Your Calendar Reveals Your Priorities

(Transcript edited for clarity.)

Hi, I'm Wes. Welcome to Your Calendar Reveals Your Priorities. This is Your Life Systems.

Today I'm going to talk about how you can work on your priorities.

When you're building success systems or trying to figure out how to reach the goals and successes you want, it's very important that you set proper priorities and, after you set those priorities, actually work on them.

Priority means the most important things.

So if you keep a calendar, take it out and look at what you did yesterday, in the last week, or in the last month.

What you actually spent your time on is what you've made a priority or made priorities.

The disconnect comes when you track your time and the things you work on the most aren't your actual priorities.

That's when you have a problem.

So let's take this step by step.

First, you need to track what you do.

I try to map out my week every week and my day every day.

I have written lists.

It's a type of time management system, but you could also call it a priority system.

That's how I make sure I work on the things that are most important to me.

I time-block things or write things in my calendar.

So the first thing is, if you're not tracking your time now, you need to start tracking where you spend your time.

If you are tracking your time, we're just going to call that a calendar.

You can use a calendar to plan your day and your week moving forward, but you can also use your calendar to look at what you actually spent time on in the past.

Because what you spend the most time on is what you're making your priorities.

I deal with a lot of different people.

One of the first things I have to work on with a lot of people is the same thing I had to work on with myself over the years: intentionally doing things.

Until I started intentionally working on my priorities, I let other things become priorities that weren't the important things for what I was trying to do.

I'm going to give you an example from my own life.

When I set my calendar and make my schedule, I always block my number one priority first.

Then I mark my number two priority.

Then my number three priority.

I base all of these on my core values.

For example, my number one core value is faith.

My number two core value is family.

My number three core value is freedom.

Within freedom is financial freedom.

So basically, my third priority is making money, my businesses, etc.

I don't schedule my business stuff first.

I schedule my faith commitments first.

That's what I do first.

I know what times and days I have commitments for my faith, and I schedule those first.

That's the first thing on the schedule.

The second thing on the schedule is the important things I have to do or want to do involving my family for the week.

Then the third thing I do is business-related: financial freedom, health freedom, time freedom, and everything that goes into there.

For health freedom, I block out time for exercise and things like that.

That's pretty much a set time.

But if one of the first two things needs to be done instead of that, I'll move the health-freedom part around.

You set your own core values.

What I'm talking about here is identifying your priorities.

If you're not tracking, start tracking so you can start seeing what you prioritize in your life.

Then you start taking control and intentionally prioritizing things in your life.

We all have things that are important, but intentions don't reserve the time.

I know a lot of people have gone to keeping calendars on their phone, tablet, computer, or whatever.

I do have a calendar on my phone, but it is not my master calendar.

It's mostly just for things I can't forget.

So I check my phone calendar once a day to make sure I have nothing scheduled that day that I can't forget to put on my written calendar for the day.

You don't have to use a written calendar.

But if you're having trouble working on the things that are true priorities to you, why don't you try making a written calendar every day and every week for a month to see if it helps you?

It helps me a lot.

I sit down once a week and put my calendar together.

Then every day I also work on that day's calendar.

So I have a weekly calendar, but each day I have a more detailed calendar that I work on.

I've talked about how I set that up in many different episodes.

Look up my episode on time management, or The Time Management System I Actually Use, and I give a thorough explanation of how I set that up.

But what I do is decide intentionally what my priorities are, then combine that with my core values.

I think you should have core values, not my core values.

You get to set your core values intentionally.

You combine those two things, then fill in your calendar.

That's the way you make sure your calendar shows that you're working on what you really want to work on: your priorities.

Your calendar doesn't tell the whole story, but it does show what your current life is protecting.

Are you protecting the things that are most important to you?

Are you prioritizing the things you want to make priorities in your life?

For years, I struggled with that until I landed on this type of system and started using it religiously every week, every day, every month.

Then I started making more progress on the things that were most important to me.

I still have down times where I can move things around.

If an emergency comes up, there are certain things you have to take care of in life.

I take care of those, and I move things around so I'm still working on the things that are priorities to me.

Important work is too often crowded out by things that feel urgent.

What I'm talking about here is you assigning urgency and assigning your priorities.

A repeated gap between your values - the core values I'm talking about - and your schedule creates frustration.

It can create guilt.

You can get behind, and then you're wondering, 'Why am I not making progress on what I say is a priority?'

Then the guilt comes into play, and it makes things worse.

So instead, intentionally create your calendar to protect your priorities.

Look at your calendar and look for patterns across as many weeks as you can.

Every one of us will have unusual, not-ordinary days when our schedule gets messed up.

What I'm looking for as you track - I said to try writing it down for a month - is patterns.

Look for patterns in what happens on days when you don't work on the priorities you want to work on.

Then intentionally create systems so you work on those things every day.

Your calendar is evidence of what you make priorities, but most importantly, you're in control of your calendar and you're in control of what that evidence is.

It reveals both your choices and your constraints, then gives you something concrete to improve.

I often talk about, when we're building goal systems or success systems, taking action and then evaluating and adjusting.

This is the exact same thing.

Start tracking everything on your calendar.

Track everything you do, then take a look at it.

You're evaluating it.

You've taken action by starting to track everything you do.

Then you evaluate it, compare it to your core values and what you say your priorities are, and adjust and do it again.

Let's say you've only worked on your number one priority four out of the last seven days.

That's fine.

Maybe you didn't schedule priority work for one or two of those days, but there's some reason you only got four out of seven.

Identify what that reason is.

Create a system to make sure you don't miss it three days next week, then look for improvement.

It would be great to go from four out of seven to seven out of seven.

Sometimes you can do that, sometimes not.

It depends on the feedback you get after tracking, but look for gradual improvement at least.

If you've got four out of seven this past week, go for five out of seven this week.

That's an improvement.

Then six out of seven the following week, and then shoot for seven out of seven.

It's very rare for anyone not to have something that messes up a day over a whole month, 30 straight days.

Some people don't go a week without a day getting messed up.

The key is to have systems or frameworks in place so when you do get off track and your priorities don't get taken care of, you've got a system or framework to get right back on track.

So again, the title of this was Your Calendar Reveals Your Real Priorities.

That's what we're talking about here.

If you don't know what your calendar says - what you've been doing - then it's time to take control of that.

Create a calendar, track everything you do, do it for a month, then intentionally create your calendar moving forward.

Thanks for being with me.

This is Wes with Your Life Systems.

Please like, subscribe, and take care.

What's Next?

·        Track where your time actually goes for the next week, and ideally for a month.

·        Write down the core values and priorities you want your calendar to reflect.

·        Compare the time you spent with the priorities you say matter most.

·        Look for recurring days or situations when important work gets crowded out.

·        Change one scheduling rule or system to protect that priority more consistently.

·        Track again, evaluate the result, and improve the system gradually.

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