Color-coding the Calendar

I’ve always relied on my calendar as the ultimate to-do list. I’ve learned that if it’s not on my calendar, I’m likely to forget all about it. It’s why my schedule is the first thing I look at when I start my day and the last thing I look at when I finish.

After a few days of working from home, it became clear that I needed a way to gauge where and how I was spending my time. Was I spending enough time checking in with my team? Or too much time checking in with clients? I was finding it hard to see where I was spending my time. Then I had an idea.

What if I associate a color with various activities and then color-code those activities on my calendar? This way, I could look at a week and see, at a glance, where I was spending my time.

I started by breaking my time into the following categories:

Team activities would be blue. This would include leadership team meetings, one-on-ones with team members, etc.

Client activities would be green.

‘Doing Good’ activities would be pink.

Health activities would be orange. I debated whether or not to have this one, but as Charles had told me previously, “what gets measured gets done.” Therefore, if I wanted to make exercise a priority, I needed to measure it.

I then systematically went through every calendar item for the last month and changed each item to the corresponding color. After doing this, I realized that I was missing a bucket.

Random activities would be yellow. These were things that I didn’t want to do, but had (for some reason) agreed to do. I didn’t realize how many of these things were on my calendar! I was apparently still working on knowing how to say ‘no’ to some things.

I then went forward in my calendar for two weeks doing the same exercise. It became crystal clear that there weren’t enough blue team activities scheduled. I immediately went to work, correcting that because it was a priority to spend more time with my team during this pandemic, not less.

Key point: Managing your time as a leader is critical. Give yourself the ability to have an overview of how you’re spending your time so you can, at a glance, tell if you’re focusing on the right things. And learn to say ‘no’ to initiatives that are distracting you, especially during times of crisis.