Young, Scheduled, and Free? 🤔

When I left corporate, I got caught up in the idea of light calendars so that I could have time to work on what I wanted to.

In the past couple of months, I learned that I became way more productive when I stuck to “routines.” It turns out that setting daily and weekly calendar routines is a great way for making sure you’re spending your time on your priorities. Except this time, I get to decide what’s important, not anyone at work who has access to schedule a meeting on my calendar 😭.

Last week, I read Coach Builder by Donald Miller (5/5⭐️ if you’re a coach or coach adjacent). In one of the last chapters, he spends 10+ pages breaking down an example of what the week of a coach making $256k/year looks like. Below is a simple summarized table version of the chapter that explains what every time block is:

This weekly schedule looks BUSY! But is it actually?

Here’s what I see that would be considered unattainable for many entrepreneurs making even $100k/year:

• There is family time with their kids prioritized every morning

• Workouts during the workday 2 days of the week

• Somehow taking 2-hour lunches to connect with perspective clients or friends & family

• All while not working past 5 any day and having weekends off as it’s after 5 pm while I write this email…

The idea here is setting boundaries around what’s important to you:

• The most important things come first in the week (masterminds)

• 1:1 Clients always have the same time slot with no reschedules because that throws off their week

• Building in more 1:many offers to increase the value of their time

• Intentionally scheduling prep, follow-up, & errands time so that it doesn’t encroach other things

How do you make your calendar work for you?

1. Define your priorities (work & life) - put those either first in the week or day (Jo & I read and create before any client work)

2. Build in focus blocks for things you get easily distracted from

3. Make it a repeatable habit, so you don’t have to think about it

4. Remove as much unwanted variability as possible (emails get responded to at ___, client calls on ___ and ___ between _- _)

5. Push the boundary out to others (email signatures, client onboarding, auto responses, automations, etc)

6. Iterate for a few weeks to find what works best for you

I was surprised that I was interested in the idea of predictability, but it turns out I can do a lot more of what I want to do when I don’t have to stress over when it’s happening.

In looking up this quote by Kevin Kelly, I learned that the second sentence is just as important: “Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you where you’re going.”

That’s a thought for another email. But it does make me happy to share that I just scheduled our first community call for all our coaching clients. We’re so excited to start putting like-minded high performers in the same room!

See you next week,

Lyndon

Ps Are you a service-based entrepreneur struggling to prioritize what’s important, what offers to sell, or even how to attract customers for your offers? We’d love to chat about how coaching can help; you can schedule a free discovery call here