My weeks are far from typical. But I love the diversity, fast pace, and new opportunities in my work.
I have several roles that demand my attention: husband, father, team leader, colleague, board member, ministry leader, friend, and others.
This post is part of the series – Get Your Life Back!
Take Control of Your Schedule
4 Tips for Managing Your Calendar More Effectively
Plan Your Year with Your Annual Plan
Create Your Best Week
You Can Keep Up With Your Email
The Secret for Managing Email More Efficiently
If you’re like me, your days are packed back-to-back with meetings, conference calls, planning, projects, and more!
But what if you could take control of your schedule once and for all?
Honestly, just about anyone can do it. Here’s how:
1. Consider interruptions
Who or what is interrupting you throughout the day and why? Are you forced to work on low pay-off activities that take you away from your high pay-off functions? Are these interruptions a reflection of your leadership style?
Mark Miller, Vice President for Operational Effectiveness at Chick-fil-A, observed that many leaders have built a team or a system that is dependent on them. So they spend their days responding to interruptions.
Review your list of interruptions and make the necessary changes right away.
Lead your team to take ownership, then free them to lead in their areas. Your team members are valuable. They are worth developing. And they can’t do it. Let them – and you’ll have fewer interruptions!
2. Avoid low-impact meetings
We all attend far too many meetings. There are times when the meeting organizer isn’t prepared, the meeting objective isn’t defined, or you can’t really affect the outcome.
Any meeting you attend should have a written objective and a written agenda. Without these two critical items, you’ll never know when the meeting is over.
Michael Hyatt recommends: If the content of the meeting is irrelevant to you and your job or if you don’t feel that you really add that much to the discussion, ask to be excused.
Also, don’t feel trapped by an all-or-nothing perspective – If you don’t have time for the entire meeting, ask if you can attend the first few minutes of the meeting or the last few minutes of the meeting to address the topics that are relevant to your area of responsibility. Most meeting organizers are happy to accommodate you.
3. Schedule time to do your work
It’s foolish to expect to get your work done when you spend your entire day in meetings and working on projects for others.
Instead, set appointments for your projects and planning. Get them on your calendar – first! Then, when someone asks you to attend a meeting, you can say, “I’d love to, but I already have a commitment.” If you don’t control your calendar, someone else will.
I’ve written several articles about managing your schedule and calendar which include practical actions steps and templates you can download and customize for your own use:
- Create Your Best Week
- Plan Your Year with an Annual Plan
- 4 Tips for Managing Your Calendar More Effectively
Check out those articles and download the tools to be more effective and efficient.
4. Add to-do items to your calendar
Everything takes time. I learned a number of years ago that my to-do list is exponentially more effective when I simply add the items to my calendar.
If an item was not important enough for me to schedule 10, 15, or 30 minutes to accomplish it, then maybe I shouldn’t be doing it.
For projects that require less than 5 minutes of my time, I do them right away. Putting them off requires me to think about them over and over and ultimately wastes far more time than the action requires. So I just do it – and get it out of the way. Finishing the quick items also gives me more energy and momentum.
See! Anyone can benefit from a few simple steps to reduce wasted time and develop new productive habits.
Most importantly, you’ll have greater control of your schedule so you have more time for those who need you most.
Question: What tips have you discovered for improving your productivity? Share in the comments.
Great post! I like the idea of batching similar items. This allows me to really focus and be extremely effecient. This could be doing all content/blog, site visits/estimates, shopping/errands on a specific day. Michael Hyatt talked about creating a theme for your day, which was my motivation for batching. I now have a theme for each day of the week.
Thanks for sharing! Great idea for a theme each day!
I like to make a to-do list for the next day before I go to bed so I’m not up all night reminding myself to do things tomorrow. I then priortize the list first thing in the morning. Also, at least every other week take one day off where you don’t respond to calls or emails (unless it’s truly an emergency). You can get burnt out very quickly if you’re not careful and then you won’t be putting your best foot forward!
3 good ideas! You’re right – it’s important to plan margin time.
Choosing what can be clipped from my shedule. Not saying yes all the time. Remembering I am a unique individual and don’t have to be doing what everyone else is.
All good disciplines. Thanks for sharing them. Let me know how I can serve you.
I run or swim once a week & agree that it totally revitalises you whilst getting the endorphins going for that feel good vibe. Feeling good means working good! Alas, I have struggled with morning workouts but will consider than again.
Nice. It’s funny how different we are – yet we can still learn from each other.
I find taking time for physical activity improves my productivity. It allows me to recharge my internal battery. Coming back from a brisk walk, short run, or a set of jumping jacks and my productivity level jumps.
Funny that you mentioned working out midday – I wrote about my experience here – http://www.michaelnichols.org/changed-diet-lost-weight. It didn’t work for me.
Morning workouts, however, are game changers for me. I am more relaxed and respond better throughout the day after a morning workout.
I like the idea of scheduling “to dos”, i’m going to start doing that. I’m looking forward to the rest of the posts in this series.
That’s great, Krista. I do it everyday – it’s also helped me to be more realistic with what I can actually accomplish in a day.
It will take a little getting used to. So don’t get frustrated with it too quickly. Let me know how it goes.