How a Personal Calendar can Jumpstart Your Success

Posted on by Bill Womeldorf

In the past several years, I’ve recorded every 30 minute block of time I’ve spent awake and organized them into various color groups. During my monthly and yearly progress reports, I can visualize where I spend the majority of my time and how it changes throughout the year.

Here are some of the directly beneficial reasons:

  • Increases your productivity by optimizing your schedule and prioritizing tasks
  • Reduces your stress by removing strain on your brain computational power
  • Increases your effectiveness by blocking in self-developmental tasks and weekly priorities
  • Increases your health and wellness my adding repeating workouts and blocking in time for recharging tasks

Quick Tips:

  • Color code the calendar so you can visually see trends occurring (and it makes data analysis more clear)
  • Block in repeating workouts, meditation, reading or any task that gets put on the back burner from more urgent items
  • Block in time to work out your high priority goals, I typically call this time “Weekly Focus” then I map out what I will be focusing on each week at the top of my calendar. Typically, these weekly focuses help move me towards my yearly goals.
  • Avoid multitasking or switching tasks often. Instead batch all similar items together. Example: Block all your maintenance items (haircut, bank run, grocery shopping, etc on Sunday, or whatever day works for you).

Example:

 

Important Notes:

  • It’s okay to act sporadically! – Sometimes I go into the day thinking I’ll focus my time on a certain tasks and realize I need to fight a fire. This is okay! But remember that you have the choice on how you want to spend your time. Don’t be a slave to your calendar, instead have it be your tool for developing a highly productive lifestyle.
  • Remember one of the goals is not to overwhelm yourself with items to-do. The goal here should be to make sure you block in time for items you care about and then defend that time when other priorities come knocking
  • Don’t make time commitments without looking at your calendar. If someone want’s to grab coffee together just say you’ll get back to them later tonight when your back in your home office.

Case Study:

After you try this out for a month or two, consider exporting your results using a free calendar to CSV tool online then organize your data into a pie chart. Here’s what my data looked like from January 2017 to June 2017:

 

 

 

 

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