Control Your Time By Designing Your Schedule.

I thought my schedule was packed when I worked in corporate! Filling in my days with status meetings, presentations, sales calls, and updates all mixed together to produce a week chock full of weaving, diving, and running. Now that I've been running my company for the past ten years, I've found it even harder to keep my schedule clear and organized to ensure I get everything done AND allow myself the time to work on my business.

Do you feel this way? 

Well, I developed a cool way to look at each day in my schedule and ensure I not only get my client sessions scheduled, but I also leave time for basic tasks and strategic projects.

Take a look at my typical schedule (click on image to expand):

The key is CONSISTENCY and FLEXIBILITY. I try to remain consistent from week to week to ensure I can work in my business and on my business.

But I also need to be realistic. Emergencies crop up. Clients move or cancel appointments. New prospects creep into my calendar. Speaking engagements usually fall right in the middle of my schedule (but those are planned well in advance). So I also have to be flexible and have the ability to move things around when needed.

Here's the surprise — I don't have to do it as much as you'd expect. Week after week, I can pretty well stick to my schedule and ensure I am growing my business while keeping the engine running smoothly.

Let me break down some of the elements:

4:30 AM to 10 PM - Yep, that's my day. I know - 4:30 AM is a bear. But I find it's my key time to get things done - where I am energized and focused. My best brainstorming occurs at this time. So I do my best thinking in the shower (a sort of 21st century meditation) and then I'm off to write my blog and prepare for my clients.

7:00 AM to 5 PM - Blocking out all of my clients. I was taught this many years ago by my mentor coach, Ken Abrams. If you fit all of your clients into pre-specified groupings, it's easier to manage your schedule without all of the 30 and 60 minute gaps.

Email - I check my email at 9 AM, Lunchtime, and at 7 PM. It doesn't rule my life. If there is a client emergency, call me. Candidly, I read my email every few hours, that's fine to catch up on what's important.

Lunch, Dinner with Family, Reading - This is my time - these hours are to allow me to decompress and spend special time with my family and also to grow my knowledge-base.

Thursday - This is my Networking/Connecting day. I am out and about meeting people, learning about new businesses, and going to meetings. I also meet with two groups - my sales force (about 35 people) who are actively out promoting my product to key prospects. The second group is a high-potential business owner team where we exchange leads and discuss many business issues and problems. I also fit in meetings with my agent, pr guy, marketing team, accountant, attorney and any other colleagues who make my business HUM.

Friday - This is my 'clean-up day'. I spend the time with any errant clients and also do any marketing/prospecting, presentation building and my financial planning. I spend most of my day connected at the hip with my assistant ensuring I clean up any mess from the previous four days and preparing me for the next week.

I hope my schedule gives you a few ideas on how to better structure your schedule.

What do you do to make your professional (and personal) life more bearable?

5 Ways To Kill Email.

Email sucks. It's a terrible communication platform (no live, two-way communication), messages are sometimes understood the wrong way, they get lost, you turn around and there are 50 new emails in your inbox, and deciding what to do (open, read, file, trash) is a frustrating process. If you're old like me (I'm 48), you probably remember the old Inbox on your desk where you received actual paper memos. Harkening back to those old times, we only received/wrote 2-3 (no more than five) memos a day. Most business was done face to face or over the phone (where real, live, two-way communication happens).

Here are some tips that I use to make my way through 125-150 emails a day:

1. Recognize that email is not your master, it's a piece of software. Too many executives and business owners live and die by every email that drops into their inbox. If you step back and look at your career, major leaps and successes were not built on that one email you sent or read, it was clearly delivered by your actions, presence, management, leadership, and interpersonal skills. And more importantly, not a snarky comment at the end of an email. So here's your first challenge: Stop giving any importance to your inbox. If someone asks you if you read an email that they sent you, say "No". Tell everyone that you are on an "email diet" and if they truly have something important to communicate, pick up the phone or stop by your office. Your fear of missing that important email will slowly go away. Trust me.
2. Turn off your email notifier that lets you know another email has arrived. This is a big one - stop reading it every minute of the day. Unless you are a bookie and have to place bets instantly, you do not have to read that email this moment. Begin by setting in place certain times of the hour or day to read email. Some executives do it during the last 5-10 minute of each hour; some spend 15-30 minutes in the morning, at noon, and before they go home. Pick a process that suits you. Also - stop checking your Blackberry or iPhone every available minute.
3. Prioritize your email. This is my secret that I unveil to many of my clients with time management issues. Go into your email program and setup rules to color your email messages (check in your help center of Outlook or MacMail). Here are the three categories that I manage my email: a. Critical - emails from your boss, other superiors, and clients. These should be colored red and attended to immediately. b. Important - emails where you are on the 'To:' line only (no one else). These are emails that are singularly directed at you. Color them blue. c. Not Important - all other emails - these should be colored gray and only read — if you have the time. You'll find that 80% of your email ends up in the 'Not Important' bucket and 20% is in buckets 'A' and 'B'. You will also find (if the Pareto Rule is in effect — that the most important communication — is found in the 20%, which delivers 80% of the impact of your position. If colors don't work, use folders.
4. Don't respond to emails with an email. How many times have you been pulled into an email 'conversation' or even worse, an email 'confrontation'? Try picking up your phone, doing a 'drive-by' someone's office or cubicle, or hosting a short meeting (if it is truly important or an issue that is beginning to blow up). The more that you take important communication events out of email, the more that you will use and receive useless emails. If you receive it on your phone, call back instead of emailing them.
5. Turn emails into what they really are — memos. Emails should communicate key information, schedules, and history, not management or leadership. As I stated above, they are poor communication vehicles, but they are useful ones when used effectively. When you have the itch to send an email, don't. Most of the time, you can just let sleeping dogs lie and don't respond.

Now I understand there might be vocations that live and thrive on email - so it might be tough doing all my tips. But try just one and see how it affects your input, throughput and output. Even if you get a 5% savings in email time a week, that equals 2 full hours you can apply to more important issues.

But remember, I'm not stating 'Don't read your email', just not the important ones. It will be hard and this will take some practice.

Stick to this plan for one day, review. Then one week, review. Then one month . . . and keep going. You might surprise yourself.