From Chaos to Clarity: The Action Calendar Method

Hi Friends 👋

As I reflect on my first ten years in the workforce, one thing has become abundantly clear: the more experience I gain, the more responsibilities I acquire🤪. The feeling of having a full plate at work can often be a stress point for me. However, having the right tools and systems to organize my days has dramatically helped me manage the pressure. Although I am a huge fan of to-do lists, the holy grail that keeps me on track during the week is my calendar. Having a full calendar may seem overwhelming at first glance, but it actually provides the opposite effect for me and brings a sense of calm, knowing exactly what's coming up in the day, week, or month ahead. With that being said, building out a calendar with intention can serve as an aid in staying focused to reach short, medium, and long-term goals.

If you have experienced similar challenges in managing your workload, perhaps it's time to explore how your calendar can be used to take action and keep you in control of your time.

ENTER Action Calendar 📅 🦸‍♂️

What value does an action calendar bring?

• Super task killer ✅

• Goal smasher 🥅

• Accountability checker 🧾

• Short and long term habits can be learned with calendar repetition 🔁

Patrick Betdavid, a YouTube extraordinaire and an even more extraordinary businessman, summed it up best by saying:

"Show me your calendar, and I'll predict how your business will do in the next 90 days."

Now, I'm not suggesting you follow the Elon Musk method of having a calendar broken down into 5-minute increments (legend has it). But I am saying that aligning a calendar to daily, weekly, monthly, and annual goals is definitely a better idea than not using it at all. Heck, maybe after this, you will be inspired to give the 5-minute Elon calendar a shot!

THE HOW-TO FRAMEWORK - 3-Step Process

How I turned my normal calendar into an action calendar

1. Understand my goals It all starts here. In any business or personal endeavor, goal setting is huge! Once I have done my planning, the first place to start is by breaking up my goals into actionable tasks. This can be reduced to quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily goals.

   🧠 Note: Some long-term goals may not be time-bound, and that is okay, for example, living a healthy lifestyle might entail setting exercise frequencies in your schedule without a finish line.

   1. 🧠 Pro Tip: Start with the most important goals, or if business-related, are tied to company KPIs/objectives.

   2. ⚡️Check out my post on Goal Setting if you need a helpful start 👍🏼

2. Time Blocks Once I've set and squared away my goals, it's time to build time blocks.

   1. When my calendar is empty, I tend to struggle with priorities and feel a bit all over the place. My hack to avoid this is to fill up my calendar with time blocks that matter.

   2. Set up weekly recurring time blocks to establish a routine and rhythm for personal/work.

      Refer back to your goals here. Start putting the pieces together by asking:

      -If I were to achieve this goal, what would my schedule need to look like?

      -How often would I need to take the actions required to achieve the goal?

      Action: Take these answers and translate them into your best guess of frequency and duration into a recurring event for your calendar.

      P.S. it's okay if you don't know how often or how long; 2-3 times per week with a 2-hour time block is a good rule of thumb to start.

   3. Rinse and repeat the above steps for your goals and consider this the base layer of your calendar.

3. Daily Tasks & Blank Blocks Actions for goals laid out?

   Work the remainder of your calendar with daily functions and responsibilities that are required but may not be critical from a strategic perspective.

   1. Ensure these tasks are handled efficiently and do not encroach upon your strategic activity time blocks.

   2. 🧠 Any time left over? It's OK to have a blank time block. In fact, I encourage this! Sometimes, the creative juices work best when the mind is not under constant demand. A blank time block can be used to satisfy your curiosity, read, doodle, research, think, journal, etc. Just be mindful of the duration for this, and make sure 30 minutes doesn't turn into 3 hours.

🧠 Pro Tip: Creating a shortcut widget on my phone was crucial in helping me prepare my mind for the day ahead. A quick 1-minute scan allowed me to be ready for the day and stay focused on what I needed to accomplish. Remember, your action calendar is the boss!

A final tip is to implement as a quick visual check is to color code red-yellow-green as you work through your week. This is a quick way to recap my day/week and see what I have successfully completed (green), what I have started (yellow), and what I have not completed or started (red).

Once I adopted this strategy, I quickly realized that my calendar became my boss. I could tell if I was falling behind on multiple tasks or staying ahead. This became very helpful when scheduling new meetings or committing to deadlines. It also kept me laser-focused from Monday through Friday.

Now you have yourself an action calendar 🙂

When considering this approach, know that the initial setup may take a little longer than operating a simple to-do checklist. However, over the long term, I found that I was taking actions more aligned with what mattered most. Ultimately, this helped me to stay focused on my short, medium, and long-term vision and significantly boosted my productivity by eliminating waste in the planning and execution of my time. Most importantly, I actually began to feel like I had control over my time.

So there you have it. If you found these suggestions useful, I highly recommend following the framework above to help you get started in reaching your goals!

brainy.bites Key Tip Summary

1. It's okay for some goals to not have an end date, such as being healthy. Frequency in your calendar and the act of doing is more important and valuable in helping reach these types of goals.

2. The foundation of creating an action calendar lies in laying out strategic goals first.

3. Having a blank time block in a calendar is OK and can be a time to tap into creativity.

4. Create a shortcut on your phone for quick access to your calendar for clarity on the day/week/month ahead.

5. Once the action calendar is set, it becomes your boss!

🔊 QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Lost time is never found again. -Benjamin Franklin

👨🏼‍💻 INTERESTING

Article More fun reading on the Elon 5-minute calendar rumor.

Parent Corner This article provides 7 parenting rules based on research in neuroscience and psychology to help children develop flexible and resilient brains. The rules include creating an environment for growth, talking and reading to children, explaining things, describing activities instead of labeling people, encouraging imitation, exposing children to diversity, and applauding their sense of agency. Highly recommend for any parents to check this one out!

Audiobook Leadershift -John C. Maxwell

Thank you for reading, and I'll see you all back here next week! 👋

B