Calendar your way Out of Chaos

‘Planning your work and working your plan’ is the key to making the most out of your time and increasing productivity. However more said than done, constant interruptions such as calls, notifications, emails and other distraction at the workplace rob us of our focus and contribute to stress. This is why it’s essential you have a planned schedule to ward off distractions and concentrate on critical tasks at hand.

If you study the habits of most successful people, you’ll find that they employ tasks planners such as calendars and to-do list to plan their days ahead. By rigorously following simple techniques they stay organised and achieve more out of their time. Based on these time-tested techniques, we’ve listed a few useful tips for you to calendar your way to success:

Do the planning ritual

Scheduling your tasks on calendar saves you from forgetting important meeting or deadlines. It also lends you the confidence that you’re heading towards completion in a phased order, with no task’s conflicts or deadline messes. An in-depth planning of your daily, weekly and monthly tasks and incorporating it into your calendar gets you into momentum as soon as you wake up and channelizes your energy in the right direction.

Block time zones

Blocking time for various activities helps you stay organized throughout the day and focus on a single task at a time. You also avoid procrastination and juggle of multiple tasks that could otherwise stress you out. Utilize your time to complete high-priority tasks when your energy levels are at peak and schedule monotonous, repetitive and routine tasks at the end of the day.

Set time for ad-hoc tasks

Sometimes miscellaneous tasks come your way in the end-moment. So, you can block 30 minutes each day to accommodate last-minute requests into your calendar.

Schedule intermittent breaks

Taking breaks between focussed work sessions relaxes your mind and help you move on with full focus to the next chunk of work. During this time, you can informally catch up with your co-workers on what’s going on and understand any task dependencies. This way they’ll less likely to bother you during your critical hours of work.

Set reminders on phone

Connecting your online calendar to your smartphone will help you receive pre-set reminder while you’re on the go. If you constantly travel to attend meetings, you’ll be able to stay in the loop of attending to commitments and avoiding missed dates/time.

Go on DND mode as well as OOO mode

When executing critical tasks, train your brain to not pay heed to any other requests than the present task. Close your office door or use a signaling mechanism (a headphone) to let your team know that you’re in the DND (Do-not-Disturb) mode. They shouldn’t disturb you unless it’s legitimately urgent. Also, once you’re done with important tasks for the day, go on the OOO (Out-of-Office) mode. Enjoying your time-off work is the best way to recharge and refresh for the next day’s work.

I hope you have found these tips useful to calendar your way out of chaos. Fulfil your professional commitments and become more efficient over time with a planned schedule.