Rather than allow my schedule to control me, I work to plan my schedule so it matches my needs and habits. I'm a morning person, so my most productive time (and the time when I have the most energy and ability to focus) is in the morning. So, to your point, I try to make my busiest point in the day in the morning.

If I can, I schedule my most intense meetings and activities for each day between 9:00 AM and 2:00 PM. I'll plan a breakfast meeting frequently. Early in the morning, I block out some time to scan email, pick up messages and take care of anything that's urgent. Then I spend the most productive part of my day being productive (that work can be anything from meetings to conferences to important think work). By mid-afternoon, I'm ready to do low energy activities such as email, responding to messages, returning phone calls, have routine meetings, do office work, etc. Part of my afternoon work also includes looking ahead at the next day and doing any prep I need to do for it. I review upcoming events farther out (usually that work is on a prioritized work list that I maintain) and work on those items also (unless that work is high energy work in which case I may have done it in the morning).

I find that I can't always control my calendar or my daily plan, so I stick with my approach as much as I can and then flex when I need to.

Scott Wright

CTO, GRMC Group

Posted on April 3, 2011

I never plan for a day, I plan by objectives and move any given days items to best meet them...

Scott

daniel jeges

Posted on April 8, 2011

Hi Paul,

My system is to monitor my actions for few weeks (4-6) to understand my busiest point (busiest by my customers, busiest by my working ability).

I use following system:

• Make list of activities
• Chop big activities into small (creating some type of gantogram)
• Prioritizing activities (I use important/non important – urgent/ non urgent matrix)
• Put activities in calendar (thing which are not in calendar does not happen because there is no dedicated time for them)
• On my phone I log time I spend on activities (time I spend on activities and time I plan to spend does not match always)
• At the end I analyze what wanted to achieve, what I did, what were disruptions etc.

This system helps me a lot to understand my abilities and needs of clients whom I serve.

I repeat this exercise from time to time due my clients change and from time to time I learn some new skill that improves my efficiency or simply by adopting new technical solution/gadget I change how I execute some activity which then influence time I need for it or level of attention I need for a good performance.

Regards, Daniel