Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #51| Create Productivity Without Overwhelm This Week With The "Calendar Clean-Out Method"
Transcript
- 0:04Michelle Gauthier: Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 0:09Michelle Gauthier: Hey, friends, thanks for joining.
- 0:13Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 0:28Michelle Gauthier: This week, I'm going to talk about something that I do every Sunday.
- 0:31Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 0:42Michelle Gauthier: And what I do every Sunday is something that I call the Calendar Clean-O ut.
- 0:48Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 0:59Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 1:21Michelle Gauthier: This will mean that things won't make it onto your schedule that you have on your to-do list.
- 1:28Michelle Gauthier: Now, this happens anyway when you have a ridiculous to-do list that's way too much.
- 1:33Michelle Gauthier: You don't get it done, but you feel really frustrated at the end of the week.
- 1:36Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 1:44Michelle Gauthier: A few weeks ago went on a long weekend trip, which was so great, and I'm so glad I did it.
- 1:50Michelle Gauthier: I went to Texas.
- 1:51Michelle Gauthier: In case you're wondering where I went, I went to Austin and San Antonio, where we used to live.
- 1:56Michelle Gauthier: We even went to the rodeo in San Antonio.
- 1:57Michelle Gauthier: It was so much fun.
- 1:58Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 2:08Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 2:16Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 2:34Michelle Gauthier: And I don't know about you, but I'm a visual learner and a checklist kind of girl.
- 2:39Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 2:57Michelle Gauthier: So the link for that is in the show notes.
- 3:00Michelle Gauthier: And then, lastly, stick around for the end of the episode.
- 3:04Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 3:18Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 3:30Michelle Gauthier: Okay, let's jump into this calendar cleanup.
- 3:34Michelle Gauthier: I'm getting excited about it.
- 3:35Michelle Gauthier: First, you want to grab everything that you need in order to review your schedule for the week and have your to-do list.
- 3:43Michelle Gauthier: For you, that might be paper, might be your phone, might be your computer, whatever it is.
- 3:47Michelle Gauthier: You want to have all of that handy.
- 3:48Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 3:57Michelle Gauthier: Okay, I'm going to tell you a little bit about Old Michelle, which is ironic because I was younger Michelle.
- 4:03Michelle Gauthier: But Old Michelle took some serious pride in the fact that I could do anything and everything all at the same time.
- 4:11Michelle Gauthier: So that means every week I'd start off the list with an impossible schedule and a to-do list.
- 4:16Michelle Gauthier: I would give that ridiculous schedule my all, just flying from one thing to the next with rather frantic energy.
- 4:24Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 4:59Michelle Gauthier: And this honestly did work for me for a while and I suspect that maybe this worked for you too.
- 5:06Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 5:18Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 5:33Michelle Gauthier: And your car says 400 miles until empty.
- 5:36Michelle Gauthier: But you're like, I don't know, we're just gonna do the 500 miles without stopping for gas.
- 5:40Michelle Gauthier: I'm not really sure how it's gonna work, but we're just gonna do it.
- 5:43Michelle Gauthier: Why not just like plan a fun stop where you could get some gas and recharge yourself?
- 5:50Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 5:59Michelle Gauthier: And when you do run out of gas, you feel like crap that you've put yourself in a bind.
- 6:03Michelle Gauthier: Now what am I supposed to do?
- 6:06Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 6:23Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so let's get started.
- 6:26Michelle Gauthier: Here are the steps, and I'll go into each one of these in detail.
- 6:28Michelle Gauthier: First step one is to check out your committed blocks.
- 6:32Michelle Gauthier: So I want you to grab your calendar and take a look at your calendar.
- 6:36Michelle Gauthier: Committed blocks are things you have already committed to and are on your calendar that you actually plan to attend.
- 6:44Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 7:01Michelle Gauthier: So those are all things that I am committed to.
- 7:05Michelle Gauthier: I can't do other things during those times.
- 7:07Michelle Gauthier: That is what I'm doing at that time.
- 7:10Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 7:21Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 7:32Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 7:42Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 7:48Michelle Gauthier: I see it on Sunday.
- 7:49Michelle Gauthier: I texted the chiropractor and requested a new time and it all worked out.
- 7:53Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 8:11Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 8:31Michelle Gauthier: 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?
- 8:41Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 8:51Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 9:00Michelle Gauthier: And maybe your brain is telling you well, if I'm in charge of something, I can't just quit it.
- 9:05Michelle Gauthier: First of all, yes, you can, it might be uncomfortable but yes, you can.
- 9:09Michelle Gauthier: But second of all, make an exit strategy.
- 9:12Michelle Gauthier: Then, like, say, next time I'm up for reelection, I'm not going to run.
- 9:16Michelle Gauthier: I'm just noticing right now that this is not a committed block that I want to keep having on my calendar.
- 9:23Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 9:36Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 9:43Michelle Gauthier: If you have that type of situation, really ask yourself, what do I need to attend?
- 9:49Michelle Gauthier: Do I actually need to be at all these committed blocks?
- 9:53Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 10:09Michelle Gauthier: But grab your to-do list and let's make your to-do list for the week.
- 10:14Michelle Gauthier: So this is different than your actual schedule, right?
- 10:17Michelle Gauthier: We're not putting these on the calendar yet.
- 10:20Michelle Gauthier: When I make my to-do list, I split mine into personal and work.
- 10:24Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 10:42Michelle Gauthier: This does not mean that you'll be doing all of these things this week.
- 10:46Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 10:55Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 11:05Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 11:15Michelle Gauthier: Be really reasonable and realistic about this.
- 11:19Michelle Gauthier: I wish that took me one hour.
- 11:21Michelle Gauthier: It doesn't take me one hour, it takes me two hours.
- 11:22Michelle Gauthier: Then prepare for group coaching - 30 minutes.
- 11:26Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 11:36Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 11:42Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 11:50Michelle Gauthier: So now I've just got my whole list of things that I need to do and how long they'll take - ballpark.
- 11:57Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 12:06Michelle Gauthier: You have now reached the make or break moment for your week if you want to prevent schedule overwhelm.
- 12:12Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 12:19Michelle Gauthier: Now just take a look at your calendar and think, what hours do I have available to do all of these tasks?
- 12:26Michelle Gauthier: So, for example, I stop work at four every day but one, and on that day I work till five.
- 12:31Michelle Gauthier: So that's the end of the available time to get work things done for me.
- 12:36Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 12:48Michelle Gauthier: So what hours do I actually have to do that?
- 12:50Michelle Gauthier: And then for me personally, personal stuff has to get done on Tuesdays.
- 12:54Michelle Gauthier: So if I don't have space on my calendar on Tuesdays, then those personal things don't have a place to go.
- 13:01Michelle Gauthier: 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?
- 13:12Michelle Gauthier: Do I let some things go undone this week or do I schedule things in it like 5 am or 9 pm?
- 13:20Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 13:30Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 13:41Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 13:52Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 14:00Michelle Gauthier: So I just let them sit there on my to-do list.
- 14:03Michelle Gauthier: I feel very calm that they're there and they're written down and I'm not gonna forget about them.
- 14:08Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 14:21Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 14:35Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 14:57Michelle Gauthier: I like to actually put my blocks where I'm gonna be working on something on my calendar.
- 15:02Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 15:15Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 15:27Michelle Gauthier: It makes you very efficient, okay.
- 15:30Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 15:41Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 15:53Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 16:03Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 16:13Michelle Gauthier: What if I would have had all 13 or whatever and I did four of them?
- 16:17Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 16:23Michelle Gauthier: So four out of five is pretty dang good.
- 16:24Michelle Gauthier: So give it a try.
- 16:26Michelle Gauthier: Clean out your calendar, go into your week with a clear head, a clean brain and knowing exactly what you can accomplish.
- 16:35Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 16:46Michelle Gauthier: Every week, I'm going to tell you about something that I did, where I did less and how that impacted my success.
- 16:55Michelle Gauthier: This week's example is about my daughter.
- 16:57Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 17:09Michelle Gauthier: She's my little organizer, so near and dear to my heart.
- 17:13Michelle Gauthier: I want to start packing.
- 17:14Michelle Gauthier: Can you make me a packing list for the trip?
- 17:17Michelle Gauthier: And I paused for a second and I was like, no, I'm not going to make you a packing list for your trip.
- 17:24Michelle Gauthier: Now, this particular child is the queen of lists.
- 17:28Michelle Gauthier: She is the most organized.
- 17:30Michelle Gauthier: She will 100% pack herself and not forget anything.
- 17:33Michelle Gauthier: She is better at packing than I am.
- 17:36Michelle Gauthier: So this was essentially her being like Mom, can you spend time doing something so that I don't have to do it?
- 17:42Michelle Gauthier: But you know what.
- 17:43Michelle Gauthier: You know what she was busy doing before that?
- 17:44Michelle Gauthier: Watching Dance Moms or something.
- 17:46Michelle Gauthier: She had plenty of time to do it and she has the skills to do it.
- 17:49Michelle Gauthier: So I just simply said no.
- 17:50Michelle Gauthier: And how that helped me be more successful is I just got right back to what I was doing before that.
- 17:57Michelle Gauthier: I did not allow myself to be interrupted, and right now, as we speak, her suitcase is fully packed.
- 18:03Michelle Gauthier: I don't even need to look at what she packed because she's so organized she did not need my help.
- 18:09Michelle Gauthier: All right, there's your tip for doing less.
- 18:11Michelle Gauthier: 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?
- 18:20Michelle Gauthier: Okay, don't forget to grab the worksheet so that you can do your calendar clean out.
- 18:25Michelle Gauthier: You have the checklist or the worksheet for the first couple of times that you use it until you get the hang of it.
- 18:31Michelle Gauthier: 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?
- 18:38Michelle Gauthier: That would be amazing.
- 18:39Michelle Gauthier: The podcast is almost a year old.
- 18:41Michelle Gauthier: 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.
- 18:49Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 18:50Michelle Gauthier: See you next time.
- 18:51Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 18:58Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 19:02Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 19:04Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.