Ever tried to book a meeting with your boss (or other senior leaders) only to find their diary is completely full.
Frustrating isn’t it?
You simply can not get time with the senior leaders and get them to focus on the things you think they need to.
Try and get into your colleagues diary though and it seems to be empty. Plenty of spots you can slide a meeting into.
There is a reason for this and it’s not because senior leaders are busier than the workers.
Well they are busy, just not on your priorities.
It is because they know that if they don’t control their diary, then other people (like you) will.
Some even have a PA to keep their diary full.
On the things they want and need to be working on.
And the secret to having a clear diary, is to have a full diary.
A full diary that is filled by you
On the things you want and need to be working on.
Not a blank diary with no meetings that people can fill in for you.
And put in meetings you don’t need to be in.
Or Teams calls you turn up to and everyone’s camera is off doing other things.
The single biggest and easiest way to manage your time better is to take control of it.
Manage your diary like you have to fill the entire thing up.
Put in your to do list – what it is you are doing and when you are going to do it
Put in time for strategic thinking – if that’s important to you.
Put in walks with your dog – if that’s important to you (I literally do this because if I don’t she eats my socks!)
Even put in time to your diary to work on urgent things that just pop up. And label it “urgent stuff that just popped up”
I put that in for two hours each day.
Some days it runs over and I need 3 hours for it.
Some days I don’t have anything urgent and its 0 hours.
And when I need 0 hours for it nobody else can take it away from me so I decide what I will do instead to replace it – things important to me that I choose.
That is why your bosses diary is always full
They choose what they work on.
Which means others don’t.
To do this just block out your outlook with blocks of things you want to be working on.
Or use tools like Asana which I personally use and have come to rely on. It links straight to my outlook and is great for repetitive tasks you do all the time – like my programs and like your month end and budget.
I put it in once and then just pick the person and the day/time it needs to be done. I get a notification and so do they. And they click it when done.