I’ve been pretty bad about scheduling my days for most of my life. I get a lot of things done but I’m guilty of getting in the zone on one thing and before I realize it I’ve spent all day on it and while I’m happy with the results I’ve also discarded everything else I’d hoped to do during the day. I’m also easily distracted at times, so again I’m guilty of waking up and jumping into 20 different things and being happy with getting so much done only to realize that not a single thing that I did during the day was actually on my todo list – they were all things that just presented themselves. I’ve of course read all the GTD/GSD scripture so it’s not for lack of direction. Recently I hired an assistant to help with my scheduling, and what I mean specifically with that is my scheduling with other people. I realized how much time I was spending going back and forth trying to find a time that worked for this thing or that with someone, sometimes I swear we’d spend more time figuring out a good time to have a call then the time we’d spend on the call itself. This has been revolutionary for me. When something potential comes up I just CC Julia in an email and next thing I know it’s booked and in my calendar and all is well. She knows my preferences for timing and thinks of things I never consider when setting them up.
Results have been amazing. And I’ve been putting more specific items to do in my calendar and as I do I realize I actually get them done when I wanted to. But I also realized that in my rush to schedule somethings I’ve overlooked some other things. This hit me the other day and I couldn’t believe I’d been so silly. I was lamenting not having ridden my bike recently and knew I’d wanted to but just hadn’t found the time and then realized how stupid that was, that I should have just put it in my calendar. Haven’t had the time to get coffee with friends? I should block off time for coffee with friends in my calendar. Want to meditate for 15 minutes every day – easy, just put it in my calendar. I really can’t believe I’d seen how awesome it was to schedule all my work and not translated that to personally fulfilling things as well. Which I’ve just corrected, of course. And I’m excited to see how this week plays out.