The Basics of Calendar Management - Part 1

This cast describes the first of our recommendations about calendar management.

We spend a lot of time talking to customers and clients about how they spend their time and how they manage their priorities through their calendars. When we first begin to coach an executive we ask for two things immediately: an accounting of what they consider their priorities and a print out of their calendar. And to our disappointment, almost every single time, what we see on their calendars does not line up with what they say their priorities are.

If you're a thinking manager, you're not asking, "why?" but rather, "what can I do to avoid that"?

There are a few simple rules that get most Effective Executives (thank you Mr. Drucker) started off well, and they start with thinking a week at a time.

There have been many times when we've caught ourselves saying "time management" and then had to correct it to "priority management." It's so easy to slip into that phrase, but as we're constantly saying, time doesn't respond well to management.

That's one reason we love GTD [Getting Things Done] so much: David Allen talks about managing our work, wrestling with priorities, and actually moving through one's in-box, rather than trying to eke out more hours in a day.

And Peter Drucker was really way ahead of everyone else here. The second chapter of The Effective Executive teaches this beautifully. It's called "Know Thy Time." He suggests we start with a survey of how we spend our time, and then make sure that the RIGHT THINGS are being done when we're working.

But we've already done a cast on how to measure one's use of time - our recently rerecorded Time (Priority) Management - so that's not what todays cast is about. If you've not heard Time (Priority) Management, we recommend you go back and listen to that one. Instead today we're going to talk about the WEEK of an Effective Executive.