3 ways to increase your efficiency using just your calendar.

I feel like when everyone talks about improving efficiency, they can sometimes just start talking about fancy project management tools, process mapping and documenting all your systems and processes. For me I love to go down the rabbit hole of these conversations but for most people and businesses it’s just not needed.

You can vastly increase your efficiency by using just one tool that you ALREADY use…your calendar.

With a few adjustments and tips your calendar could be your new and improved efficient time management tool.

Now, I’m an Outlook kinda gal. We have clients that use Google, and we use the Google suite for some things. When it comes to my calendar though I’m team Microsoft all the way. All of these tips can be incorporated into whatever software you’re using, and I’ll try and reference the Google terms if they’re different as I go.  

TIMEBLOCKING

Break your day down into time blocks and group tasks together. I split my day up into 5sections. Early morning, 9am-11am, which actually isn’t that early but I’m THE worst in a morning. Mid-morning, 11am-12.30pm. Midday, 12.30pm-2pm. Afternoon, 2pm-4.30pmand evening 7.30pm-9pm.

Then I make a massive ‘to do list’ I group things together that make sense and slot them into these slots. Simple. There’s a few things to consider though.

-      When grouping tasks try to group in at least 30min blocks. A great example would be all of your finances. Invoicing, reconciling, accounts payable. Or if you’re rouping client work group by each client.

-      Workout your time blocks first. I don’t start until at least 9am because I have 2small children. You may want to start at 7am and finish at 3pm. Or you may want to take a long lunch to fit in your workout. Just do what works for you.

Why is this going to make you efficient? Well, by grouping tasks you’re not ‘interrupting yourself’ an interruption can take up to 30 minutes to recover from. If you can focus on one thing or one group of things, you’re going to be able to concentrate far better.

If you’ve got a team, try not to block out your whole time though. With more and more people turning to remote or at least hybrid working, online availability is becoming more and more important. You could also give them a set time that you are available if anyone needs to run anything past you.

COLOURCODE YOUR CALENDAR

Ok, this is by far my favourite tip. I remember when I first moved into the EA role and one of the executives I looked after had a calendar that looked like a rainbow. I was so impressed. Everything had a colour and without even reading the titles of the meetings you could see what her work week looked like. How many team meetings, exec meetings, work blocks, travel, personal, external meetings, EVERYTHING! I immediately did the same to my calendar. Now I actually can’t look at my calendar if it’s not colour coded.

You can do this in Google too and there’re different coloured tags. It can be quite overwhelming at first so maybe start with 2 or 3 colours and add in from there. It’s great if you’re wanting to spend the majority of your week on a certain project. You can give that project a colour and at a glance see any meetings or time blocked (see previous tip) dedicated to that task. It’s a game changer, promise! When you go to add a new meeting in the appointment ribbon there is a button called categories (or tags if you're in Google). Just click that and then all categories and name/add the colours to whatever you want. Going forward when adding in meetings just select the category it falls under. If someone invites you to a meeting, you can just change the category by right clicking on it.

ADD INREACTION TIME

The one place you can go wrong when trying to have a really structured productive week is not leaving enough reaction time. Things are going to happen, someone is going to call you when you’re in the middle of something about something that needs actioning urgently or maybe you’re child has to stay home sick or maybe someone is delayed getting something to you for a deadline so you can’t progress a piece of work.

You can do one of 2 things here and this will all depend on your workplace and the demands of your role. You can leave gaps. Proactively leave 2 or 3 one to two hour gaps each week so if you’re running late on a task or something happens you have time to deal with it. OR. If you’re in a role or business that sees a gap in your calendar and it’s likely to get snapped up quicker than you can make yourself a brew, then you can pop in blocks. Literally just block out the time, no title needed, and it will make your calendar look busy. I typically leave around 3 hours a week for this and half of the time I couldn’t tell you what it gets eaten up with! Don’t forget my earlier note though, if you have a team you need to show your availability to them somehow. I’ll let you work that one out though.

These are just 3 super simple changes you can make but they can have a huge impact! If you have an EA or you’re thinking about getting one this will literally be one of the first things, they will look at. Your calendar. It will also be where they spend the most time, so you don’t have to!

I would love to hear from you if you’ve implemented any of these tips and it’s helped! Happy calendar organising!

AC

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