Why You Should Start Your Day with The Calendar
The calendar in my opinion is the most important asset that you should be actively protecting as a part of your work. More so if you are a Product Manager because there are so many stakeholders who would like time in the calendar. And yet there is only so much time left in a day.
So it is important for you to be very aware of the calendar and keep it well managed to utilize your time efficiently. Here is how I manage my calendar.
The first thing I do on a Monday is — Check my calendar for the week. It is only when you look at your calendar at the start of the week, will you understand how full or empty it is. And if certain days turn out to be busy, we can move around or decline meetings. As a rule of thumb we should only accept meetings our presence could be of real value. Having a birds eye view of the week enables us to get a general sense of the week ahead and be better prepared when accepting meetings.
Additionally, at the start of the week I use outlooks built in feature (Link)that automatically books time in my calendar based on available slots. I make sure that I book
- Focus Time ( 1 hour per day)
- Break (15 minutes per day)
- Learning Time (2 hours per week)
Doing this ensures my calendar is protected from being booked by others and with a shared calendar this enables others to plan their meetings around these times. These times are ‘me’ times where I plan to slot the work that I want to focus on or for learning to develop myself.
Thirdly, in one of my earlier articles, I talked about using a to-do app and my preferred app is Quire. Quire has one way integration available with popular calendars. I have mine setup with outlook. So the tasks that I have scheduled in Quire get automatically added to Outlook calendar. This allows me to move and reschedule work accordingly.
Unless we put the items in the calendar we might be under the misconception that we have a lot more time in our hands that we actually do.
You may have a number of task marked as to-do, but unless you put it in a calendar and visualize it you wouldn’t get the true picture of the day. And if you are constantly wondering that you never have enough time, then actually putting everything in a calendar is an easy to figure out where your time is going.
Some of you may be thinking that this way of scheduling and working in a timebox would be limiting your creativity or actually having fun working, I’d argue that it is another misconception. Spending 15 minutes at the start of the week this way allows me to stay better informed and planned.
I review the calendar at the start of each subsequent day and re-prioritize work if needed.
Please note that what I have described is an ideal scenario and as with anything in this world, surprises and procrastination almost always interfere. But despite all that planning things this way, has enabled me to be a lot more productive that I usually would have been.
Curious to know how the rest of you are managing your calendars. Please let me know in the comments.
