Plan Your Calendar With a Purpose to Free Up Your Time!

I have been using a system that has been around for a while now that I am finding is really helping me gain perspective on how I use my time each week. This is nothing new and there are tons of methods out there to help with your time and calendar.

For this method I am using two things

1. Google Calendar
2. Google Sheets with TimeSheet Add-On

By using hashtags to organize and plan my weeks I am able to get a visual breakdown on how my time is being used. As I state in the video please don’t overcomplicate the system to the point that you need cheatsheets for your hashtags and the calendar becomes a whole new task to complete each week.

I use this to reduce the amount of time I spend working at home in the morning and when I should be with my family. I was noticing two things happening in my life that I just adusted to be normal.

1. I wake up at 4 am and do work until about 6:30 before getting kids ready for school and then heading to work to actually WORK for the day.
2. Come home from work and sit at the kitchen table and do more work and not be committed to my kids and family.

This is not healthy, acceptable, or a way to live.

What I have been doing is taking my to do list(which I am trying to no longer create) and mapping out my week where I am doing these things during my “work hours”. Even if it is 10 minutes here or there. Additionally, I am logging time with my kids(as you will see in the video) so I can see my time breakdown.

Finally, I am building in “me” time. Time for me to read or write or whatever I want to do. We have to take care of ourselves if we want to take care of others.

My next step for November is to begin to build in time for me to run and take care of my health, but like I said, one small step and one thing at a time.

At the end of the week or month I can create these reports using the TimeSheet Add-On that look like this

Here is my video. I hope you find it helpful and I would love to know what you use to help balance the work life craziness.