Stop letting your diary manage you
If you want:
- clarity on what you need to do in your personal life, work life
- keep on track of all the school info, vets appointments, gym memberships, subscription dates
- set boundaries for yourself and those around you
- stop work at a time that suits you
- gain proper time back in your day for that illusive work-life balance
Read on.
A few pointers for you to start you off
work out where your work calendar is stored, if indeed you have one. (Don’t. I know people who don’t write any of it down.)
if you have a Gsuite/google account - happy, happy days. If not, there are workarounds here too.
connect your work diary to your personal diary, even your other half’s or children’s diaries, so every single thing is on one page. No more diary clashes
if you are on Google, easy peasy - bottom left of your screen, see ‘my calendars’, click ‘add calendar’ or the ‘+’ button. Select calendars. Voila. I suspect other email providers probably have a similar system.
if you run on different systems, you need to invite yourself to your own meetings, so each calendar will pre-populate. A bit more of a pain in the a/se, but once you start doing it, you won’t regret it
If you have a shared work calendar, start to carve out hours to focus on specific things, or create some headspace for all those brilliant ideas. Block book time in your diary as ‘admin’ or ‘creative’ or simple ‘NO meetings’
Start to get creative with your diary. Colour coding is the quickest and easiest way to make your time easy to see, and analyse what you are spending time on. You could have different colours for ‘home and personal’, ‘external meetings’ ,‘internal meetings’, ‘do not disturb’.
You can even do different colours for the different projects you are working on, which then helps you determine where your time is going and whether this is the best and most productive use of your time.
Make sure you fix non-negotiable time in for you. To have a lunch break, go to the gym, time for personal admin. If it is in the diary, you are more likely to do it, because you do, in fact, have time to go to the gym, after all. Look, it is there in your diary!
Start being unapologetic about your time and your diary. If others want to book time in with you, they will have to find an empty slot, or ask you when it is convenient, rather than assuming you are free. Your diary is a really quick and very tangible way to show that your time is important, and help you create boundaries. Heaven knows, you might start to believe it yourself!
Mark in all the other, important, logistical things you can’t move or avoid. The school run, for example. If you work in a corporate environment, and mark in your arrivals and departures, no one will book things in to clash, and you can leave without feeling guilty that your colleagues are still there. You have an appointment in your diary. It is as simple as that.
Setting up and maintaining a diary that makes your life easier, shouldn’t take more than half an hour a week. A small price to pay for clarity, freedom and some serious colour in your life.
PRO TIP - set aside half an hour on Sundays to review the diary and move things around if you need to. Then you can hit the ground running on Monday morning.