5 Steps To Schedule Your Calendar Effectively

Successful businesses become successful because they focus on priority areas that will drive business results.

Identifying your priorities is one thing, achieving your priorities is another.

If you’re going to achieve the priorities in your business then you need to plan when you are going to do it and effectively scheduling your calendar is how you do it. Makes sense right?!

Unfortunately, many people don’t spend a short amount to effectively schedule their calendars to achieve what matters most to achieve their business goals. When we don’t prioritise effectively, our ‘to do’ lists seem to takeover and we take action but not always the right action to create desired results.

"The key is not to prioritise what's on your schedule but to schedule your priorities." – Stephen R. Covey

When we schedule our calendars effectively then we can:

- Increase our confidence that we will complete priority tasks and objectives

- Feel organised (because we are!)

- Focus on what will create the biggest progress to achieving desired results

- Maximise our time and energy

- Remember the activities that matter most

Scheduling your calendar effectively means to schedule important activities in your calendar to maximise time and energy.

Here’s 5 steps to schedule your calendar effectively.

#1 - Schedule the most important things outside of your business.

Business for many of us is a vehicle to experience life as we want, as are out outside business commitments and activities. Schedule in the activities that are most important to you in your life e.g. exercise, hobbies, social events, self-care, time with loved ones, personal or family appointments.

#2 - Schedule your challenging and leveraged activities.

Leveraged activities are activities that will make future weeks easier – they are activities that you will be able to automate, systemise or get someone else to do e.g. creating an operational guide to delegate or outsource. Schedule these early in the week when you work best eg. Monday / Tuesday morning.

#3 - Schedule ‘Flex Time.’

'Flex time' is a placeholder time to complete unplanned for tasks that you don’t even know about it yet that are important and need to be completed. Schedule an hour a day in the afternoon or schedule it towards the end of the week.

#4 - Schedule easier tasks.

Schedule the tasks that need to be completed that don’t take the same energy and focus as challenging or leveraged activities in the gaps in your calendar e.g. half hour time slots. Schedule easier tasks in afternoons and towards the end of the week when your energy might be lower. P.S. Most meetings fall into this category. Schedule or reschedule meetings in the afternoon and later in the week and reserve your deep focus time for the morning if that’s when you work best.

#5 - Schedule any remaining time.

If there are any gaps in your calendar, schedule any other tasks from your ‘to-do’ list. If you find a task that has missed being scheduled, analyse your calendar and negotiate what stays and what goes based on timelines, deadlines and reality. If there are too many tasks, think about other ways to achieve them, push them to next week or even next month, communicate to others impacted and accept you are human!

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Your turn...

Why not have a go at scheduling your calendar using these 5 steps and see the impact it has on your productivity and progress towards your goals.

If you would like to learn more on how to effectively prioritise to enhance your business results, reach out to Claire White at Leaders Network hello@leadersnetworkgroup.com.au