How Your Calendar Dictates Your Priorities

There’s a famous saying: “Show me your calendar, and I’ll show you your priorities.”Now that you’ve gotten into the practice of Unstoppable Sundays, and have started to think through your attack strategy for the next 365 days, there’s ONE EVIL THING IN YOUR LIFE that you’ve got to eradicate — and that’s your calendar as it stands right now.Whether we realize it or not, much of our lives is spent according to priorities set by others, who decide what they want us to be doing. Whether it is meetings at work, family commitments on weekends, or those work trips that we’re endlessly on — we spend all those hours and days constantly REACTING.

Regardless of what we put on our to-do lists, despite our New Year's Resolutions, and notwithstanding the intentions we set at the beginning of the day -- ultimately it is what is on our calendars that dictates how we spend our time.

So the question then becomes: What is on your calendar? Who is setting the agenda for how you set your time on your calendar? And, if you haven’t spent 30 minutes each week to map out the week ahead, and at least a couple hours to map out your next 365 days, do you think you’re making the most of your time ahead?

Let me ask you another set of questions. Where will you be spending Thanksgiving? Fourth of July? Christmas? Do you have your two weeks of vacation planned out through the year? How about Spring Break? Have you thought about strategically taking a few long weekends throughout the course of the year to pause, restore yourself, and make sure you’re on the right track?

In the BEFORE part of my life, I didn’t use my calendar as a proactive tool. And I wouldn’t have been able to answer most of the questions I posed above. I was working hard, but not working smart. I was burning through the hours, but only to burn myself out. And worst of all, as the major holidays approached, anticipation of these dates only increased my anxiety level, because I didn’t think to properly plan ahead and make the most of them.

In the AFTER part of my life, I became more purposeful about the goals I wanted to accomplish for the year; I started to pause and reflect on a weekly basis. But, most importantly, I began to set up my calendar to cater to my goals instead of others’ goals. In the AFTER part of my life, I started to answer these strategic questions about my life and developed the habit of mapping it out ahead of time for the next 365 days:

  1. Where, with whom, and how will I spend the major holidays? Here in the United States, these holidays include Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas, and New Year’s.

  2. When will I be taking my one major vacation (even if it is a staycation) of the year? Where will I go? Whom will I spend it with?

  3. How can I take time away every six to eight weeks, either because of a holiday or as a day off, so that I can pause, reflect, and course-correct on my plan for the year?

  4. What are the necessities of life I need to take care of every four to six weeks to ensure I’m running in peak condition? Doctors’ appointments? Haircuts? Massage?

  5. What major conferences, networking events, and charity functions will I be attending throughout the next 365 days to broaden my network and increase my net worth?

  6. What family-and-friends commitments do I have over the next 365 days? These include weddings, birthdays, reunions, etc. Will I prioritize them or decline with regret, based on my other priorities for the year?

  7. Given what I’ve prioritized over the next 365 days, as well as my time commitments, will I be able to accomplish the goals I’ve set for myself?

You may first notice, as you read the set of questions above, that they’re not your average “Do I go to my Monday morning team meeting?” type of calendar questions. These are broader, more strategic questions to answer about how you will spend the next 365 days of your life. These are questions that are designed such that, if you spend 30 to 60 minutes addressing them up front, in a proactive way, your answers will not only help you run the rest of your year smoothly, but your responses will also help you to be  proactive and to prioritize the right things in your life.

You’ll also notice that most calendar applications (like Microsoft Outlook or iCalendar on the Mac) aren’t really designed to map out your year in this way. In fact, most calendar applications are designed for the exact opposite purpose: They’re there for others to easily send you calendar invitations to events THEY think are important and to fill up your days. 

So, to help you map out and become proactive about the next 365 days of your life, we’ve created a spreadsheet that helps you map out your whole year. This spreadsheet gives you a MACRO view of your 365 days, instead of being zoomed in to just this week -- or, even worse, just today — which is how we often approach our calendars.