Run Your Day
Have you ever felt like your schedule is not your own? Meetings magically appear on your work calendar, your child’s social schedule has somehow taken over your weekend, and you find yourself thinking that there’s no time for the strategy session you wanted to hold, that class you were going to take, a trip you have been dreaming of, or a phone call you were going to make to a friend? Living in alignment with what you want starts with taking ownership of your schedule one hour, day, week, month at a time. Below are some tips for developing a practice that’s become a foundation for my own planning.
Enter every commitment on your calendar as soon as it is confirmed. When you map out what you’re going to do each day you can clearly see who you are making time for and what is getting left out of the picture.
Integrate your electronic calendars into one view or have a single electronic (or paper) calendar so that you can easily see all your commitments in one place.
Hold time on your calendar for appointments even if they are just with yourself. It can be easy to forget to hold space for ourselves on our own calendars. Examples include, completing a solo work task, taking a walk, or starting on a new home project.
Review your calendar at the beginning and end of each week and ask yourself the following questions:
What is/was most exciting about this week?
What continues to “fall off” my schedule (i.e. tasks that didn’t get completed, a lunch date that got moved, the yoga class you cancelled)?
What do I want more of? What do I want less of?
I want you to wake up each morning knowing that you run your day and that the commitments on your schedule hold meaning for you and support your goals. What will it take to put this practice in place? I would love to hear what changes you plan to make and if there are other approaches that support you in owning your time.