A week in your life
Get a report on your calendar and time use
TLDR: I’ll send you a free, detailed, written report on your calendar usage if you send me a screenshot of your week.
Word count: 351
Read time: 2 mins
Last week, I asked some calendar-related questions of you in a poll. Here’s what came out of it:
Just half of you hold a daily planning session. This is truly awful! So start - even if it’s only (as mine is) for 15 mins!
A mere 43% of you have a recurring positive habit in your calendar. Again, start one now! Right now! Take your pick from meditation, reading, exercise, learning, friends/family or choose one yourself.
Three-quarters of you keep timeboxes mostly of 30-60 minutes. Personally, I prefer less than that so that I’m focused on something specific at almost any given time, and have less opportunity to feel overwhelmed and/or get distracted.
One in seven of you say you have no intentional hours at all. What?! What kind of a life is that?!
42% don’t batch email at all and 75% don’t batch email consistently. This is such a quick and substantial win for so many. It’s a real shame that this practice isn’t more widespread. Put in 30 minutes each day at a time that suits. Be efficient and effective for those 30 mins. Be much freer of (email-related) distraction outside of them.
56% of you have a sleep routine. Well, well. I am surprised and impressed!
Finally, the majority of you are interested in a digital version of me advising you on use of your calendar and your time. Well, about that…
…OFFER
As you obviously know by now, I like to help people manage their calendars, time, and lives better and more happily. I’ve been working on a prototype technology that takes as input a screenshot of the week-view of your calendar and produces a report with advice about how you’ve been using and how you might make better use of your time.
So, if you’d like some almost-immediate feedback on how you’re spending your time, just send me a screenshot of your week. (Note: the process involves an AI model process the screenshot temporarily to generate the insights but your calendar won't be stored or shared by me beyond the purpose of creating the report.)
I’d then love to hear from you about what’s useful or not in this feedback (but there’s no obligation on your part).
Marc
Links you may like
7 days of Timeboxing (the free email micro-course)
Timeboxing, the book (US)
Timeboxing, the book (UK)
Timeboxing, el libro (Español)
Connect with me on LinkedIn
Hi Marc,
I would like to send in my week. Would you be able to give another image of yours or a fictional week with readable text? I can see that many of your blocks are usually 15 minutes but seeing what the block is called would be helpful. The text in the image above is hard to make out. Also, is this image of planning a week in advance or once the week has completed? I timebox mainly one day at a time and I try to adjust my timeboxes to reflect the actual time spent on a task on the fly if my planning has to change.
Thanks
Mark