Calendar Triage

The last three weeks have been crazy. I spent a week in Philadelphia with my Executive Leadership Team. We attended an Alignment Intensive seminar sponsored by Gap International. It was amazing and well worth the time. (I hope to write more about it later.)

However, I fell behind in my other work and have been working madly since then to catch up. An intense travel schedule has also added to the challenge.

Needless to say, something had to go. Unfortunately, that something was blogging. As much as I enjoy writing, it’s difficult to do unless you have time to think. In the interest of catching up and focusing on my other priorities, I have put it on the back burner—until now.

I’m just now starting to get my head above water. But as I look ahead, I still see quite a few challenges with my calender. So tomorrow afternoon, I am planning to go through my calendar and engage in a little triage. I’ve done this before and here’s how it works:

1. Protect the basics. I will look at my top priorities and make sure I have allocated time for them in my schedule. I especially have to build-in non-meeting time, so that I have time to actually get my work done. I will schedule these as appointments. (This is particularly important in a corporate environment where it seems that every empty slot gets booked if not spoken for.)
2. Eliminate the non-essentials. Sometimes I make commitments that seem to be important when I schedule them. However, after further reflection, I realize that they aren’t that important. So, to the extent possible, I am going to either cancel these meetings or see if I can handle them another way.
3. Re-schedule some of what remains. Some things are important, but they are not important now. I like to get things done as soon as possible, but this some times works against me. So, I plan to go through my calendar and see what can be postponed without significant consequences.

Hopefully, with a little planning, I can regain my equilibrium and get back to regular blogging!