Blending Leadership: How I Do Things (Part 2)

Calendar Control

I use MacOS's Calendar as my main schedule and task prioritization space. I will plan to go more detailed into some of the ways I manipulate it to suit my personal organizational needs, but in this post I'll share mostly some guiding principals that I rely on.

First, I have a window of each week day that is only to be used for work purposes (i.e. my main job). Right now I have that set for 7AM - 3PM. The early start has to do with working collaboratively with my colleagues in Poland who are 6 hours ahead. There are certainly times when things get scheduled outside this window(for example, when collaborating or meeting with colleagues in NY or in CA),  OR when personal matters need to be handled within that window (for example, a school conference). When those situations occur I shift things around so that the day feels balanced.

I use a second calendar for non-main work things (personal appointment and side-hustle related things -like writing a book). That calendar has a different color so it is easily visually identified.

And then I have a third calendar which is my wife's calendar that has been shared with me. This way I am aware of things that are going on and when necessary, I can also add things to it. On those occasions when a personal or family appointment needs to take place within the primary work window, I always try to create an event on my work calendar that simply says 'Unavailable' so that my colleagues who might be looking to schedule something based on my availability have a more complete set of information. Sometimes, if I have created a free block of time (or a meeting gets canceled) I will move some personal tasks into the main part of the day, but still keep myself available for interruptions.

In the end, my calendar for this current week (in week view) looks like this as of today (Thursday Jan 31). Stay tuned for more.