Calendar Management: Why your intuition is more important than you think
What happens when we spend hours creating a plan and schedule that would work in an ideal world but doesn’t hold up with life’s unexpected twists and turns?
Many of my clients end up getting overwhelmed, sitting in indecision, and sometimes even giving up on planning altogether. This leads to lots of frustration, disappointment, and time wasted.
If this is you, I see you.
Many factors can throw off our carefully planned schedules, and it’s difficult to navigate these obstacles with confidence.
When it comes to creating adaptable and flexible plans (that don’t feel like a prison), your intuition is so important.
Your digital calendar is one of the best places to plan with and practice trusting your intuition.
In this post, I’ll guide you through how to identify your intuition, why it’s so hard to listen to, the benefits of using your intuition in your calendar management, and give you helpful tangible examples.
What is your intuition?
To me, my experience of intuition is simply a gut response to a decision, big or small, without necessarily having logical reasoning for it. Intuition can show up as a physical sensation, imagery, synchronicities, patterns, and more.
Curious about all the ways your intuition might be showing up? Check out Bustle’s 14 signs your intuition is speaking to you.
Also, personally, human design has also really helped me tap into my intuition. As a manifesting generator, I have a sacral (or gut) yes or no response to external stimuli and decisions.
However, at the end of the day, your experience of your intuition is what matters most.
What is YOUR experience of your intuition? How does it show up for you? Comment below and let me know!
Why is it so difficult to listen to your intuition?
For many reasons. The 3 biggest that I see are:
It’s almost impossible to tap into your intuition when you’re tired, overwhelmed, anxious, stressed out, in your head, or busy. If you’re often in these states… that’s your answer.
We confuse fear, critical, or “should” voice as intuition. (My intuition shows up as neutral, calm, and clear.)
Intuition isn’t often honored as an important business or time management skill/strategy in our culture. Even though 85% of CEOs in this one study confirmed that intuition was central to their decision-making process
We all have intuition, whether we realize it or not.
The more we understand it, the more we can apply it to better our lives.
The massive benefits of listening to your intuition
Honestly, the benefits of listening to yourself reach far and wide. But when it comes down to it, you get days that add up to a life more beautiful than you could ever imagine.
Listening to your intuition allows you to live a life true to you.
What’s better than that?
My clients, and I, often feel like we need proof to trust more. If you’re like us… I can confidently say you already have proof!
Ask yourself, “What’s happened in the past when I’ve listened to my gut?”
Ease, flow, peace, accomplishment, success, abundance. For me?
Changing my offerings in my business, then selling them out.
Choosing to become a digital nomad and experiencing more peace and freedom than ever before.
Being super tired, putting my work down, opening Netflix for a brain break, and watching an episode that gave me tons of ideas allowing me to return and accomplish what I was doing way faster and easier.
What’s happened in the past when you HAVEN’T?
Frustration, guilt, resentment, suffering, pain, delays, and spending loads of time and energy overthinking and NOT making a decision.
Some more personal examples:
Forcing myself to do a workshop with someone, spending a month marketing, and having to cancel it because of the low attention and excitement it received.
Attempting to be a morning person and work out first thing, always being miserable when I do it and when I don’t guilt-trip myself.
Not deciding what to do with my day so just go along with whatever comes up in my inbox, and ending the day feeling like I did nothing.
How do I use my intuition in my digital calendar?
Now you know what intuition is, how it shows up for you, and how important it is to listen to it.
Unfortunately, time management or calendar management advice rarely recommends you listen to your intuition.
The typical advice is to time block your whole day or week to the minute and perfectly stick to it. Then, if you can’t then something is wrong with you.
Good thing I’m not your average time management coach!
I know it’s nearly impossible to perfectly stick to your schedule every day, all day, AND be happy. I wouldn’t even want to anymore.
So, let’s start with what calendar management even is.
What even is calendar management?
Calendar management is the process of prioritizing your time and managing your life through the use of a calendar(1).
I use my digital calendar to organize and manage everything in my business and life. It’s basically my personal assistant, and it’s free!
Linking calendar management and your intuition
You can use your intuition when you’re creating a daily or weekly to-do list and/or schedule.
You can also flex your intuition throughout the day and week by moving time blocks around when you feel like doing the thing.
Tangible examples of intuitive calendar management
Asking yourself how your schedule feels to you.
Leaving gaps to move around tasks when you feel like doing them.
Dragging and moving time blocks/containers around without guilt.
Using language that feels good to you when naming events.
Putting tasks when you’re most energized, creative, and excited.
Scheduling time to work on goals and dreams that are deeply important to you in your calendar so they finally happen!
Ask yourself, “What it would look like to use my intuition more in my calendar?”
When you use your intuition in your calendar, you can…
Trust and listen to yourself more, leading to more peace and fulfillment.
Make decisions that will give you the freedom you want.
Have more energy, be more productive (in the good way), and be happy with yourself and how you spent your time.
Your intuition is the most important, yet underrated, time and life management skill out there.
Now you know how crucial it is…
Intuitive scheduling and time blocking? Yes, please!
Enroll in Digital Calendars For Humans now.
Partner Works Too Much? Why & What To Do About It
My partner means so much to me. We just celebrated four years (watch this short montage reel I created!) of marriage and it still feels like we’re in the honeymoon phase most days.
I credit much of the strength of our relationship to the healing and growth work I’ve done around time, worth, and success.
Why?
Simply put, time is your life. Time is your presence. And it’s how you show love.
Before I started healing my own misunderstandings around time... I spend most of it working. Not just on my “work-work”. I was always going and doing things.
Without checking everything off my to-do list and successfully achieving all my goals, I didn’t feel deserving of love or partnership.
Where did this leave me? Us?
While I cherished my relationship, it was suffering because of my inability to be with him. I rarely sat still long enough to form a real and deep connection with myself, let alone my partner.
Cue all the frustration, resentment, and guilt.
I created this blog for those of us craving more presence with our partners, our kids, our family members, or even ourselves. Keep reading for an inside look at making time for loved ones, because it is possible to have time for everything that’s important to you. And holistic time management can help get you there.
How do you know if you or your partner works too much?
These are the signs that I personally experience, and my clients’ experience, when we’re not making time for our loved ones.
Frustration, resentment, and/or guilt towards self or partner.
Feeling physically, mentally, or emotionally disconnected from your partner.
Never having time to cook and enjoy meals together.
Feeling unbalanced in domestic duties.
Struggling to not talk about work when you aren’t working.
Any successes you do have feel empty.
Think of something else I haven’t included in the list above? Feel free to share your unique experience in the comments below - who knows, others might be in the same spot.
Why is it so difficult to make time for our partners? We love them!
If your partner works too much or you find it difficult to make time for your partner... You are not alone.
As a time coach, an extremely common goal of my clients is to have more time for their loved ones. They want to know, “why is it so hard to make time for the people I love?”
Often it’s not about a lack of love. It’s because we’ve been taught to place more value on work, money (especially if we’re in survival mode), and success.
Many people label time with loved ones as rest, time off, and/or self-care. As we know, those are some of the most challenging things to actually have time for. We have to flip this inherent prioritization in order to reclaim our time.
If you’re a business owner, this feeling can compound even more. Our businesses feel like our babies in a way, taking time away from them feels impossible. Businesses that are passion-led and mission-based are deeply connected to our purpose.
Want to read more about the truth about the difficulty of taking time off? Click here.
What to do if you or your partner works too much?
The answer to this is a complex one. Because you and your relationships are unique, giving tips and advice doesn’t feel all that useful here.
The best thing I can offer are these three coaching questions:
Is making time for your loved one important to you?
If so, why? What will happen in your life if you make more time for them?
What is ONE small thing you can implement today to be more present with them?
Some steps could look like:
Pause and take a deep breath (or three).
Setting clear expectations with your partner about how you spend your days.
Discover and focus on doing the things you both love to do together.
Heal any limiting beliefs around what’s preventing you from making time for them and being present.
Create time management systems to make the time actually happen. For example, a shared calendar to more openly communicate your schedules. In my Sustainable Schedule VIP Day, I’ve worked with clients to create shared calendars with their partners, for their kids, and a co-parenting schedule. Learn more here.
Adopt a practice mindset where it’s okay to mess up and fail sometimes.
Recognizing the little moments throughout the day.
Notice a trend in all these steps above? They’re all related to time management.
Why time management is so important for good relationships
Simply put, time is your life. Time is your presence. And it’s how you show love.
It’s also how you make money, pay your bills, and find fulfillment in your life.
Making time for everything that’s important and meaningful to you is no doubt a juggling act. I’ll be the first to say it is a constant work in progress. (Yes, even for me… a time coach).
Time management is the most important thing you can focus on because when you effectively accomplish everything you need to, tasks don’t bleed over into your time with your loved ones.
You can relax and enjoy the company of your people without feeling guilty (HUGE!)
When you prioritize and dedicate time and energy to your relationship, it will flourish.
If you are able to tap into the present moment when you’re with your partner, it’ll be a lot easier to feel connected and loved.
The opposite is also true. When you don’t spend time with the people that mean the most to you, the relationship will suffer in some way. Learn more about the benefits of rethinking how you manage your time.
Holistic Time Coaching is your best bet for making time for loved ones
Traditional time management focuses on helping you be your most productive self at work, sometimes at home. When you set goals, create a schedule, or write a to-do list… it’s rarely encouraged or taught to include things like rest, time off, and/or self-care.
If we equate our relationships with those things, it makes complete sense to me that they don’t happen as often as we’d like them to.
Holistic time management understands the entire scope of your life and what’s most important to you, like your relationships. Managing your time with a holistic approach will allow you to be a whole human being.
Learn more about why holistic time management works so well here.
Want your evenings back to spend with your partner (not thinking about work?)
Learn more about 1:1 holistic time coaching.
How to Delegate So You Fall In Love with Your Business Again
It’s exciting starting and growing your own business, isn’t it? It’s an opportunity to create something exactly as you envision it.
No one is there to tell you what to do or how to do it. It’s your baby to nurture and develop and give you the freedom to be yourself.
But all too often, reality sets in. And it’s not always a great reality. Your baby is demanding. There are so many things to do.
So many behind-the-scenes tasks it takes to run a business that you weren’t exactly thinking about when you pursued your passion.
Tasks that aren’t necessarily in your zone of genius and are taking way longer than you know they should.
So there you are with this amazing thing you’ve created, but you’re tired. You’re stressed, you’re overwhelmed, you’re headed for burnout (or maybe you’re already there), and you might even feel like shutting it all down.
If it’s any comfort telling you you’re not alone, please know that is true. I’ve seen it time and again with the business owners I work with.
So many of us are extremely capable and could probably win a multi-tasking contest if there was such a thing. We figure, hey, I’m great at getting lots of things done, so that’s what I’ll do in my business - all the things.
But guess what? Doing everything in your business is exactly what you should not be doing. In this post, I’ll be stepping you through a simple delegation process that I take my clients through.
Written by: Cory Zacker
Learning how to delegate
The key to a successful business that can grow and flourish is learning how to delegate. If you get clear on the tasks you love doing most (and that light you up) and get even more clear on the things that drain you, you’ll be well on your way to improving your delegation skills.
And hear me when I tell you this: assigning tasks to someone else does not mean you’re any less worthy. It does not mean you’re lazy or incompetent or less than. It means you understand what you do best and are willing to entrust someone else with those things you want to let go of. That’s a big part of the mindset of delegating and something I encourage you to embrace.
Assigning tasks to someone else
So how do you get clarity on what exactly you want to pass on to someone else? I like to use a simple strategy I call the Yea, Nay, Give Away exercise. It’s concise, clear, and will probably take no more than 15 minutes to complete.
Make three columns on a piece of paper (or a document on your computer) and label them Yea, Nay, and Give Away.
Yea
In the Yea column, list those things you love doing in your business. The tasks that energize you and come easy. For me it’s face-to-face client work, networking with colleagues, and writing. Those are three of the things that light me up.
Nay
In the Nay column, list the ones that take too much time and sap your energy. Things you might not be that great at and resent spending your time doing. (Remember, you might add a few personal things in this column that are taking you away from your business, e.g., cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.)
This one is easy for me. Numbers are important in any business, but they’re just not my thing. I pay attention to them, but I don’t want to spend time doing my bookkeeping and accounting myself. It doesn’t come naturally to me and it takes way too much time.
Give Away
Then in the Give Away column, choose some items from the Nay list that you can either get rid of altogether or delegate to someone else. (Hello, accountant!)
Once you have your Give Away items, take a good look at them and figure out who or what can help you. Would hiring a virtual assistant for a few hours a week take care of some of those tasks? Or maybe a babysitter/mother’s helper can tick a few of those boxes. Can a bookkeeper take over your billing? Or maybe a tech person could set up automation for you.
Why delegating actually makes you money
When you get clarity on what you need and who can help you, delegating doesn’t seem so hard. I’ve seen just a few hours a week of hiring help make a huge difference in someone’s business.
Take Sherri - an amazing woman I know with a hugely successful business. She was doing everything herself and was overworked and overwhelmed. Once we figured out who she needed to hire and what tasks she was going to delegate, Sherri had way more time to nurture her current clients and find new ones. Within a month of hiring a project manager, she was able to sign a new client who paid 5x what Sherri was paying her new team member. So delegating actually made her money.
What assigning tasks to others can do for you
So what does delegating in your business bring you?
Time - sweet, delicious, abundant time just for you. Time to not only rest and recharge, but to do what you love doing (remember that Yea list?).
Growth - yup, it’s true. With more time on your hands, you’ll be able to nurture your leads, create new offers, and reach more potential clients. I’ve seen it happen.
Peace of mind - fewer tasks equals less stress. Less stress equals a calmer you.
You created your business out of passion. So I’m inviting you to take some time to make more time for this thing you love. And more time to step away from it when you need to. (And it’s okay to need to.)
Let’s try to eliminate the word solopreneur, shall we? There’s no reason to do it all by yourself and learning how to delegate is the key to falling back in love with your business.
Want to feel confident, in control, and at peace with your time? Click here to get free + supportive resources!
About the contributor
Cory Zacker is a business consultant and strategist, as well as a certified Positive Psychology coach. She helps brilliant service providers grow, nurture, and manage their business with personalized growth strategies and business mindset coaching. With over 20 years of entrepreneurial experience, Cory uses her business wisdom plus her warmth and humor to help entrepreneurs align with their core values, simplify their systems, and manage and grow their teams all while reducing the stress and overwhelm of growing their thriving business.
Why toxic productivity is actually getting in the way of your success
Why toxic productivity is actually getting in the way of your success
Today's post is a bit vulnerable and scary because as a time management coach I'm sharing with you my biggest time management mistake.
I’m sharing it with you because hopefully, you resonate with me. By the end of this post, you will also know how it is costing you so much time + energy in your life and business.
So when lockdown started I got at least 10 emails from a bunch of different companies offering free art classes, finance classes, knitting classes, and all these different things that I could do.
Now that I “had the time” guess what I did? I signed up for all of them.
Deep down I felt that I needed to make the most of this time now that we were stuck inside of our homes.
If you felt this way too, comment below just to tell me “Yes, I feel you Becca.” Tell me I'm not alone in this!
This is a super small example of a bigger picture issue that we have as humans in our society today. On a normal basis, pre-pandemic pre-COVID, we are bombarded with productivity hacks, tips, tricks, and tools to make every moment productive as possible. If you google productivity, you will get around 500 million results.
When we are students in school, as children, we are rewarded for getting the most done, the quickest possible, the best output. We're impressed by people who can pull all-nighters. In our industry, entrepreneurs boast about working 80 hours a week and never sleeping or having time for themselves.
Rarely do we celebrate people who have a healthy work balance, who get a good night's sleep, who take care of themselves and have tons of time off to rest and to do whatever they want.
So when the pandemic hit globally, in the United States, many of us didn't have our commutes to our nine to fives anymore. We didn't have plans to go out with friends or spend time with family that didn’t live with us. We had “nothing else to do”, so we could finally get to all of the house projects, courses, books, starting the business, and growing exponentially.
—> A statistic that just backs up what I'm saying is Home Depot increase its revenue by 20% from February 2020 to January 2021. They made 132 billion dollars in revenue.
At the same time, companies and many people felt like our focus, energy, and output would be the exact same or somehow even better during a really traumatic, huge shift in everyday life. So many people lost loved ones, got sick, and lost jobs. Yet we continue to expect ourselves to be productive at the expense of our humanness.
Since lockdown began, it became clear to so many people that toxic productivity is our biggest time management mistake as a society. And it was mine too, even being someone who knew how important resting and taking time off is. Even as a time management coach, I was still pressuring myself to be productive at the expense of the things that I thought I valued and cared about.
The mistake of toxic productivity
Why is toxic productivity a mistake?
A business owner I have worked with recently asked me why is it such a mistake or why is it a bad thing that I want to be productive and work. My answer was, “there is nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with wanting to grow the thing that you are passionate about, the business, the life that you are trying to create. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be productive, it's when it becomes toxic.”
When it becomes toxic, you only care about productivity, making every single moment productive and have an output or result you are chasing after something that is not really ever going to happen.
We believe this fallacy of productivity, that we'll finally get everything on our to-do list done one day. So we're always doing more, more, more, and more to try and get to that one day where we can rest, take time off, and make time for ourselves.
Productivity becomes toxic when all you do is try and get to that one day. That's what creates a hamster wheel because it never happens. Your to-do list will never end and when you believe you'll finally get to that one day, the things that you do get done never feel like enough.
All of that creates a lot of self-confidence issues, it causes unhealthy self-care habits, you start to put your worth into your productivity and the output that you create.
That has a lot of detrimental impacts on your business and your life.
In my personal experience, I was in the hospital with an intestine infection, never really having major health issues before. I developed a severe intestine infection and was in the hospital trying to meet a deadline! I had my computer with me in the hospital trying to work on an essay. At the time I was in college as an engineering student. I didn't really care about English at all (sorry to my teacher) and yet, I was unconsciously choosing to be productive over resting and caring about myself.
That's how bad it can get. Obviously, that is a pretty severe "rock bottom” in terms of burnout and productivity. It doesn't have to be severe at all it can just be you unable to sit on the couch and enjoy an evening with your family or even with yourself.
How to know if your productivity is toxic?
You have trouble sitting still and resting.
You continue to work when you know that you're tired, achy, and not in the mood to work.
You feel like being bored is a bad thing.
There's this just constant need for self-improvement, just more, more and more which leads to a lot of impacts on our mental and physical health like depression, anxiety, and strained relationships.
Choosing work over yourself and which leads to a lot of self-mistrust.
That's my experience and that is the experience of many of the clients that I work with.
How to reverse the impacts of toxic productivity
If you relate to any of the things that I just mentioned, I want to share with you two super simple things that I had to do and that I help the folks do in my coaching program. There are so many things that you can do to start reversing the impacts of toxic productivity and hustle culture.
1.The first thing that you can do is reframing what productive means to you.
A lot of times we think that just resting, relaxing, and spending time with family isn't productive and I would love to cut that out, it is 100% productive. Anything that is of value or importance to you is productive. Being alive, being a human, it's not just about work, it is not just creating results and output. Anything that means something to you is productive and I will say this over and over and over and over and over again.
Once you figure out what is of value or what is important to you then just remind yourself every time that you spend time on those things, you're being productive!
2. The second tip that I want to share with you is, the best lifestyle is a healthy lifestyle.
There are so many statistics and studies coming out around how being healthy is the best thing you can do for work, productivity, your business, for yourself, for your family.
When you are falling into the biggest time management mistake, aka toxic productivity, you put work over health, work over self. Putting your health number one is the most basic thing that you can do to step off the hamster wheel.
At the end of the day, we need to rest, we need to train ourselves to put ourselves first.
The next question that you are going to ask me is how, how do I reframe what's productive? How do I put myself first? How do I create a healthier work-life balance?
There is no one solution. I can't give you in this short post what the how is. The how comes from inside of you, it is unique to you.
This is beautiful because that means it's going to work, you just have to figure out what is inside of you and how to make that happen. So if you want to step off of the toxic productivity hamster wheel, if you want to be mentally and physically healthier and happier. If you want to be more compassionate with yourself. And if you want to feel like there is all of the time in the world for everything that you need to get done… the answers are inside of you. And I can support you in unearthing your answers in my 1:1 coaching program.
I know how hard it is to peel yourself away from your laptop, from work, from the business that you're building. I know how hard it is when you know how toxic a productivity mindset can be and yet still fall victim to it and not be able to rest, take time off and put yourself first. So if that's you, you are in good company here. Trust me when I say that I am here to help you break up with toxic productivity and step off that hamster wheel so you can start resting and start living life in the way that you want to.
If you resonated with my biggest time management mistake, let me know in the comments below.
Ready to heal time scarcity and live into your values? Click here to get free + supportive resources!
4 Personalized steps to get back on track when your day gets derailed
4 Personalized steps to get back on track when your day gets derailed
Don’t you think that life seems to have completely different plans than us some days?
You just want to know how to get back on track when the day seems to just get away from you, that's why you clicked on this blog post and I got you!
At the end of this post, you are going to have a super short and quick plan for what to do when your day gets completely thrown off.
Ok so, the kids are sick, you get stuck down a social media rabbit hole for an hour or two, you forgot about a meeting, your dog needs to go to the vet, maybe you just had a bad night of sleep last night and you're in a crappy mood today?
Let's be real, COVID has derailed over an entire year of our lives too!
It never feels good when you make plans and yet you can't do it because of some of the things I just mentioned. It feels like you only get an hour of real work in a day. Ugh.
Personally speaking, in my life when my day gets derailed or my schedule gets derailed it's because I just don't feel like doing something. I wanted to bring that up because sometimes it's not external, maybe it's internal and oftentimes I blame myself. I can get into those shame and blame cycles of “oh it's my fault that my schedule got thrown off, I could have if I had more self-discipline or actually followed through”.
Like I talked about in the procrastination blog post (if you haven't read it, check it out!) it's okay to let things marinate, sit, enjoy the creative process, and give things more time. Sometimes the longer you wait to do something some beautiful ideas might come from that time.
How to get back on track
Let's get right to the solution, how to get back on track, and then I want to share with you how to prevent it in the future so things don't go haywire as often as they are right now.
1. When you notice that your day has been derailed, pause.
Awareness is the first piece, you have to notice that everything got thrown off or something happened that doesn't go according to plan. Honor it, honor this, it sucks big time when you create plans and they don't happen according to the plan that you want.
2. After you pause, ask yourself what do I need to do right here at this moment to get it back on track?
Instead of ruminating and sitting in the why is this happening to me and why can't I control everything, start just by asking yourself, “what I can do right here in this present moment? What can I do to get it back feeling good, feeling easeful, or accomplishing what I need to accomplish?”
Oftentimes for me, it's yoga, breathing, taking time to journal, talk to a friend, whatever I need to just like get back in my body.
3. Ask yourself, can you do what you need?
Can you actually do that yoga class, can you breathe, can you call a friend, can you take a nap. If so…
4. Do it!
If you can’t, go back and ask yourself “okay, so what can I do? How do I get my day back on track, what do I need to feel better?”
How do you prevent your day from being derailed?
So that is what you need to do when your day is derailed but how do you prevent your schedule, plans, and your day from being derailed in the future?
Something that my clients and I often talk about is that whenever your day or plans get derailed it is because of high expectations and this illusion of control over your time, the day, or your schedule. It's the high stakes and the pressure that we put on ourselves to be perfect.
As much as we love being in control we have to realize that, at some point, we're just not. So shifting your mindset to being more human, being more flexible, being more compassionate is going to take you to have more success.
Every single time that you create a plan add extra space for things to move around. Or simply knowing that your plans 99% most likely will shift and that is what it is. That is what being human is about.
So tangibly this is why I love digital calendars because when you put your to-do list in your calendar you can move your tasks around and still have a visual that it IS possible to still get everything done.
Also, you can create extra space in between tasks, client calls, meetings, etc. That's the beautiful part about your digital calendar too. When you create more space you allow yourself to live, you allow more compassion, ease, and space. And that is so beautiful.
No matter if you are trying to figure out how to get back on track and taking care of yourself at this moment reading this post or you are attempting to be more proactive in your scheduling. Or in your time management to allow derails to affect you less and less. You are adding more compassion to your day and to your life so that needs to be celebrated. That is going to help you so so much in your business, your life, your relationships, your health and you'll be more productive (that’s like the understatement here).
I help people be more productive but at the end of the day, it's more about compassion, just being human, and living our lives. That is possible when you are flexible and intuitive with your time. If you enjoyed this post leave a comment below sharing what your biggest takeaway from this post was and what you are going to do to make a shift in your life, whether it's on the mindset side or, the tool side.
Want to feel confident, in control, and at peace with your time? Click here to get free + supportive resources!
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