SDH 422: My #1 Time Management Tool: Calendar Your Life with Amanda Boleyn

In this episode, I'm sharing a tool that I’ve been practicing diligently for the past 9 months. It is what has attributed to me accomplishing my goals, not giving in to overwhelm, and knowing when my workday is done.

Time management. What does it actually mean to manage your time? Managing your time is you decide ahead of time how you’re going to spend your time and exactly what you’re going to do with it. 

The problem with time management for most people is that they’re reactive to their schedule and work from a never-ending to-do list. 

When you work off a never-ending to-do list, it is, therefore, never-ending. Right from the start, you set yourself up for failure in the sense that you’ll always be “behind”.

And when you feel behind, you put yourself in a closed loop of being behind.

Napoleon Hill, the author of “Think and Grow Rich” shares that our thoughts create our feelings, which creates an emotion, inspires an action, which produces a result. If your thought is “I’ve got so much to do” (because it is triggered by your never-ending to-do list), you’re going to feel overwhelmed. Most often this results in either not taking or initiating action but also not following through. Ultimately, this becomes your story and what you identify with.

Today, I want to offer you a tool I use that actually allows me to throw my to-do list away and feels so freeing. It is a tool called “Calendering,” meaning everything that needs to get done, goes on the calendar. No longer are you trying to track down your multiple sticky notes, rather you have ONE central location that you work from. This method definitely works better with a digital calendar rather than a traditional paper calendar because you may find yourself needing to switch things around, and doing this digitally is much easier than on a paper calendar. 

The idea is that anything and everything that needs to get done has a place on your calendar. The benefit of this is that you no longer have a to-do list and you become more proactive with your time; you know exactly how you’re spending your time and what you’re producing during that time, plus, you save energy by having a system in place.

 

In this episode, you will:

Learn how to effectively block time on your calendar for business and personal use

Find out how I break down tasks to maximize my working hours

Hear how to make the switch from using a paper calendar to a digital one

Discover the importance of planning out the usage of your time

 

Insights:

“The idea is that anything and everything that needs to get done, has a place on your calendar.”

“Our thoughts create our feelings, which creates an emotion, inspires an action, which produces a result.“ - Napoleon Hill

“The Six-P Formula states that ‘Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.’”

“You want to make sure that you pick a time every week where you sit down and plan your schedule.”

“One of the worst uses of time is to use it to do something very well, that need not to be done at all.”

 

Resources:

Google Cal

Six-P Formula