission. If they have, take it back.

Doing this exercise will reduce the time you spend wrestling with an out-of-control calendar.

When you prioritize your time, you will show up with more clarity and control over your most valuable asset, your time.

Time management that begins with cleaning up the messy mind getting ahold of your calendar a key component of my coaching practice. Book a discovery call if you want to learn more.