Identify the recurring tasks that you have and set them up in a way that makes sense. Be sure to always block the time as tentative so that others can schedule important meetings with you. A key to using this strategy, is that the blocks of time can be moved around as needed to make way for important items that come up.
Recurring appointments can be set to repeat every week day or on the last Friday of the month, for example, so set them in a way that is most effective for you.
Using colors for specific types of meetings and/or reminders can be very helpful too. For example, self-reminders can be gray. Big meetings that you run can be green. Internal regular status meetings can be orange. Working on your goals can be a dark blue. Set up colors that make sense and are meaningful for you.
Suggestions of reminders to set in your calendar:
- Filing (perhaps every two weeks for 1 hour)
- Meeting preparation (a built in 30 minutes prior to any regular recurring meetings you have)
- Goals (set aside at least 2 hours per week to work on your goals – don’t let “tasks” get in the way of true progress)
- Report preparation – such as status report for your manager (perhaps 1 hour every week, morning of meeting with manager)
- Recurring processes that you have daily (such as 1 hour for filtering resumes; if you find the time is not needed – great!)
- Organization session – set aside an hour per week to prep for your next week, make sure all priorities are moving along. I will train you on this as well. (Friday is a great day for this)
- Tickler file follow up – If you have a follow up folder that you keep (which is a great idea), schedule an hour or so per month to go through and clean out what you can, follow up on things that should be done by now. *tip – save emails that you send to this folder as well if you want to make sure something important was completed.
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