How to Maximize Your Day By Treating Your Calendar Like a Budget

calendar executive assistant leadership leadership development time management

Have you ever had to work late into the evening or take last-minute meetings in the middle of your lunch because your calendar was too full or too inflexible? Does it seem like there's never quite enough time to get everything done? Time is one of the few things in our life that can't be replaced. Once it's gone, it's gone. If this sounds familiar, keep reading.

Over the last decade as an Executive Assistant, I've worked alongside senior leaders in large and small organizations. I help them maximize their time so that they're able to invest their best in work and have time left for the things they personally value the most.

Think of your calendar like a personal budget. In a budget, you allocate money according to your priorities and values. If you're smart, you make sure your essentials are covered first. Then, you pay yourself by contributing to savings and investments. Finally, you make room for some fun with the money you have left over. If you don't budget well, you might end up eating 10-cent ramen noodles on Friday night instead of enjoying a nice dinner because you're digging yourself out of a financial hole.

Now, switch gears and imagine creating a budget with your time. Your calendar is the tool that makes that possible. If you budget your time well, you'll be able to accomplish your most important objectives and still have margin to do the things you want.

I have developed four guiding principles that, when followed, can transform your calendar from a thorn in your side to a source of comfort.

1. Identify Your Anchoring Priorities

Anchoring priorities are the things that keep you professionally and personally centered as a leader. They stay the same week to week. They are non-negotiables in your budgeted time, similar to how you might treat your mortgage in your personal budget.

List the most important objectives for your job.

Focus on the larger picture, not a task. For example, it could be three areas you're responsible for: Product, Budget, and People Development.

List out the most important things to you personally.

Time with kids, dedicated time with spouse, or time for a hobby.

2. Protect Your Margin and Focus Time

Protect your time by reserving weekly recurring blocks for your best work, pencil in padding between meetings, and block off the beginning and end of your day. Set aside time for thinking, decompressing, and socializing. Own your calendar, or your calendar will own you. In our budgeting analogy, this is the concept of paying yourself before you spend on non-essentials. The time you set aside will pay you back in energy and productivity.

If something urgent comes up later, it's always easier to willingly accept a calendar invite at times you've budgeted for other things than being stuck with a meeting at a time you intended to use for something else. Having these dedicated times throughout the day is critical to giving yourself some personal space to start your day, lunch without work, and time to shut down each day.

Create recurring blocked times on your calendar for items such as:

Early morning
Lunch
End of Day
Add 15-minute blocks before and after meetings
Deep work

3. Determine Your Weekly Priorities

Weekly priorities are the most important things you need to do this week. Knowing them will help you know what to say "yes" to and what you might have to push out or decline.

Some examples of weekly priorities could be:

Dealing with an outage or incident
Onboarding a new employee
Preparing a quarterly sales presentation

4. Hold The Line

Holding the line means following the schedule you've laid out for yourself and not allowing external pressure to force you to spend the time you didn't budget for. You wouldn't willingly give someone a blank check to your checking account, so don't make the same mistake with your calendar. The higher you go in leadership, the more complex your schedule becomes, which means the harder you have to work to maintain your schedule without burning yourself out trying to meet the demands of everyone pulling for your time.

Sample Day

How do you go about applying these principles? Here's an example of how I might utilize these to plan my day.

My mornings begin with utilizing my blocked time to review what's on my calendar for the day, prepare any last thoughts for meetings, and check my email. Since I've already budgeted lunchtime, I can easily take lunch alone for a break, run an errand, or connect with a friend for a relational lunch. I reserve the last hour of the day to wrap up by responding to emails, connecting with team members, making calendar adjustments for the next day, or reviewing things that need my approval.

What about all the time between morning, lunch, and the end of the day? Great question. Remember the anchoring priorities we defined in our first step? I leave work by 4:30 p.m. so that I'm home to cook dinner for my family and drive my kids to band practice. This helps me align my time with the main areas of my job. This is where your weekly priorities come in since they are driven by the anchoring priorities you've already defined. It could be space for meetings, presentations, or one-on-one meetings with my direct reports.

I often hear leaders cautious about blocking 15 minutes of their time (before and after a meeting) and how that affects the available time in their day. It does take time away from your calendar, but those 15-minute chunks allow you to have a quick water cooler chat, a bathroom or coffee break, a walk outside, a buffer if your previous meeting runs over, or a moment to reset your mind for the next meeting. Remember, you already only have so many hours in a day. If you consistently run from one thing to the next, you likely won't bring your best and will end up having additional meetings to make up for the lack of productivity due to being overwhelmed.

Adding in pockets of time for deep work throughout your week will also help you to complete critical tasks without interruption. The great news is if you need to adjust to accommodate another meeting, you can because you own your calendar instead of it owning you.

Practice the Principles

Getting the hang of new systems and processes takes time, but I promise the result of your investment in budgeting your time will pay off. Before you know it, you'll be not just focusing on the right things every day, but you'll have the margin to invest in the things you value the most.

I'm not always successful in applying these principles, but when I've budgeted my time well, and my boss needs to meet, or a team member needs to talk, I've already built margin in my week where I can make those shifts.

Not everyone can "decline" a meeting because it wasn't your top priority for the week. If your leader adds an unexpected Monday morning meeting, you probably can't say "no" to that. That's where your margin and communication come in. Great leaders don't just budget time well; they also communicate well.