Calendar Control: Unlock Your Time, Reduce Overwhelm, and Boost Your Business (#3)
This episode is available in blog format here.
So….how’s your calendar? Is it serving you as a tool or when you think about it does it stress you out? Ever felt like meetings are eating up your valuable time? This episode is for you.
By the end, I'll share 3 simple but impactful steps to help you organize your calendar and start owning your day.
SELECTED LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE
SHOW NOTES
[00:00:45] The Time Mastery System
[00:01:22] Calendar Overview
[00:02:40] Calendar Warning Signs
[00:04:45] Timeblock High Impact Work
[00:05:25] Audit Your Meetings - Question Them
[00:06:28] Use Calendar Tools That Work for You
[00:07:58] Your Action Items
[00:09:19] Free Mini Course - Escape Business Overwhelm: Plan Your Optimal Week in 15 Minutes
TRANSCRIPT
Hey business owners, welcome back to the Time Mastery podcast where we reduce overwhelm, help you reclaim ten plus hours of your week and increase your business revenue. I'm Ryan Lloyd, I'm a time management coach. I've been a time management guru for 25 plus years, just here to add my value and help everyone. So here's the question for today:
How is your calendar? Is your calendar serving you as a tool, or does it just stress you out?
Do you ever feel like meetings are eating up your valuable time? If so, this episode's for you. By the end, you'll have three action items you can take to help move you forward and move your business forward in this area.
This is all part of what I call the Time Mastery System. The Time Mastery System is building an intentional system for your time in your business. And there are six parts to it. Your calendar is the second part of this system. We've already talked about vision, values, and goals - which are kind of the foundation for the system.
And then the first part of the system which is planning those are in episodes one and two. if you want to find those episodes, it’s ryanlloyd.com/1 and ryanlloyd.com/2. You can go there and find transcripts, episodes to listen to, everything you need. So let's jump into calendars.
Calendars are a pretty basic time management tool that we hear about all the time. Probably calendars and to do lists are the two big ones. But your calendar is not just a place to keep track of appointments. If used correctly, your calendar can be a powerful tool for managing your priorities and most importantly, protecting your time. Here's the reality: if you don't control your calendar, someone else or something else will control it for you, and you'll be controlled by external things.
So it's really important to implement a strategy where you're taking a proactive approach to your calendar.
If you don't do this, low priority tasks can easily sneak up on you throughout the day and take up all of your time. Using your calendar proactively allows you to: (1) Create a structure in an organization for your day (2) ensure your most important work is getting done. (3) And three minimize time spent on unproductive tasks and meetings.
And when you use your calendar well, it really is an awesome tool for getting you excited about your day. Looking forward to your day and then looking back on your day and feeling good about what you accomplished.
So let's go over what happens when your calendar is out of control. You have probably noticed some of these things. These are warning signs to look for to know that you have a problem that you need to fix. Number one, your day feels scattered with no clear sense of direction. You're just kind of going throughout your day. You just have it in the back of your mind all the time. Number two is meetings dominate your time. You have way too many meetings and things that you know are time wasters that could be a lot more productive. Your calendar is full of those. That's the second warning sign. Another thing to watch out for is at the end of your day feeling like you were busy but not productive.
You did stuff the entire day, but the stuff you accomplished, you know, wasn't the high value task that you should have been doing. It wasn't the priority stuff you should have been working on.
Now, the problem with this is it not only affects your business growth, but it more importantly, in my opinion, leads to burnout and frustration on your part.
You can easily burn yourself out and not take care of yourself when you're not proactively managing your calendar. So before I get into how to do this, I want you all to go to a free mini course that I have offered to anyone listening. It's at ryanlloy.com/freecourse. It is a course called Escape Business Overwhelm. Plan Your Optimal Week in 15 minutes. It is talking about exactly this with how to prioritize and manage a calendar, along with a lot of other things. You'll learn how to plan your week in only 15 minutes. The actual mini course only takes 15 minutes, so it's not a huge time commitment. Go check it out. Totally free at ryanlloyd.com/freecourse.
So we could spend an entire episode just talking about calendars. But I'm going to give you three tips today that you can take action on right now. That will give you the most bang for your buck. The first one we've talked about before is time blocking high impact work. Start by blocking out on your calendar for your most important tasks and most importantly, protect those blocks like appointments.
A lot of times we fall into the trap of feeling like we need to protect meetings because maybe they involve other people, or we perceive that they might be valuable. We'll protect those pretty well. But lots of people struggle with protecting time when they're working up by themselves. But that work that you're doing by yourself could be one of your high impact, high value tasks.
So we need to learn to protect those timeblocks where we're working on tasks.
Number two is take a look at your current calendar and look at how many meetings you have, and ask yourself questions about those meetings. Ask yourself, is this meeting high value and high priority? Ask yourself, do I need to be at this meeting? Am I going to add value to this meeting? You may not need to be there.
Number three if someone does need to be there, but it doesn't need to be you ask yourself, can I delegate this meeting to someone else? What you're trying to do here is clear your calendar as much as possible. Meetings in some scenarios are needed, but a lot of times your meetings will fall into one of those three categories and you can eliminate them from taking time from your day. And you can fill that time with these focus blocks. We're talking about where you can work on high priority tasks.
If you do have to set a meeting. Make sure it has a clear agenda. Make sure it has a time limit. And again, make sure you're needed at that meeting.
Number three is use the right tool for your calendar that works for you. There are so many ways you can do a calendar. Tools like Google Calendar, Outlook calendars that are digital. You can use the bullet journal journal method where it's all on paper. Your calendar can really be as simple as just one single sheet of paper that you keep track of things on.
Do whatever works best for you. The thing that I will say digital calendars is that it’s a lot easier to move those focus blocks around. Adjust your time blocks throughout the day so they're a little more easy to adjust. Also, a digital calendar will make it so you can take it with you wherever you go a little easier. You can share it with other people. So digital has a lot of advantages. But some people just prefer paper. They prefer to have it out there in front of them. They prefer, writing things down. It's been shown in studies that you tend to stick with things better and remember things when you're actually taking the motion of writing. So if that works for you, then do that. The key here is you just want to do whatever works for you, whatever you're going to stay consistent with and stick to, and whatever's going to be most effective for managing your day in the most productive way possible.
And that's it for today. We could continue to talk about this, but your three action steps for today are: (1) block out your top three priorities for your calendar tomorrow. Reserve those time blocks. So that's your first thing that you're going to do. Set aside those time blocks for tomorrow and protect those time blocks - the most important part.
(2) Number two, audit your meetings. Ask yourself, do I need to be there? Can I delegate it? Does this meeting need to exist? If it does, make sure it has a clear agenda and is productive.
(3) And number three: Pick a tool. Make sure that you're using a tool that you think you will stick with. Try a few tools if you need to. Go digital. Go paper. Use different apps. Google Calendar is what I prefer using for the majority of my calendaring. Mixed with a paper bullet journal that I keep track of. But do what works for you. Nobody's going to be the same. Different things are going to work for different people in different scenarios, but try to find a few different tools and try them out for this week and see how they work.
And then at the end of the week, what I recommend doing is review how it went and then make adjustments with all of this as you go. These are small changes you can do, but if you do these changes consistently over time, you're going to find that you're going to settle on a system that works for you and your business the best way, and you're just going to feel like you're more productive and you're going to move your business forward.
And again, if you would like to take my free mini course, it’s ryanlloyd.com/freecourse. It is a 15 minute course where the videos modules take literally 15 minutes total, and it will help you plan your optimal business week and escape business overwhelm. You can get that absolutely free at ryanlloyd.com/freecourse.
That is it for today's episode of the Business Time Mastery podcast. I hope you're feeling inspired to take control of your calendar and make it a tool that works for you.
Join me next week, where we'll discuss the second most popular tool, or one of the most popular tools in time management, the to-do list. We’ll help you come up with strategies where you can actually use the to-do list and stick with it, and not get overwhelmed when you look at it.
Remember your calendar is your secret weapon in a lot of ways. Use it wisely.
