Use a default diary to get the most out of your day.

In last week’s blog post, I wrote about self-management versus time management and how to assess where the tasks you do fit on an important/urgent time target. This week, I’m going to suggest that a default diary will help with this …

One of the most effective ways to ensure you are using your time wisely and getting the most out of your day, is to create and use a ‘default diary’. Many of us (potentially even the majority) don’t use our time as productively as we could.

Often the things that we know we should be doing to work ‘on’ our business and that are very ‘important’ to move our business forward, rarely also fall into an ‘urgent’ category which is why those tasks end up getting indefinitely deferred.

I’m sure you can think of plenty of tasks that fall into that category; for example a business plan, marketing plan, website updates, one to one’s with staff members etc.

So, back to the ‘default diary’ as that is the key to getting the most out of your time and ensuring that those important/not urgent tasks get prioritized and completed. Work out which activities need time set aside to be done and block out time to deliberately work on those tasks.

This shouldn’t be your main diary, but a separate, ‘default’ one that shows specific times in a week or month when certain activities happen. For me, Monday’s are about marketing and I block out set times for certain activities on this day. Friday 3pm is for reviewing the week and planning the next one. For a colleague of mine, Tuesday at 2pm is his time for contacting current or past clients to see how things are going.

Activities like this will rarely be urgent, but can make a big difference to client relations. Use the information in your default diary alongside your regular diary, for example, on a Friday afternoon, when you should ideally be reviewing the week and planning the next.

Look at your default diary and plan as many of your scheduled activities into your main diary the following week. Of course, there will be occasions where they may not all happen every week, but if they’re scheduled in, then most likely they will.

What activities would you schedule in your default diary, that would never fall into the urgent category, but if you worked on them regularly would enable you and your business to progress faster and work more effectively?