One of the biggest time-wasters is scheduling meetings over email. Both those changes can buy back hours and hours on your week and keep you feeling energized. And to end at :25 and :55, to give you a little time to mentally transition. So what if we shortened our default meeting times? There's a setting in Google Calendar to change your default meeting times to as short as 10 minutes. Parkinson's law suggests that work tends to fill the given time. How'd you do? What got in the way? What was actually accomplished? What is a priority for next month and are there any personal challenges you want to take on based on what happened this month? On the last day of each month, schedule a recurring reminder to check in on your goals. Some people also choose to do a special weekly wrapup to evaluate some highs and lows of the week.
in the meeting description, I have a list of what to do– clear out any urgent emails and slack messages, close unnecessary tabs, and write a to-do list for the next day based on my schedule. Other categories might include deep work, shallow work, meetings, social, rest, learning, culture/adventure, morning routine, and email! Limit that inbox time.Īt the end of every day, create a short recurring calendar event for a daily wrapup. Block out your ideal week and don't forget things like commuting, lunch, and the gym. Or you can just do it directly in your calendar app. You can do this with an app like Plan, TickTick, HourStack, Planyway, or Skedpal ( read a review and guide of all 5 here). Instead, build better work habits and protect time. We shouldn't set ourselves up to play defense, by working a different to-do list every day. In his book, Deep Work (one of our favorites and inspirations for Caveday), Cal Newport talks about scrapping to-do lists in favor of time blocking. Here are 5 tips to help you own your time this year. Which is why this month, we're sharing some calendar hacking tips to set yourself up for a productive and on-task 2020. But by the end of the month, we'll be fully back into work-mode and reacting to emails, deadlines and, anything urgent. But for another reason too: our calendars for the year are pretty empty. Sure, beginning of the decade and the newness of a fresh start day and all that.