One of the major tradeoffs in life is between the short term and the long term. Another way to think about it is the tradeoff between the urgent (usually short term) and the important (usually longer term). If we devote too much time to the urgent we get a lot of activity, but not much accomplishment.
A useful tool to help with this dilemma is the time skeleton. The end of the year is a particularly good time to make one. I call it a skeleton because while there are many ways to change how fit your body is and how you look, you can’t change your skeleton. This is a way to make a skeleton for the year of the things you need to do that are important for long term success. Then as you go through the weeks and months, all the other things hang off this skeleton – like your muscles and skin hang off your bones.
Step One – Get a Calendar For the Year
You want something that fits on one page (or at most two). You only need one small box for each day but it needs to have at least a little room to write. Here are some pictures of what I mean. This one came from PDFCalendar.com. Tell it to put 52 weeks per page.
This one came from CalendarPedia and is available in Word or Excel formats as well as PDF. Note – you have to scroll down to see the calendar – I think the link at the top of the page is something else. It already has holidays blocked out.
Step Two – Block out the things you have no control over
When there is a conference, trade show, holiday, vacation, or something where you can’t move the date, block those days out. Best to write what’s happening in the boxes for the relevant days or you won’t remember why you blocked them out.
Step Three – Block out days for the following categories
There are some important activities where you do have some control over the dates. And these may not take all day – but they happen on a day. These are the important things that you don’t want to get usurped by the urgent. These will vary by the work that you do, but for most people, they tend to fall into these 3 categories.
Strategy: Quarterly planning sessions. Goal Setting. Monthly financial reviews. Partners meetings.
Management: All-Hands Meetings, One-on-One meetings with staff, performance reviews, training sessions.
Non-Management Work: If you need to make so many sales calls a week, or dedicate a certain amount of time to billable hours, block out time for that on your calendar even though at this time you don’t know exactly who you’ll be calling or what you’ll be working on.
You will probably have a lot of empty days on your time skeleton. That's expected.
Step Four – Transfer to your real calendar
Now you have an overview of your year with time blocked off for the important things. Transfer all those activities to your regular calendar. You can color code them if you wish.
But a lot of detail is missing. Some of these things don’t take all day. Others need to have travel or prep time scheduled. That all goes in your regular calendar too. It’s really important to only have one calendar you work off of. So consider this skeleton as a temporary planning tool. Throw it away once you’ve put the details in your regular calendar.
Your regular calendar is the "flesh and blood" of your work. As you go through your work week, you’ll schedule appointments and lots of other things that are not on this skeleton, but you’ll fill in that work around these “bones.” The point of the time skeleton is to ensure that the important stuff doesn’t get crowded out.
The clock picture is from www.zazzle.com/13_hour_clock_friendly_skeleton-256149445625222368
