For the full show notes and access to resources mentioned in this episode visit https://www.easyscaling.com/blog/episode52
In today's episode, I’m talking about all things time and calendar management and what works for me. We all know how important time management is but it’s usually easier said than done to actually implement real changes. If you’re constantly feeling drained and that your calendar is chaos, you aren’t alone. But luckily there are practices you can try to help gain control over your schedule.
Time and calendar management tips that I use to keep my schedule on track:
Links/Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Jordan Schanda King:
Love what you heard? Reviews really help us out! As a thank you, you can get my 90-Day Planning Formula ($97 Value) by submitting a screenshot of your 5-star review at easyscaling.com/podcastreview
For the full show notes and access to resources mentioned in this episode visit https://www.easyscaling.com/blog/episode52
In today's episode, I’m talking about all things time and calendar management and what works for me. We all know how important time management is but it’s usually easier said than done to actually implement real changes. If you’re constantly feeling drained and that your calendar is chaos, you aren’t alone. But luckily there are practices you can try to help gain control over your schedule.
Time and calendar management tips that I use to keep my schedule on track:
Links/Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Jordan Schanda King:
Love what you heard? Reviews really help us out! As a thank you, you can get my 90-Day Planning Formula ($97 Value) by submitting a screenshot of your 5-star review at easyscaling.com/podcastreview
Ep#52 - Tips on time and calendar management
Hey, hey, hey. All right. This week I wanna talk about something super sexy. Not really. I wanna talk about time management and calendar management, which don't tune out. This is so important. This is so important in this. These questions come up all the time. I, I know that this is important. I know that a lot of you listening.
Feel like your calendar is chaotic. You feel like you don't have enough time, you feel drained, like all of these types of things. This is like classic experience for a business owner, just especially if you're trying to grow. This is just typical part of the process. I feel like this is what, this is partly what creates that like hustle experience that a lot of people have is, is this.
This very unstructured approach to how you're managing your time and how you're managing your calendar. And that's not, that's not a criticism. I have been there, I have done that. There are seasons in life where you do need to be a little bit more flexible with some of these rules that I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk you through.
And that's okay. You don't have to do any of these things a hundred percent. You don't have to do all of them right off the bat. These are guidelines. Some of them may be helpful for you. Some of them may not be relevant at all. Take them and leave them, you know, do whatever's gonna work best for you, and just try them out.
Try them out one at a time. See if it helps, see if it changes your, your workload, see if it changes how you feel towards your business. See if it feel changes how you feel towards your life. And, you know, then you can adapt and, and figure out your own, your own set of roles. But for me, these have been the ones that have worked really, really, really well.
but again, These are not things that I do a hundred percent. I would say 80 ish. 80 ish percent of the time I'm doing these things, but recognizing that there are crazy chaotic times where I can't, I can't necessarily control. My scheduler, what's going on in my life, or my sick kids, or the fact that they can't go to daycare or who knows, like maybe I'm moving cuz I like to move across the country a lot.
So there's always gonna be, you know, times where you're not gonna have the luxury to be so strict with your calendar. And that's okay. So let's dive in to some of the things that, and there's about seven things here that I have. Implemented over the years that really helped me, helped me really stay efficient and also effective and avoid that really chaotic feeling that that I know can come from an overbooked calendar and a lack of focus and prioritization on what you should actually be spending your time on.
So let's do it. Number one, and this, this is like strictly for calendar here. Number one is I designate. Days of the week for certain call types. I had tried time blocking. I know there's lots of like really robust cool things that people do with their calendar. For me, I can't get nitty gritty specific on like, I'm gonna sit down on Tuesday from 12 to three to work on this task.
That does not work for me. If that works for you, fantastic. It does not work for me. But what does work for me is. Is really just setting the intention of certain days of the week being for certain types of calls, and also maybe tasks, but I'm more talking about calls generally. So for me, Mondays are client days.
I always have the bulk of my client calls on Monday, and that way I don't need to think about much else. I I'm not gonna be chipping away. You know, at my, my to-do list, I'm not gonna be also trying to meet with my team and talk through new initiatives. I'm not gonna be doing podcast recordings. I'm not gonna be doing any of that on Mondays because, Mondays are client days.
I'm gonna be solely focused on client stuff, catching up on messages, meeting with my clients, one-on-one, meeting with my, my pods in my Mastermind, and that is what I do, and it's a pretty packed schedule, so I don't really have time to do other things on Mondays, Tuesdays typically. More team-based calls.
So I do check-ins with several of my client managers on Tuesdays, and then I try to kind of leave it open because sometimes there's overflow with like client stuff on Tuesdays that I need to work on or catch up, you know, with my team on. Again, not a hundred percent rule. Sometimes I do other things on Tuesdays for sure.
Wednesdays and Thursdays are, are a little bit more flexible. That's usually though when I'm gonna be doing things like coffee chats or podcast recordings, you know, both for my own or for being a guest on other people's podcasts, and, and they're not, these days are not like labeled in my calendar necessarily.
I just kind of know. Mondays are always blocked. I never allow anything to be scheduled on Mondays other than client work. And then Tuesdays are kind of open, but ideally team stuff. And then Wednesday, Thursday, a little bit flexible. you know, I can do catchall like sales calls or like whatever I wanna do on Tuesday, Thursdays, and then Fridays are blocked.
Fridays are always blocked on my calendar. That doesn't mean I don't ever take a call on Friday, but that does mean that nobody can book in on my calendar. Ever on a Friday that is like super, super important to me. and a lot of times I don't take calls on Fridays, but sometimes I do throw something in there.
Especially again, if I, if there is some kind of chaotic season, I don't have the luxury of like being very particular with my schedule because maybe I'm operating on like a much slimmer schedule because I don't have childcare or whatever it is, and I have to take a call on Friday. That's fine. It's just kind of a general, a general rule, a general kind of framework for how I'm gonna separate out my time throughout the week.
Okay. Number two is I heavily block my calendar about one to three weeks out based on what's going on in my personal life. I look at, each individual day over the next, like over the, you know, coming one to three weeks. And if I see a day where I'm like, oh man, I already got three, four calls on that day.
That's a lot. Three to four calls is a lot of calls for me on a day. I'll block the whole day so that nothing else can get. Booked on that, on that day. So I just kind of periodically sit down, look a couple weeks out, and I'll go through and I'll block things as needed. especially again, if there's something going on in my personal life, I need to make a shift.
This leads into the next thing, which, gosh, this is maybe one of the most important things that I'm gonna say in this episode, and that is permission to cancel and reschedule liberally. Like do it all the time. Look at your schedule a couple weeks out. And if you're like, oh man, that day is gonna be so heavy, or, oh man, I just don't think I'm gonna that, like, I'm gonna be exhausted if I do that, or this is budding up against this and I need to focus on this thing that's happening, cancel it.
Cancel that call, reschedule that call. It is okay. The only thing that I, I try really, really hard not to cancel and reschedule our client calls. Try very, very hard not to do that. And I don't have a lot of one-on-one client calls, so that means that, you know, there's not. Typically a lot going on there that I need to reschedule, or shuffle around because there's just not very many of them.
And the other thing is my, my mastermind pod call. So that's a, a set in stone schedule. And I don't know, I think maybe I've only ever canceled or had to reschedule maybe one mastermind call in the last like year. So I, I try to, Really, really prioritize keeping my client calls as they are scheduled, but everything else is always on the chopping block.
I'm sorry to say that if you have ever had a call rescheduled or canceled by me, I'm sorry. but I'm also not sorry because that is, that is just so important for me to maintain my sanity, to be able to like just liberally cancel stuff and move it back. That's what keeps me from totally spiraling out into burnout is to lighten my calendar.
Okay. Seriously though permission. Permission to cancel stuff. The next thing, number four. So helpful, so important. And if you've listened to any of the episodes that I've done with Julia or really several other people or I've mentioned cycle syncing, I. This is that number four is to really lean into cycle sinking.
I've done that. I, I track my cycle very closely. I have kind of like gone in and out and like how, strict I am with this. Obviously I was pregnant there for a good long time, so it wasn't super relevant. But when it is relevant, it's super helpful for me. So I always have kind of kept an eye on this. And Julia helps me do this, my coach Julia.
But recently I have been, I have been getting a lot more into this because it does help and it's also, again, like none of these things have to be super strict. You don't have to be strict with them, but they're just such great frameworks for keeping your calendar lighter or focused. and not overbooking yourself.
And not overextending yourself. So, Recently what I started to do is look ahead for like the next one to three months and actually block in my calendar for what I'm calling light Call weeks. That's what I'm calling it. I'm trying to keep things kind of positive here. Light call weeks, and for those light call weeks.
I block my schedule. So again, doesn't mean I'm not gonna take any calls, but it does mean that no one's gonna be able to book in with me. And so that's kind of what I was getting to earlier when I was saying I heavily block my calendar a few weeks out. When I go and I look at everything and I maybe move things around or cancel things.
I also block off the whole day because I've got schedulers out there floating around. People can book calls with me for different things. Clients can book calls, people can book calls, right? I find that it's a much nicer experience for me to block. As much of my calendar as I wanna block and then add things in if I feel like adding them in rather than leaving everything open and letting people book in at their leisure.
That just, I, I don't, I just, I don't like the way that that feels, it feels, again, very chaotic and like, I don't really have control over my schedule. And I know that this is, this is a tough one for a lot of people, especially if you rely, you know, a lot on sales calls. For booking out your, your offers or if you do a lot of calls where clients are scheduling in, this can be tough, but I find that, that, that just, that is like a recipe for disaster.
It's a recipe not for disaster. It's a recipe for feeling like your time is not your own, your schedule is not your own, and like you're a little out of control. Right? So that can lead to that chaotic feeling and that burnout. So if possible, Try to block your calendar and then you can always add a call back in.
And I do this all the time where people will message me and they'll be like, oh, I wanted to schedule what I didn't see anything, you know, for the next like three weeks. I'm like, oh, okay, well how about I go unblock a couple of days, this week? Would that work? Or whatever week it's gonna be, they're like, sure.
So unblock those days, they'll book in and then I will block them back, you know? So yeah, this is a little less efficient in terms of like, The automation side of business, but doing it manually like this just makes me feel like I am actually in control of my time. So take that or leave that. Highly recommend though.
Okay. So we've got cycle syncing, which very important. And where I was going with that was I have light call weeks that I fully block, but still allow myself to take calls as I would like to. And then I have weeks that are. what I'm calling High Energy Weeks, and those are the weeks where I am doing guest podcast interviews.
I'm batching my own podcast. If I'm doing sales calls, that's the week to do sales calls, things like that, presentations, any, anything like that, that, that would be considered like high energy. that's, that's the week those calls happen. And if you have any questions about cycle syncing, let me know.
I'll probably just connect you with Julia. Julia knows all the things. And then we have a podcast episode you can go listen to with me and Julia all about cycle syncing. She's got some good resources in the show notes of that episode as well. Highly recommend it. If you're not doing that already or if you are doing it, but you're not really applying it to your calendar, definitely check it out.
Okay. One other thing I wanna say about. The cycle syncing piece and why I think it's important to block your calendar is because we don't, we, we know. Conceptually, oh, I don't usually feel good or like energetic that week of the month or, oh, I know. I'm usually like really magnetic and like personable and like high energy and want to like socialize that week of the month or whatever it is.
You may be really reflective, you may be really creative, whatever it is during whatever time of the month. There are patterns there, but what I find is that it's really difficult to remember. How you actually feel during other times of the month in the present, right? So like thinking ahead and looking at the calendar.
And blocking it off because, you know, conceptually you're not gonna feel good that week is a much better way to go about it than just generally knowing, but not doing anything about it. And then being like, oh, it'll be fine. I'll just plug that in there and I'll just, oh, I'm sure it'll be fine. You know, like it's really easy to justify or kind of like forget how it actually feels or how you're actually going to feel in the moment when you're taking that call.
So, best to just set the structure. Block the calendar or open the calendar if you're wanting to accept calls on a particular week and just stick with the structure. Okay, number five, this is a great one. And this one I have Emma Louise, one of my former clients, and now bestie. I'm gonna call you bestie.
Emma Louise, if you're listening, I love you. she gave me this idea, and this has been one of the best things that I've done in terms of like calendar structure. It because it's like so massively impact how I actually deliver my offers. I think it's, this is just like so cool and impactful. So thank you Emma Louise for this.
What this is is, My client off week. That's what I call it. That's what Nema Louise called it. So I just took that from her. But I block an entire week, every single month off of my calendar and I plan ahead for about the next three to six months, especially cuz you know, we have, we have the mastermind and we, we set that call schedule six month in it.
Six months in advance. So I go through and I pick my client off week and it changes. It's not always the first week, it's not always the fourth week. It's not like I go through and I hand pick each month what I want my client off week to be. A lot of times it matches up with holidays or birthdays or. It is other things that are going on, like I'm taking a vacation in July with Emma Louise.
We're going to London, we're going, well, she lives there. I'm going to London to visit her and we're gonna go to Wimbledon and do some cool v i p days and different things. stay tuned for that, but I knew that pretty far in advance, so that got blocked off as a client off week. Months and months and months ago.
So those types of things I can build into my schedule and then make sure that my offers are structured accordingly. So that is the reason, part of the reason that we only have three calls a month inside of our Mastermind because I know that I need to be off. One full week every single month, right? So a weekly call wouldn't work for me.
Same thing with one-on-one calls. Typically, we're doing every other week, and again, it's not gonna be the first and the, and the, the third week that we're gonna have client calls, it's gonna match up with my client off week so that I can make sure there's no calls booked for that entire week. It doesn't mean I'm not gonna take any calls, doesn't mean I'm not gonna work, but it does mean that I have that option, which is nice.
but it's really just there to have a light call week so that I can catch up with things. you know, maybe in the behind the scenes of my business, content creation, I can take a vacation, whatever it's gonna be, it's there and it's already built into the schedule. Okay, now we're gonna transition over to more like task management, rather than just calendar management. So number six, this is so important. Okay? This is how my brain works. Anyway, I keep a running to-do list in the notes app on my phone, which I also then have on my Mac because I have a Mac.
So this is what I live by. I'm literally looking at the notes right now for this episode. In the notes app on my computer as I'm speaking to you, and so I have a to-do list note where everything lives. I, I live by this note. I'm not joking. I check it throughout the day. If I sit down to work, I look at my to-do list and I look to see.
What am I supposed to be working on right now? My husband thinks I'm crazy. He's like, I, I don't understand. I just like work on things, you know, when they come to my brain, I'm like, that. Mm-hmm. No, that doesn't work for me. Everything needs to be written down so that I don't have to keep, keep it in my brain.
Everything is re-prioritized. So throughout the week, no, I don't do this just once and I don't have a special day that I do it on. I'm sorry if that works for you. Fantastic. But I just periodically through the week. We will look at my long running to-do list and I'll move things around and I'll move things to the bottom that I know are not really a priority for the coming week.
Everything else gets moved to the top and then ideally gets sorted by day. So I usually have at the very top the stuff that I'm working on that day. And then when it gets done, it gets deleted. Or if it gets re reprioritized, I push it back down, you know? To another day that week, or I push it back off the list, and that is just how I keep top of mind what I actually need to be working on.
It's already, like I said, been prioritized. It's re-prioritized, so I know that there's nothing else I need to be worrying about. I don't need to be looking at the full list. I don't need to be wondering if I'm missing something. It's all there. It's all already been sorted. I can just look at the two to six things that I've decided are important for this day, and I chip away at those.
That's it. It keeps my brain from kind of like spiraling out of control, feeling like I have a million things to do because I don't have a million things to do that day. I only have the couple of things I've already decided are important, so there you go. Seven. Last thing.
This is something that, that I do and I encourage all of my clients to do. We, we have a call actually inside of our membership that we actually do this as a group every single month, but that is to set a monthly focus. And, and this is so important because I find that a lot of times we're not actually zooming out to think about the month ahead and say, okay, what is the big project this month?
Or what is the big thing that I need to be working on? And I like to kind of frame it as the answer to this question. So, If nothing else were to get done this month, what should you get done that would still make the entire month feel like a success? So this is, this could be the one thing. I mean, maybe you're doing a launch, maybe you're launching a podcast, maybe you're bringing on a new team member, maybe.
You are redoing a process. Maybe you're creating a course, maybe like it could be a million things that could be the big project that you need to focus on that month. Everything else is extra like, and, and I'm not to, I'm not saying that it has to be a big project sometimes. The focus of your month, and this has come up on some of our calls inside the membership.
Sometimes the focus of that month is to get caught up. That like that can be your focus. It's whatever it is that you want to, at the end of the month say, ah, I did that thing. That was the thing that I needed to do this month and I did it and I feel great. And maybe not everything got done. Maybe it didn't get done perfectly, but you did the thing and it can only be one thing.
You can't have. Six focuses for the month. You get one focus that is the priority. If other stuff gets done, fantastic, obviously we wanna be doing more than one thing in a month. but you still need to have the clarity on what is the main thing that you need to get done that month. All right, there you go.
Those are my tips on time and calendar management. Again, like these are things that I have rolled out. Over time for myself, it waxes and it wanes on in terms of like how strict I am with these things. Sometimes they completely go out at the window when something crazy's going on, and that is okay. You may have other things, you may even wanna be more strict.
That's fine. Figure out what's gonna work for you. But again, If, if you take anything away, permission to cancel and reschedule stuff, your calendar is your calendar permission to block it. That is one of the biggest game changers in terms of how you, how busy you're gonna feel. So go do it. Go block your calendar, go look a couple weeks out, block some days off, cancel some calls.
Have some fun with it, and uh,I'll see you soon.