I’m a little nuts — I really do schedule EVERYTHING.
I keep a color-coded calendar:
💜 Purple = Personal stuff → Training & exercise, BJJ classes, soccer, family time, dog walks. Because purple is my favorite color. 🙂
📗 Green = Client work → Weekly Coaching calls, LIVE training sessions, workshops & 1-1s. It’s green b/c clients are how the business makes money… 🙂
🍊 Orange = Content & writing → Podcasts, blog posts, book writing. Big time blocks to be sure I’m spending time every week on the most important activity that drives the business forward from marketing and sales to training and coaching.
🚺 Lavender = Home duties → Breakfast for my son, school pick-ups & drop-offs.
📘 Graphite = Internal → Standups, team meetings, standup, travel
🔵 Blue = Buffers → Time between meetings and activities to account for calls that run long and to give myself time for breaks.
When I build out my schedule for the year-quarter-month-week-day, I think:
Mountains–Boulders–Rocks–Pebbles–Sand–Water
🏔 Mountains represent the top projects and outcomes I’ve got for the next 6-12 months. Personal stuff goes first and I build my work life around that.
Of course there are exceptions like conference or client travel and accommodating for time zones.
By scheduling personal stuff first, I know what needs to be moved and replaced to make sure nothing is given up.
🌄 Boulders represent the big obstacles or deliverables along the way – making time to organize and write content for a workshop, blocking time to prepare for Big Meetings, and keeping a regular content production schedule.
The rest of my calendar fills in with the daily activities and meetings that advance me towards the outcomes and key results I set for myself.
⏳ Then I time-track every activity down to 10-minute increments – meetings, calls, email and calendar work, standups, time on Slack and Teams to answer DMs, LinkedIn and prospecting work. I track everything, every day so that I can see how I’m spending my time relative to how I should be spending my time.
📆 On top of that, my wife and I send each other calendar invites for our personal activities – when I’m training, doing soccer, and when she’s heading to the barn or heading out on hikes with her friends.
This keeps us communicating about each other’s priorities and activities.
Check out this week’s episode for more strategies and examples from my trail-running and coaching #startup founders every day at SalesQualia. Listen to the episode here: https://lnkd.in/gaVs7Nyw
