We’ve been saying “if it’s not on the calendar, it’s not getting done,” a lot in our weekly Mastermind meetings. Calendaring is so important that we talk about calendar hacks a lot. You need to manage your time. What type of calendar you use isn’t important (electronic, print, big, small). But what IS important is that you find something that works for you — and you USE IT!
Here are a couple calendar hacks that our group has found useful.
One calendar hack we have all adopted is to set appointments with yourself. As the business owner, you’ve got a ton of decisions to make. Running a business—even a “small” business—requires so much work and such a long freaking to-do list, we often get so caught up in feeling accomplished by getting that work done and those to-do items checked off that we forget to check in with ourselves as business owners. We get caught up in acting like an employee to such an extent that we forget to be the boss.
So every week, (I schedule mine on Monday afternoons) take 30 minutes to an hour to have a meeting with yourself as the chief strategist of your business. To start off the meeting, acknowledge what your big-picture goals are and then for each of those goals, figure out if what you’re doing right now is aligned with making those things happen. If it is, great. If it isn’t, figure out what you can do to change it. If there’s room for improvement, figure out what that improvement needs to be.
Oh, and occasionally at my strategy sessions, I name myself Employee of the Month! I mean, someone has to be turning in stellar work every month — it may as well be me!
Another important calendar hack is to leave at least 20% of your time un-scheduled. The thing is, there’s always something that comes up last minute that you must deal with. There’s always a phone call with a needy client that goes 60 minutes over its allotted 30 minutes. And there’s always something you thought would take an hour to finish, but it takes two. And if nothing like that comes up one day – then great! You now have time to catch up on your emails, read up on what’s happening in your industry, or dedicate more time to your passion project within your business. Or, you know, you could just take that time off for the sake of your mental health.
Be productive and effective during your work time. There’s a productivity practice called the Pomodoro Technique. Basically, it’s this: work for 25 minutes, break for five minutes, and repeat until you work four 25-minute segments. Then take a longer break. Repeat four times. Each set of four lasts for about two hours, and I’d swear you’d get at least three hours or more worth of work done. Part of this is psychological. Because you can “only” work for 25 minutes before taking a break, you feel like you need to have something to show for that time, so you automatically stop wasting your time on Facebook. Also, because it’s only a 25-minute work segment, there’s absolutely zero pressure to finish a project in one sitting, eliminating the stress of getting started and making it easier to make progress.
These calendar hacks work. Try them for yourself and see. And to see other productivity tips, check out our blog post Quit Multi-Tasking for Greater Productivity.