How To Use Your Task List With Your Calendar.
This week’s question is all about managing your tasks and managing your events. Where does everything go? Your calendar or your task list?
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Script
Episode 147
Hello and welcome to episode 147 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.
So, I’ve had a few questions recently on how best to schedule your day and what should be on a task list and what should go on your calendar. It’s a good question and it goes to the heart of managing your time and your days and weeks.
Now, before we get to that, If you are sick and tired of endlessly rescheduling tasks and starting the day with a lot of overdue tasks, it may be time for you to consider the Time Sector System.
The Time Sector System shows you a different way to manage your tasks, a way of being more realistic about what you can get done each day and each week. It encourages you to become better at prioritising your time and the work you have to do and it makes your daily and weekly planning easier and faster and a lot less complex.
It’s a system designed in the 21st century for the 21 century and will help you eliminate all those overdue tasks and give you a simple time management system that you can build on and learn new habits that will ultimately put you back in charge of your time.
Full details of the course are in the show notes.
Okay, its time for me now to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question,
This week’s question comes from Benjamin. Benjamin asks: Hi Carl, I’ve seen a few of your videos recently on using your calendar but I’m a bit confused. Are you saying you should manage everything from your calendar or from both your calendar and your task list?
Hi Benjamin, thank you for your question and I’m sorry for any confusion. Hopefully, in this episode I can clear things up for you.
So let’s start with the calendar. Your calendar is your most powerful productivity tool because it is the one tool you have that will never lie to you. It shows you the number of hours you have each day and it will not allow you to over-schedule yourself. Well, I suppose you could do that, but you would very quickly see the impossible situation you have created for yourself.
So, how do you use your calendar? First, you want to schedule your non-negotiable events. These could be meetings, family commitments, your exercise time and classes or other commitments you have that are important to you.
For me, each week, I have a number of classes that are at the same time each week. These are on my calendar as repeating events. They are non-negotiable for the most part—although from time to time I will cancel these if I need some time to record a course or if I need to take a few days break for thinking and planning.
I also schedule my exercise time on my calendar too. I do this at the beginning of the week because each week the type of exercise I do is likely to be different. To do some weights at home—because at the moment gyms are not the safest of places to be— takes around 45 minutes. And a quick shower afterwards means I need an hour. But there’s no travel time or cooling off time—which I usually need if I have been out for a run or to the gym.
If I go out for a run, I usually need ninety minutes. So I schedule my exercise when I do my weekly planning.
That takes care of my core commitments for the week.
And that’s what you should be doing when you plan the week. Start with your calendar. Make sure you non-negotiable commitments are on there first. After all, they are non-negotiable. They must happen at a specific time and on a specific day.
Once your non-negotiables are on your calendar, look for blocks of time you can block off for focused work. Now when I say “focused work” I mean projects or goals you know you need to commit a certain amount of time in order to get them done.
Here it will be up to you how and when you do this work. Because my week is largely fixed, I have recurring blocks of time for writing, recording and creating. For example, Monday morning I have an online class between 8 AM and 9 AM and once that is finished I have a block between 9:15 AM and 11 AM for writing my blog post for the week. It’s fixed and it’s recurring every week. I do the same on a Tuesday morning. Every Tuesday I have an outside class at 7:30AM and I get home around 9:30AM. So between 9:30 AM and 11:30 AM I have a recurring block of time for writing this podcast script.
These ‘events’ are fixed and recur every week. They are non-negotiable. If I did not block these times, my blog post and podcast script would not get done, or I would find it difficult to find the time to do them. I need that structure and I need that consistency to do it.
You could do the same. If you have a regular meeting that requires planning for, you can block time on your calendar to prepare for the meeting. Once it’s blocked and it recurs at the same time each week, you know you have the time available to prepare for your meeting. Of course, if you ignore the time block, then it won’t work and you would quickly find you run out of time because other, less important but louder things will inevitably crop up.
This is also how I have time each week to prepare and record my videos for YouTube and write the two newsletters I produce each week. Each piece of content has a block of time scheduled on my calendar that recurs. So, my newsletters are written on a Wednesday and Friday morning. My videos are recorded on a Thursday afternoon and a Friday morning and edited on a Friday afternoon. Producing and publishing content each week is important to me and the work I do. So, it is non-negotiable and is fixed on my calendar each week.
The way to look at it is if it is important and must get done, then schedule the time required to do it on your calendar when you do your weekly plan. If you are not scheduling the time to do the work that is a “must’ how will you find the time to do it when your week starts? There will always be ‘emergencies’, demands on your time and requests from bosses, colleagues and customers. These demands are often loud, but not really important—unless you think every request you get at work is important (seriously, that is not true at all)
So, what goes on your task list?
Your task list is for all the little things that need to be done on a daily or weekly basis. The things that come up and gets added to your inbox. Let me give you a few examples.
Yesterday, as I was feeding my dog, I used that last of his supplement tablets. That went into my inbox; “Buy Barney some more heart supplements”. Another one was from this morning, I said I would send my students a link to a video I was watching last night. So I added that to my inbox.
Now, let’s take those two examples. They are now in my task list inbox. Do I need to schedule a time to do them? No. They just need doing. My dog’s vet is a ten-minute walk from my house and I already know I will need to drop into the supermarket at some point in the day today anyway. So, when I go to the supermarket I will take a small detour and call into the vet to get the supplement.
Sending the video to my students will take less than two minutes, so I will do that this evening when I process my inbox. I do not need to schedule these on my calendar. I will do them when I get a break in my day.
Now of course, there are other things in my task list. I have an amendment to do to a proposal I sent out for a workshop. It’s a small amendment and I was asked to do it last week. It was not urgent and I scheduled it in my task list to do this afternoon. It will take me around ten to fifteen minutes to do and it is non-urgent. So, it is on my list of tasks to do today and I will probably do it after I finish my exercise today. It is not on my calendar—it does not need to be. It will get done later today when I have some free time.
Now I have other recurring tasks on my task list. Things like do my admin, write my journal, clear my action today folder in my email etc. All these tasks do not need time scheduling on my calendar, they can be anytime throughout the day when I get a moment. And there will always be moments of time to do these things.
And that’s an important point. You should not be blocking out your whole calendar with work. You need space to do your regular tasks, deal with things that come up throughout the day and anything else that just needs doing.
For me, I generally use the morning to block time out for important work that needs an hour or two of focused time. I try to keep late afternoons free so I can deal with anything on my task list that needs doing.
You see, morning times for me is when Europe is asleep and the US is preparing to go to sleep, so very little comes in at that time. Late afternoons Europe is waking up, but as so many people check email in the morning I know I am unlikely to be disturbed by anything urgent, and the US is fast asleep.
And that’s a good point. If you are going to do this and block time out on your calendar for your important focused work, block times out when you are least likely to be disturbed. If you get the majority of your calls and emails in the morning, then do your focused work after lunch. Likewise, if you find late afternoons are your quietest times, when Slack, Twist and emails are quiet, then schedule your time blocks late afternoon. Find the right times for you.
This is why planning the week really helps. You should know what your important work is. Your core work. The work you are paid to do before you start the week. Make sure you have time scheduled each week to do that work. If you are not doing the rod you are paid to do consistently, you are not going to have a job for much longer. That work needs scheduling. Anything else does not need scheduling and can be kept in your task list to be done when you get a few moments in the day.
I hope that helps, Benjamin. I hope it has cleared up some of the confusion.
Thank you for the question and thank you to you for listening.
It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.