My losing battle with my calendar

Drinking from a fire hose

Building the plane while you are flying it

The startup analogies are plentiful and at many times throughout the day, we all have that feeling. It always hits me meeting after meeting with short breaks to actually execute on strategic initiatives. I continue to prioritize meetings/networking with email breaks, over spending time in more creative or business building activities.

I first wrote about this topic in October and have done a slightly better job of email management, not checking incessantly, but the calendar has still been difficult. What have I learned in this quest that you can hopefully avoid? And by writing this can I rewrite my own habits and come away with a plan I’m confident will actually work?

1. Overscheduling is a slippery slope

Once you get used to having 10+ meetings a day, it becomes the norm and you begin to associate a productive and successful day with the number meetings you have.

For me this started when I joined Glassdoor and was trying build out a sales organization, sell, and hire all at the same time.  It’s tough to prioritize when everything seems to be a top priority.

What could I have done to stop the slippery slope then, and what can I do today?

• Time blocking thought time. Build in at least two one hour blocks that are anti-time blocks, meaning they are time for me to prioritize everything on my plate and spend time on longer term projects
• Delegate more. Yes, I can do the job better than most, but is it worth it? Is the extra 10-20% of productivity worth the trade off?  Many times the answer is no.

2. What to prioritize?

To piggy back on the above, how do you not do something when everything seems important? I still don’t know if I have a perfect strategy but my general formula is my people and my clients first, and then everything else.

In an idealistic world where I had systems and the machine in place, that would be true, but today that prioritization many days doesn’t happen on the people side in particular.  This needs to be fixed, and is something that must take priority in 2015. If that means less profit or clients, than that will be fine by me.

3. Being nice and being selfish at the same time

You have to own your time and responsibilities or someone else will own it for you.

The distractions are everywhere and now it feels that there are distractions to distractions!!

In order to truly master your calendar you must be selfish and sacrifice time with certain groups of people to focus on the tasks at hand.

Right now I give myself a D at best in this.  It’s tough to know many times what is most important, even though I just stated what should be. I continually spend more time on partnerships and new business than with my people. In order to not let my calendar get the best of me I’m going to have to get better at this in 2015.

I will conquer my calendar and I will be the master of my day at some point but step one is breaking the cycle of poor prioritization. Today I’m going in and moving two meetings that are not people first focused and will do the same for next week. Let the anxiety begin!