Update Your Schedule

This is a practical productivity tip that I’ve been using for the last 6 months that has really served me. I’m a huge proponent of having a detailed schedule for the day. Inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell calls a schedule “productivity’s greatest power tool.” And I've found that to be true - When I have outlined what I’m going to do and when, it gives me my marching orders to work hard, move fast, and stay focused on what’s most important.

But for reasons that are beyond my control, things often don’t go according to plan. Sometimes something comes up that is a genuine priority and urgently deserving of my time. It’s the right decision to go off schedule to accommodate it. Maybe there’s a life condition that I never could have predicted, putting a wrench in my day I need to navigate. In those moments we do our best, and that’s good enough.

And what I've found has really helped me in all of that is actually updating my schedule. When I make my schedule the night before, I do it with a certain amount of information and at a certain level of awareness. As the day unfolds and I get more information, and acquire more awareness, I’m more prepared to decide how I want to spend my time. So as things start to change I literally update my half hour by half hour plan for the day to support me in doing what I now can determine is most important with my time.

When most people start to go off schedule, they get behind and start to play catch up. This demands more energy and is emotionally defeating as they fall short of expectations. It causes them to get more distracted, be less efficient, and perpetuate the problem so much so that the plan for the day goes completely out the window and it becomes a free for all.

What I’ve found to work for me, that I encourage you to think about, is to respond to deviations from the plan by investing a few moments to update it. It’s 5 minutes of making adjustments and resetting expectations that doubles your effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity moving forward.? All you need to do is accept that your schedule is just your plan for the day, and plans change. So too can your schedule.?

Rather than letting things get deprioritized by circumstance, you can actively choose what you do or don’t do. This empowers you to follow through faithfully on the commitments you do have, and make the most of the moments in front of you.