My Calendar is My Boss

How I’m Dealing with My Consistent Struggle with Consistency

Let’s just cut to the quick. I’m struggling with consistency in my content creation. It’s hard to crank out decent content on a consistent basis. Like… on the face of it. It’s just hard to do it. Period.

Add to that, the other demands on your time, your work; your partner and kids; friends and family; hobbies that recharge your battery; and, hopefully, hobbies that pay you, and your time gets gobbled up pretty quickly. So how do you fix it? I’m going with scheduling.

Have a Schedule for Everything and Live by it

And I do mean everything. This is an idea I picked up from Rob Dyrdek . He schedules his time down to the minute. Including family time. He literally has a time of the day on his calendar for family. And I, for one, love the idea.

I mean, I can see how that seems a little cold. Putting “play with kids” as a block of time on your calendar. That’s so impersonal and calculating for that activity, right? But think about it. There’s a reason they have P.E. as a CLASS in school. You don’t have breaks (recess) the WHOLE day. You have a block of time where you eat your lunch and play a bit with your friends and then go back to class.

Why can’t you apply the same principle at home? Especially in this day and age of remote work. If you’re going to be at home working shouldn’t your kids know when they can and cannot play with you? And if they should know that shouldn’t you? And if you should then why not put it on your calendar?

It’s not Written in Stone, it’s a Living Thing

You can look at this one of two ways. It’s a living thing in the sense that this is something to live by. It’s a principle of priorities. That once something goes on the calendar going against it can be tantamount to sacrilege. When I say my calendar is my boss I mean it literally tells me what to do and when to do it. No exceptions… Except when, well, I want to change it.

Because, of course, this is not the ten commandments. (In case the subheading “written in stone” was a little too subtle for you.) It’s a living thing in the sense that it can change. You’re not going to die if you play with your kids a little bit too long - or more likely cut it short. Or if you shoot videos for six hours instead of four. Calm down. Put away the chastity belt and whip.

You’re also allowed to chop and change what doesn’t work for you. Or what used to work but doesn’t anymore because of a change in priorities. And on that note, when did it become a crime to change your mind on something? Regardless, you’re not going to go to productivity jail if you don’t stick to your schedule religiously.

And guess what, you came up with the damn thing. Unless you have an assistant. Then everything is their fault. I mean, why else do you have one if you can’t blame everything on them? So you - or your assistant - are allowed to change things. Move them around. Make them fit better.

Group Similar Tasks

This is one of the few kinds of discriminations you’re still allowed to do. I got this one from Alex Hormozi . He likes to discriminate… against useless tasks. But he also likes to group them by similarity. So if you have a bunch of creative tasks to do, for example, you try to do as many of them as you can in one big chunk of time.

Get Things OFF Your Plate

I’m not a fan, to say the least, of this trend of busy bragging. People who humble brag about how much they have to do. They very subtly “complain” about how much work they have on their hands. How much of that work is actually useful, they have no idea, but they go around collecting things to do thinking they are being productive. When what they really should be doing is PRIORITISING.

What will ACTUALLY help you be more productive is dividing tasks into two dimensions. Urgency and importance. And what is important should ALWAYS take precedence over what is urgent.

So if something is both important and urgent then you do that immediately. If it’s important you prioritise it over more urgent tasks. Urgent tasks that are not particularly important should be attended to, when you get a chance. And if it’s neither important or urgent then why do you even bother? Delegate those tasks yesterday!

Why is it important to do this. Why should you always, and I mean ALWAYS, prioritise important tasks over urgent tasks? Because important tasks not done today become urgent tasks tomorrow. And the problem is tomorrow already has its own urgent tasks. Let me give you an example.

If you’re starting a business you need to register a company and open a business bank account. It’s important that you do so. But it’s not particularly urgent. You can still operate a small business without doing these things.

Until you have a client that, for their own internal accounting purposes, doesn’t pay non-company employees directly into their personal bank accounts. Now registering a company and opening a business bank account becomes urgent, if you want to get paid. That is a fire that could’ve been avoided if you prioritised properly.

Of course, if you’ve never gotten a paying client you don’t even know if anyone is willing to pay for what you’re offering. So the priority then would be to find people who are willing to pay for what you do. Then you can think about things like company registration. Once you know there is a market for what you’re selling.

Make Your Calendar a Priority

It’s hard to stay consistent in content creation. Especially if you have a busy life. But don’t just go around collecting tasks just to humble brag about how busy you are. If it’s worth doing it’s worth scheduling. Put it on your calendar. Who knows, you just might decide it’s not worth doing after all.

Prioritise the important tasks over the urgent ones. Fire prevention is better than fire drills. If you do something you know is important for the future make it a priority. Don’t just rush to do what is urgent today. Because what you don’t prioritise today becomes a fire you’re going to have to put out tomorrow.

Do all your creative work in one block. Don’t separate it out to fill the gaps in time you have or worse not put it on your calendar at all. Thinking you’ll do it when you have time. News flash: you never HAVE time, you MAKE time. So make time for the important things. And if content creation is important to you then you have to make time for it.