Audit Your Calendar
How you spend your time is how you spend your life. To evaluate if you live according to your values, you have to evaluate how you spend your time. I learned this practice from Rachel Hollis, who learned it from John Maxwell: a calendar audit. Here is a link to her blog post and podcast about this topic. At the end of the year, or even better do this quarterly, look at your entire calendar. Plan on this taking 2 to 4 hours to complete this audit. Look at every single meeting, every single appointment, every single fun activity, every family activity, literally everything. Tally each event in your calendar under these headings: What brought you joy? What stole your joy? What activities helped you achieve goals? What activities made you more money? What activities were a waste of time? What activities cost you the most money?
Look for patterns and look for solutions. If watching a movie with your kids brings you joy, plan more nights like that in the future. If taking 3 months off of work, devastated you financially and made you max out your credit cards, learn from that. If you are in a networking group that is not giving you leads, don’t go anymore. If volunteering on a board is stressing you out and not filling your cup, stop doing it. If the best part of your year is afternoon walks with your neighbor – how can you do more of that?
I think the real secret of this approach is taking the good things: time spent that helps your goals, time spent that brings you joy, time spent that makes you more money, and put those in your plan for next year. Put them on the calendar first, before the calendar fills up with work calls, kids sports activities, and the million other things that take your time. This is how you prioritize. This is how you move forward. By setting aside time with a clear plan to do the things you truly want to do.
To prepare for a meeting with one of my bosses about my career, I recently did this practice with my work calendar. I find that I am spending most of my time doing tasks and emails. These things must be done, but my direction as a senior manager is to spend most of my time on strategy. This means I need to shift to building tools, creating processes, and looking at the bigger picture. To shift my attention and focus, I am putting on my calendar an hour to focus intentionally on the goals of the organization, how my work ties to those goals, and how our team’s work can positively impact the organization. I’ve only been doing it a couple days so far, and it feels great! I feel like I’m actually using my leadership skills and potential instead of simply checking things off my to-do list.
