Personal Schedule Hacks [Lessons learned from the past 3 years]

If you've tried all kinds of strategies for managing your time but keep looking for something better, I feel your pain.?

Here's what I've learned… it's not about time management as much as it is about self management.

We all have the same number of hours each day. The same as each other, the same as last year, the same as a decade from now. You and I can't change how many hours are in a day. But we can change how we steward them, which takes managing oneself.?

Today, I'm sharing my journey, and some of my scheduling hacks to manage myself effectively. I'll break it down by year from 2020 to 2022.

Spoiler alert, I did things differently in 2020 than in 2022. As I learned more, I made adjustments, evaluated and adjusted again. Intentionality with your schedule is essential to growing as a leader.?

As you follow me through this journey, take what works for you and leave what doesn't. If there are habits or hacks you find helpful, let me know in the comments. Or if you have suggestions of other hacks I should try, I'd love to hear from you.

The one practice I carried through all three years: The Pomodoro technique

I've adapted the Pomodoro technique, developed by Francesco Cirillo, to prioritize my focused work. I began by focusing my work on three 25-minute chunks, with 5-minute breaks in-between. During the 5 minutes, I might refill coffee or check Slack (not email!) and then get right back into it.?

After three rounds, I'll either move on to something else, like a meeting, take a 15-minute break, and then repeat the cycle, diving back into focused work. The schedule has adapted over time, so here's a look at the past two years.

Be intentional about how you schedule your time. Otherwise, you allow everyone else to dictate your schedule.

Scheduling in?2020

My Daily?Schedule

I've led distributed teams for over five years, but 2020 reset schedules in a new kind of way. This change allowed me to test some approaches to scheduling my time. Here is how I tried to structure my day during the summer of 2020.

• 9:00 Quick email triage (15 min) — I time-box this to 15 minutes to get the important stuff out of email and into a workspace like Asana or google docs.
• 9:15 Daily Standup #1 (15 min) — I ha three teams I did this with each day
• 9:30 Focus work (25 min)
• 9:55 Break (5 min)
• 10:00 Focus work (25 min)
• 10:25 Break (5 min)
• 10:30 Focus work (25 min)
• 10:55 Break (5 min)
• 11:00 Daily Standup #2 (15 min)
• 11:15 Focus work (25 min)
• 11:40 Break (5 min)
• 11:45 Focus work (25 min)
• 12:10 Break (5 min)
• 12:15 Daily Standup #3 (15 min)
• 12:30 Troubleshooting with Team #3 (this is an optional meeting that is needed more often than not)
• 12:45 Lunch
• 1:30 Quick email triage (30 min)
• 2:00 Meeting (50 min) I like to schedule appointments with a 5–10 minute buffer
• 2:50 Break (10 min)
• 3:00 Meeting (25 min) — not all meetings need to be an hour
• 3:25 Break (5 min)
• 3:30 Meeting (25 min) — not all meetings need to be an hour
• 3:55 Break (5 min)
• 4:00 Inbox Zero (60 min) — If I get done early, then I'm done early ??

Key takeaways from this schedule:

• Focus work during my best hours in the morning.
• I arranged my focus work into 1.5-hour and 1-hour chunks to keep the flow going.
• Meetings (other than standups) stay in the afternoons
• Email remains closed except for batch triage.
• My work in 2020 was pretty structured (partially because I designed the system I was working within). If this isn't a reality for you, my 2021 schedule might resonate more.
• I use the app Be Focused Pro to track my time chunks.

My Weekly?Schedule

I would swap the afternoon meeting slot for professional development two days a week. So here is what the starting point for my weekly schedule looks like in bigger chunks.

I had my teams set up to work on 3-week sprints, so I adapted the weekly template to accommodate various scrum events. These end up falling on different days depending on the week. So I swapped it out for whatever was in that time slot.

Scheduling Adjustments

At the end of the summer of 2020, I evaluated what was working and what wasn't. One nice thing about keeping an updated calendar is how easy it is to look back and see what changed.

I made three adjustments heading into the fall.

1. 30-minute meetings. Parkinson's Law says work will expand to the time available, which certainly applies to meetings. I changed the default meeting length to 30 minutes and only made it longer if there was a compelling reason.
2. I'll trade you a standup for an inbox zero. I trained a new Scrum Master and no longer needed to be in my 11 am standup. I replaced the 15 minutes with quick email triage and gave myself 30 minutes back into the afternoon.
3. Increase flexibility. As the year went on, I was asked to lead more design sprints to help the organization pivot in 2020. These can be disruptive to a fixed schedule, so I built more flexibility by focusing on the daily chunks rather than the minute by schedule.

Scheduling in?2021

My Daily Schedule

In 2021 I changed roles and was no longer leading multiple Scrum teams. Instead, I was helping a division develop its digital strategies. Most of my time fell into one of three categories; creation, coordination and learning.

Because of this, I moved to more of a blocked weekly schedule that I'll share below. But the general daily structure looks like this:

• 9–12 Focus Work / Learning
• 4 40-minute loops with 5–10 breaks
• Email triage in the middle and end of the day

I like the block schedule a lot more. It provides more time for focused work, which my current role requires. The reality is that we all have different roles with different requirements.?

I'm not sharing my schedule to say yours needs to look just like it but to share my process in hopes that it helps you design the best schedule for your context.

I stopped thinking about managing my time and began to prioritize my energy and focus.

My Weekly?Schedule

Like I said above, most of my time fell into one of three categories; creation, coordination and learning.

I stopped thinking about managing my time and began to prioritize my energy and focus. For me personally, my best hours for energy and focus are in the morning.?

My creative work and learning new skills require the most, so they get priority in my day. The meetings I facilitate to coordinate with stakeholders, leaders, and contributors all get placed after lunch, where my energy is a little lower but still sufficient.

Take stock of when you're at your best during the day and give that time to your highest priorities. I don't open my email till lunch.?

Blocking your schedule is probably my favorite hack, but the biggest obstacle is lining up with other people's schedules. At first, I was a little concerned, but I found that just being clear (I'm only available for meetings in the afternoon) went a long way.?

2022

At the beginning of this summer, I had yet another shift in responsibilities and opportunities. This change prompted me to step back and evaluate my schedule yet again.?

As I spend more time sharpening the saw, chopping the wood goes a lot quicker.

Because so much of life and the world around me is full and fast, I'm taking a more minimalist approach to my schedule. I'm still blocking my schedule, but there are just four blocks.

1. Create. 6–10 am. This might be writing, designing or strategizing. During this window of time, I found that my best contribution is bringing the conceptual to become concrete.
2. To-do. 10–2 pm. All the things I need to do. I might be facilitating a workshop, hosting meetings or responding to messages. During the mid-day, I have the right amount of energy to tackle these, and it's the time that people across similar timezones are all in their working hours.
3. Learn. 2–5 pm. I reserve a significant amount of time for learning through reading, courses or experimentation. This time helps me wind down from all the to-dos and excited me to apply what I'm learning the next day.?
4. Play. 5 pm+ I really love the work I do, but it's the relationships that will last forever. Because of this, I'm keeping my personal schedule at the same level and priority as my work schedule.?

Schedule Adjustments?

• More time learning. I once had a leader suggest I focus more time on learning and development until I began to have a negative return on time invested. I've increased my learning time each year for the past three years, and I have yet to hit that point. As I spend more time sharpening the saw, chopping the wood goes a lot quicker.
• Minimalist scheduling. It's a significant change from the detailed schedule from two years ago, and I find the simplicity very freeing. It may be different for you, but this seems to be my sweet spot between structure and freedom.?
• Setting tomorrow's priorities. The one thing that I didn't list on that schedule is that I review the day every night and identify the priorities for tomorrow. I set 1 priority that must be done, 2 that are still really important, and everything else lives in the to-do junk drawer.?

Next steps for scheduling

We covered a lot of details, which hopefully helped illustrate what it can look like to structure your schedule intentionally.?

Here are some cliff notes you can apply to your schedule.

1. Focus on the chucks of your day. A tight minute-by-minute schedule feels good but isn't resilient enough for the realities of today's agenda.
2. Keep meetings short. Moving meetings to 30 minutes has freed up so many hours in my schedule. You could probably cut your current meeting lengths in half.
3. Stay out of your inbox. Email can eat up your whole day if you let it. I have three times that I triage my inbox, and this discipline allows me to respond promptly while still letting me focus on priority work.
4. Invest in yourself. Prioritize time for learning and development.?

You'll notice I have a basic framework that I inspect and adapt as I go. I'm trying to develop a harmony of flexibility and structure to get my best work done.?

Be intentional about how you schedule your time. Otherwise, you allow everyone else to dictate your schedule.

This is a handful of books I'm about to read as I continue adapting my schedule this summer.?

• At Your Best by Carey Nieuwhof
• Design Your Day Claire Diaz-Ortiz
• When by Daniel Pink

I'll be sharing what I learn from these books in some future posts.?

If you apply any of these schedule hacks or have some of your own to share, I'd love to hear about it.