Ep #51: The Calendar Clean-Out
episode summary
There are only so many hours in a day. And there are only so many hours in a day that you can fill with to-dos and meetings and appointments before you exhaust yourself completely.
If you've ever tried (and failed) to fit too many tasks into too few hours, the Calendar Clean-Out is for you!
Featured on the Show
Calendar Clean-Out worksheet
For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.
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CHAPTERS:
3:57 - Miles Until Empty
6:26 - The Calendar Clean-Out
16:25 - Do Less for Success Tip
listen to the episode:
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Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. Hey, friends, thanks for joining. If you are looking towards your next week or so and feeling overwhelmed about all the things that you have committed to or maybe you just don't even know what you've got on your schedule because you're kind of avoiding it, this is a great episode for you. This week, I'm going to talk about something that I do every Sunday. I do what I call a Sunday reset, and there's just a list of things that I do every Sunday to make my week go very smoothly - as smoothly as possible for things that are within my own control. And what I do every Sunday is something that I call the Calendar Clean-O ut. So today I'm going to teach you how to do this too, so that you can minimize the stress that you have in trying to accomplish all the things that you have on your calendar for the week. It's three really easy steps, and I'm going to teach you each one and talk to you about them in detail, but essentially, you'll learn how to look at your calendar, see where you're already committed, then make your to-do list for the week - both work and personal - and then finally combine those two things so that you actually have a spot for all of the things that you're going to accomplish for the week. This will mean that things won't make it onto your schedule that you have on your to-do list. Now, this happens anyway when you have a ridiculous to-do list that's way too much. You don't get it done, but you feel really frustrated at the end of the week. The pro of doing it this way is that you know at the beginning of the week exactly what you have time to get done and what you don't.
Michelle Gauthier: 1:44
A few weeks ago went on a long weekend trip, which was so great, and I'm so glad I did it. I went to Texas. In case you're wondering where I went, I went to Austin and San Antonio, where we used to live. We even went to the rodeo in San Antonio. It was so much fun. But I got back from - it was a long weekend and I got back, we flew back on Tuesday morning at like 4am or something insane.
Michelle Gauthier: 2:08
So when I got back, I hadn't done any of my calendar clean out or Sunday reset and I sort of hobbled through the week. But I felt pretty lost without it, like I was catching up all week long, and so that really made me realize, I'm so in the habit of doing that every week that when I skipped it, it really made me realize what a big effect it has on my life, and I thought, I need to teach other people how to do this on the podcast. And I don't know about you, but I'm a visual learner and a checklist kind of girl. So I created a free worksheet so that when you're doing this - let's say you're listening to this on like a Tuesday and you decide you want to reset your calendar and do this calendar clean out on a Saturday or Sunday, you can just grab that free worksheet, go through the checklist and have that as your guide for the first couple of times that you're doing it. So the link for that is in the show notes. And then, lastly, stick around for the end of the episode.
Michelle Gauthier: 3:04
I'm starting a new mini segment, like less than a minute long segment, called Michelle's Do Less For Success Tip, and I'm going to tell you about a time during the past week where I have done less and how it helped me. I think sometimes we feel like we have to do more, more, more, and I just want to continually give you examples of how doing less can actually make you more successful, so stick around for that at the very end. Okay, let's jump into this calendar cleanup. I'm getting excited about it. First, you want to grab everything that you need in order to review your schedule for the week and have your to-do list. For you, that might be paper, might be your phone, might be your computer, whatever it is. You want to have all of that handy. And if you want the guide, just go to the link in the show notes and download the worksheet, the checklist, to go with this.
Michelle Gauthier: 3:57
Okay, I'm going to tell you a little bit about Old Michelle, which is ironic because I was younger Michelle. But Old Michelle took some serious pride in the fact that I could do anything and everything all at the same time. So that means every week I'd start off the list with an impossible schedule and a to-do list. I would give that ridiculous schedule my all, just flying from one thing to the next with rather frantic energy. If I'm honest, it wasn't uncommon for me to do something like take a 5 am flight, and you know that means you have to get up at like at least 3 am, to fly in and be at an 8 o'clock meeting in Dallas and I would have never considered going the night before, like giving myself a little breathing room, and then I'd fly back the next day, landing in exactly the nick of time to get to school, pick up, and then on to homework, and dinner and whatever else, until I went back to work after the kids went to bed, to knock out a couple more things. And this honestly did work for me for a while and I suspect that maybe this worked for you too.
Michelle Gauthier: 5:06
But eventually we just get worn out, just sick of living like that, or sick- sick, physically sick, or just mentally sick from the exhaustion that we've put ourselves under. It's kind of like if you're going on a road trip and let's say, you know you're gonna be driving 500 miles on this road trip and you fill up your car and your car tells you - mine has this little thing and I'm sure yours probably does too - that says miles until empty. And your car says 400 miles until empty. But you're like, I don't know, we're just gonna do the 500 miles without stopping for gas. I'm not really sure how it's gonna work, but we're just gonna do it. Why not just like plan a fun stop where you could get some gas and recharge yourself? Get a coffee, maybe take a little walk, something like that, instead of just charging forward and crossing your fingers that you don't run out of gas. And when you do run out of gas, you feel like crap that you've put yourself in a bind. Now what am I supposed to do? So what we're gonna do here with this calendar clean out is we are going to figure out if we have 400 miles of gas in our tank, how to set up our schedule so that we have 300 miles to drive instead of 500 miles to drive. Okay, so let's get started.
Michelle Gauthier: 6:26
Here are the steps, and I'll go into each one of these in detail. First step one is to check out your committed blocks. So I want you to grab your calendar and take a look at your calendar. Committed blocks are things you have already committed to and are on your calendar that you actually plan to attend. So, for example, for me in this week, those included times where I'm seeing clients, where I'm teaching group coaching, where I'm going to the gym, something like a chiropractor appointment, which I did have this past week, and then my daughter's horse riding stuff. So those are all things that I am committed to. I can't do other things during those times. That is what I'm doing at that time.
Michelle Gauthier: 7:10
Now just a note here, because most of these are recurring appointments from week to week, but every week I look at all of them, and I just make sure that everything looks right. So on Sundays I choose the days that I'm gonna go to the gym and I sign up for that class, and I add it to my calendar as a committed block and make sure there's no overlap with anything else. And for example, this week when I was reviewing, I noticed that I had an overlap between a client meeting and the appointment at the chiropractor that I'd scheduled. So when I look ahead to my schedule, it's not like, on that day, all of a sudden I'm like, oh crap, I accidentally scheduled two things. I see it on Sunday. I texted the chiropractor and requested a new time and it all worked out. So just check out what your committed blocks are for the week and If you have the kind of job like I used to have, many of these could be meetings coming from other people, and what might look like white space now might be a committed block by Tuesday or something like that.
Michelle Gauthier: 8:11
So if you have that kind of a schedule and you know that you might be getting meetings, just sort of think of your work days as a pretty committed block, that if you're at work from 8 to 5 or you're working from 8 to 5, that there's a chance you could get those on your schedule for sure, unless you have a certain meeting- free time or something like that. Okay, now, looking at your committed blocks, are these things you actually want to do, and is there anything you can remove from your schedule? So a couple examples of this, I have had clients before who've said, oh, I'm on this volunteer committee and I'm leading this thing, and I actually don't like it at all and I don't want to do it. So that would be a good example of something where you have a committed block that you don't want, and it's within your control to not do that anymore. And maybe your brain is telling you well, if I'm in charge of something, I can't just quit it. First of all, yes, you can, it might be uncomfortable but yes, you can. But second of all, make an exit strategy. Then, like, say, next time I'm up for reelection, I'm not going to run. I'm just noticing right now that this is not a committed block that I want to keep having on my calendar.
Michelle Gauthier: 9:23
Also, lots of times, I found, at work - not in my current work, I have a totally different kind of job now where all of my committed blocks are just usually me and one other person, or me and group coaching, and so I like all those. But in my old job, lots of times I would be invited to meetings, kind of as like a CC or just a person who needed to listen in. If you have that type of situation, really ask yourself, what do I need to attend? Do I actually need to be at all these committed blocks? Okay, so now that you've taken a look at that and you're looking at your calendar and you can basically see where you're already booked for the week, now we're going to move on to step two, which is to grab your to-do list, which might be a blank piece of paper or might be something that you're carrying over from last week. But grab your to-do list and let's make your to-do list for the week. So this is different than your actual schedule, right? We're not putting these on the calendar yet.
Michelle Gauthier: 10:20
When I make my to-do list, I split mine into personal and work. Maybe that works for you, maybe that doesn't, but I find it's really helpful to just make a big old list of everything that's in my brain so that my brain can relax and feel like everything's all written down on paper or on notes on my phone or wherever it is that you use for your to-do list. This does not mean that you'll be doing all of these things this week. It's just important that you capture all of them so that you have a master list before we start figuring out which ones you can actually do this week. Okay, now that you've gotten all of your to-do list items captured, go back and just jot down ballpark how long each one of those things will take. So when I look at my example from last week, what I have is writing and recording a podcast, and so right next to it I just write two hours because that will take me two hours. Be really reasonable and realistic about this. I wish that took me one hour. It doesn't take me one hour, it takes me two hours. Then prepare for group coaching - 30 minutes. Then I have a bunch of smallish work things that I'm going to lump together, which is one hour, and then on the personal side, I'll lump together errands. I have errands where I have to get in my car and go places, so I'll lump those together in a two-hour block. And then I have to make a couple phone calls and admin-y things I need to do on the computer for personal things, I'm going to lump all those together for one hour. So now I've just got my whole list of things that I need to do and how long they'll take - ballpark.
Michelle Gauthier: 11:57
You have now approached when you have both all of your calendar blocks/ committed times and your to-do list with approximate hours on them. You have now reached the make or break moment for your week if you want to prevent schedule overwhelm. So you've got your whole calendar, you've got all of your to-do list items and you know how long they're going to take. Now just take a look at your calendar and think, what hours do I have available to do all of these tasks? So, for example, I stop work at four every day but one, and on that day I work till five. So that's the end of the available time to get work things done for me.
Michelle Gauthier: 12:36
So when I look and see what blocks I actually have open, then I know okay, well, all of the committed blocks where I'm already seeing clients, I'm not going to get any of these other things done. So what hours do I actually have to do that? And then for me personally, personal stuff has to get done on Tuesdays. So if I don't have space on my calendar on Tuesdays, then those personal things don't have a place to go. So this is the part of the schedule where you'll have to decide, do I want to fill up every white space on my calendar with this to-do list or do I want to leave some open? Do I let some things go undone this week or do I schedule things in it like 5 am or 9 pm? I would really encourage you to try to not do that and to leave some open white space on your calendar and in your life in general.
Michelle Gauthier: 13:30
Again, for this week, when I was looking at my calendar, I had 29 hours of committed blocks that I was totally committed to, so that doesn't leave many working hours for the tasks that I have on my list. So what I ended up doing, based on my time estimates, was I scheduled five tasks for work and three for personal, and then I left nine tasks just hanging out. They're just sitting here on my list and they didn't fit into the time that I'm willing to work on them for this week. So I just let them sit there on my to-do list. I feel very calm that they're there and they're written down and I'm not gonna forget about them. But I go into the week knowing - unlikely, but if something magically happens and I end up having a couple free hours somewhere, maybe I'll pick up some of these, but otherwise chances are they are not going to happen this week. And how it worked out is that I finished four of the five work tasks, and that helps me know for next week maybe I need to assign more time for the four tasks because I thought I could fit in five but I actually couldn't. The fifth task that I didn't get to will get scheduled in the next week, and then these other seven that didn't make it on to last week's calendar, I'm gonna look at them again this Sunday when I do my calendar clean out and w e'll see if they get reconsidered or if they're dropped until the next week, or sometimes I just cross them off entirely because I just don't have time to do it.
Michelle Gauthier: 14:57
I like to actually put my blocks where I'm gonna be working on something on my calendar. So if I have committed blocks for five hours in a day and I know I'm gonna work a couple hours beyond that, I will just write on my calendar, write and record podcasts so that I know what I'm supposed to be doing. I really like to work super hard during my working hours and not waste a lot of time, so that helps me just pick up and get to work instead of trying to figure out what I should be doing at that time. It makes you very efficient, okay. So if you've been following along, ideally at this point you have your calendar, you have your scheduled to-dos and you have your to-dos that are just hanging out for a reconsideration next week. If you actually go through with this plan and I'm proud of you if you do, just know that you will probably feel uncomfortable, for example, leaving seven work to-dos off your schedule. But if you do it the old way, the way where you have 400 miles of gas and you're trying to drive 500 miles, you'll beat yourself up for not getting those seven done. This way, you know that you're not getting those seven done at the beginning of the week and that you have a realistic chance of getting done, like I said, I did four out of five. What if I would have had all 13 or whatever and I did four of them? I'd be like, oh gosh, I only did four things, but at the beginning of the week I realized I really only have time for five. So four out of five is pretty dang good. So give it a try. Clean out your calendar, go into your week with a clear head, a clean brain and knowing exactly what you can accomplish.
Michelle Gauthier: 16:35
Now, to wrap up our episode, let's finish with this new mini segment, a little one minute segment and this will be the first of many of these called Michelle's Do Less for Success tip. Every week, I'm going to tell you about something that I did, where I did less and how that impacted my success. This week's example is about my daughter. So we are going on a trip this next week and she came into my office and I was busy and working on something else and she said Mom, I want to start thinking about packing. She's my little organizer, so near and dear to my heart. I want to start packing. Can you make me a packing list for the trip? And I paused for a second and I was like, no, I'm not going to make you a packing list for your trip.
Michelle Gauthier: 17:24
Now, this particular child is the queen of lists.
Michelle Gauthier: 17:28
She is the most organized.
Michelle Gauthier: 17:30
She will 100% pack herself and not forget anything. She is better at packing than I am. So this was essentially her being like Mom, can you spend time doing something so that I don't have to do it? But you know what. You know what she was busy doing before that? Watching Dance Moms or something. She had plenty of time to do it and she has the skills to do it. So I just simply said no. And how that helped me be more successful is I just got right back to what I was doing before that. I did not allow myself to be interrupted, and right now, as we speak, her suitcase is fully packed. I don't even need to look at what she packed because she's so organized she did not need my help.
Michelle Gauthier: 18:09
All right, there's your tip for doing less. Where can you say no this week, especially if you're a mom and you have kids and they are fully capable of doing the task on their own? Okay, don't forget to grab the worksheet so that you can do your calendar clean out. You have the checklist or the worksheet for the first couple of times that you use it until you get the hang of it. Also, while you're there, clicking on the show notes, if you haven't already, and you would click on the review and leave a review? That would be amazing. The podcast is almost a year old. We're working on growing it even bigger so that more people will be able to feel less overwhelmed, and I would appreciate if you would take the time to do that. Have a great week. See you next time. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.com. See you next week.
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