How to Get Smarter About Your Calendar and Task List

Do you find you frequently run our of time but rarely run out of tasks? That’s what we’ll be looking at in this week’s episode.

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Episode 240 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 240 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

I’ve been coaching people for around five years now and in that time one problem comes up again and again. That is there does not appear to be enough hours in the day to get everything done. 

Well, the truth is, there is enough time—there’s always enough time—the problem is on the other side of the equation; tasks and appointments. 

If you fill your tasks manager up with an unrealistic number of tasks when you have several meetings on the same day, the problem is not enough time, the problem is you are not prioritising correctly. 

For most of us, appointments—whether they are business meetings or personal appointments—are the priority. They are on our calendar, confirmed and someone else is relying on you to turn up and be present. Tasks, on the other hand, while they may need doing, are less of a priority. Tasks can be done at anytime in the day be that the morning, afternoon or in the evening. 

Problems start to happen when you have five or six appointments for the day and a task list with 40 Plus tasks. There’s no way you are going to find the time to do all those tasks. So what do you do? 

So, with that in mind, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Bryan. Bryan asks: Hi Carl, I’ve followed the Time Sector System for over a year now and it’s transformed my productivity. However, one problem I continually face is I rarely complete all my tasks for the day. I generally have between two and five meetings each day which take up a lot of time. This means when I get to my tasks for the day, I feel overwhelmed. Is this normal or have I missed something along to way?

Hi Bryan, thank you for your question. 

Don’t worry, it’s unlikely you are doing anything wrong. Part of the problem is the world we live in today. So much to do, so little time to do it. 

However, that said, if you do find yourself rarely completing your tasks for the day, there are a few things you can do to sharpen up your prioritising that will help.

When it comes to your tasks, the strategy I advocate is begin with your areas of focus. These are the eight areas we all share that mean something to us. Things like our family and relationships, health and fitness and self-development. Once you have established what each of these eight areas mean to you, and you know what tasks need performing to keep them in balance, you will know where your priorities for the day are. 

Areas of focus are also important because it is these that will give you your goals. Meaningful goals you set will all come from your areas of focus. Imagine you have become aware that your savings are not where you want them to be. This will come from your finances area and you can decide what savings goal to set for the next twelve months. Or it could be you notice your waistline has expanded a little over the years and you want to do something about it. You could set the goal to lose a few pounds over the next six months. 

Now, you don’t necessarily need to have an actionable task from each of your eight areas. For example, the spirituality area of focus may mean you just need to attend a spiritual retreat once or twice a year, or you go to the Synagogue or Mosque every morning. These are not tasks, these are things you just do. They become a part of who you are. You routine if you like. 

When I look at my areas of focus, I have around five or six tasks each week that come from these. Exercise for example, is not a task, it is an event on my calendar. I make time each day for some form of exercise. It’s a non-negotiable part of my day. 

Once you have established what your areas of focus are, the tasks and events are in your task manager and calendar, you can then look at everything else. 

Work is where most of out daily tasks will come from during the week and it’s here were you need to get smart. 

Start with what you are employed to do. Are you employed to sell product, teach, manage a team or create designs? What is the core work involved here so you are hitting your targets? 

For example, I have a few clients who’s core work is to manage clients. Their role is to develop relationships with clients, new and old, and give outstanding customer service. Now, that’s something to work with. Begin with what “manage client relationships” actually means for you and your company. 

What are the measurable results you and your company want from this? 

That could be a given target for referral business, it could be numbers from a customer satisfaction survey or a given number of client contacts each quarter. I know that sounds a bit cold, but you do need to be able to measure something. If you cannot measure it, how do you know you are doing a great job? 

Like areas of focus, you need to set up your core work as tasks (or events) so that these high priority tasks are being taken care of each and every day. These become your priorities. 

I consider myself a content creator, I create content that helps people become better organised and more productive. But what exactly does that mean on a day to day basis?

For me, it means each day I need to create content. It doesn’t have to be a 2,000 word article or a recorded and edited video. It could be creating content, idea development, planning and writing outlines. As long as I am doing something each day related to content creation, I know I am doing my job. 

When I start the week, I know I need to write a blog post, prepare and record a podcast episode, plan and record two YouTube videos and write two newsletter essays. You could say these are my weekly deliverables. 

This means, when the week starts, I need to have the time to create this content scheduled and blocked in my calendar. To make this easier, I fix these in my calendar as repeating blocks of time. It means I don’t have to plan them out each week. I also know when I begin the day on a Tuesday, I have a three hour block in the morning to write. Likewise on a Friday morning, I have a two hour block for recording YouTube videos. 

I don’t want to be trying to find the time every week. Once it’s fixed in my calendar, I am not going to be tempted to schedule meetings or allow meetings to be scheduled over these blocks. 

Now, you may not have the freedom I have to block fixed times each week for doing your core work, but you will have some degree of flexibility. However, you will not be able to do that unless you know what your core work is. This is why spending a little time thinking about what it is you are employed to do and pulling out the actionable tasks that need to be done in order to accomplish your targets and key performance indicators—your KPIs—will pay you a huge dividend. 

Next up is to get smarter about your calendar and task list. In the hierarchy of things, your calendar takes precedence over your task list. Events on your calendar are things that need to be done at a set time on a given day. Meetings, for instance, are fixed so we can have everyone involved at the same place at the same time. 

Tasks, on the other hand, can be done at anytime in the day. Clearing your actionable email can be done mid-morning or late in the afternoon. Putting the final touches to the presentation you are delivering on Friday can be done first thing in the morning or after lunch. As long as it’s done, it doesn’t matter when you do it in the day. 

This means, when you look at your calendar and see you have four or five meetings, you do not want to have thirty to forty tasks on your task list for the same day. You will not complete all those tasks. This is where you need to make sure you do your daily planning. 

So what does daily planning look like?

All you need do with your daily planning is look at your calendar and task list and ask yourself if that is a realistic day. If you have several meetings that take up a large portion of your work day, reduce your task list to accommodate it. 

Start by removing tasks that can be done another day—when you look at your list objectively you will find a lot of the tasks on there can be pushed off to another day. A key tip here is to look again at your calendar and find a day where you have less meetings scheduled. 

If you are getting close to the end of the week and a lot of tasks are building up, look for time on your calendar you can block out for focused work. If you feel you are going to need more time than time available on your calendar, you may want to consider rescheduling some meetings. Don’t be afraid of this, all you need do is ask. 

Sending a message to a colleague asking if you can postpone a meeting until next week because you need to finish some important tasks is not hard. What’s the worst that could happen? They tell you; no. But in my experience, most people are happy to reschedule a meeting, and if not, what have you lost? Nothing. 

Daily planning puts you in control of your day. It will help you to stay focused on the things that are important to you. How long does a daily planning session last? Well, for the most part it’s going to be less than ten minutes. All you are doing is looking at your calendar and task list for tomorrow and asking yourself if this is a realistic proposition. If you feel it is not, reduce your task list. 

If you are new to daily planning, it may take a little longer at first. We are also susceptible to over scheduling ourselves. We think we can do far more than we can in a day. This is where consistency and experience will help you. You will inevitably over-schedule yourself at first. It’s part of the learning process. 

In those first few weeks pay attention to what you are getting done and what types of tasks you find you don’t get round to doing. It’s those tasks—the tasks you don’t do each day—that are your natural low priority tasks. You might tell yourself they are important, but if you are consistently not doing them, no matter what you tell yourself, they are not priorities. If they were, you would do them. 

Try to eliminate these tasks. 

I see people putting tasks like “do a mind-dump” each week, but they rarely ever do them. If you constantly skip these kind of tasks remove them. Mind-dumps don’t want to be done each week anyway—you have enough work to do. Mind-dumps, should be done every three months or so, or when you feel overwhelmed and you need time to get whatever it is overwhelming you out of your head. 

You might think they are important, but if you never do them, drop them. All they are doing is cluttering up your task list and giving you a false reading on how much you need to do. 

I hope that has answered your question, Bryan. Thank you for sending it in. 

And thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.