How I Schedule My Time

Scheduling is not easy, and I am constantly looking for new and improved ways to schedule and manage my time effectively.  Below is how I currently schedule.  Feel free to explore, and take any ideas away that might benefit you:

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• I start with lists, but my lists are broken into separate categories for the different "scopes" of work that I do:​​

  • Design-Sales ​

  • Pre-Construction 

  • Project Management 

  • Billing 

  • Management 

• I use Microsoft Lists and generate a list for each of these categories 

• The most important items are the two columns that are on every page called "Next Action" and "Next Action Date."

  • What this allows me to do is identify what the next step is for each task to continue to push it forward.  I mark a date down and use power automation to send the task to my Outlook Calendar.  ​

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• Within my Outlook Calendar, I use categories to color coordinate the tasks so that I can see if my week is "meeting" heavy, "design-sales" heavy, or "project management" heavy, for example.  I am trying to balance out the week so that I don't have consecutive weeks or days where my sales responsibilities are being neglected.  Through the use of power automate, I can have these tasks automatically get categorized to eliminate any unnecessary steps for myself.  

  • The other thing this allows me to do is group "like" tasks.  It is very hard to keep focus when you are switching back and forth between design, sales, and project management.  However, if I can combine like tasks together and tackle several project management tasks for different projects in the same "time block," then I have found I can be more efficient.  ​

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• On Monday mornings, I review my tasks, assign dates to anything that isn't already scheduled and keep track of notes for each task and keep pushing tasks forward by completing small microtasks.