At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor

by Carey Nieuwhof

CHAPTER 10 IN A SNAP Blank space on your calendar is a trap. It looks like freedom, but it’s really jail disguised as liberty. The key to helping you thrive is to schedule all your priorities ahead of time. Decide how you’ll spend your time before others decide for you. A blank calendar is pretty much a guarantee that you’ll spend your time on everyone else’s priorities, not yours. Prescheduling your calendar is different from keeping a to-do list. So many overwhelmed people have long to-do lists but get no further ahead. In fact, they just fall further behind. A fixed calendar is a predecision about how to spend your work and personal time, most often in repeating appointments with yourself, week after week, year after year. You become what you repeatedly do. When it comes to managing a team’s time and energy, greater awareness is the first step toward greater effectiveness. Healthy people respect the boundaries you set. Unhealthy people don’t.