244: Recalibrate Your Schedule for Success

Hi there. You’re listening to the Leading Lady podcast. I’m your host, AliceAnne Loftus, and I’m a certified professional coach specializing in leadership and work-life balance. I work with clients to shift their limiting beliefs, insecurities, and self-doubt. This podcast will be filled with tools and strategies to help high-achieving women like you feel connected, empowered, and in the lead of your life, both personally and professionally. Let’s transform your life starting now. Lead yourself, the rest will follow.

Hi there, leading ladies, and welcome to today’s episode.

Today I’m gonna be talking to you about how to recalibrate your schedule, especially in your business when you’ve had a busy start to the year. I don’t know about you, but January has felt like it’s 87 years long and also moving like it’s got somewhere to be.

As far as our day-to-day schedules, I feel like every day has just been jam-packed with a never-ending to-do list. And you know me, I’m not really a fan of to-do lists, but I just feel like I can’t keep up with all the things that are happening in January at the same time. The month of January feels like it’s 87 years long.

So I thought, what do I as a business owner need to hear right now as we’re moving into February? I look back at January and think, “What the heck just happened there?” Because it was like being fire-hosed, and I just need time to reflect and recalibrate. So I’m gonna talk to you about how I plan on doing that in February and moving forward.

Reflect and Assess Your Priorities

Number one is I’m gonna reflect and assess my priorities. I need to review how I’ve been spending my time, what’s working, and what’s been overwhelming. As a business owner, I know that a lot of times we can feel like so many of the tasks we have to do, only we can do them, and it can be very overwhelming.

You feel like you’re being pulled in so many different directions and you don’t know where to start. So my advice is to identify tasks that align with your business and personal goals, and look at the tasks that are really draining your energy. And then make a list of how you really want to spend your time and what makes the most sense for your bandwidth, for your priorities in your business, and what you realistically can take on.

Reset Your Daily and Weekly Routine

Number two is to reset your daily and weekly routine. Now, I love time management, priority management. I live by my calendar. You’ve heard me talk about it. I use the Erin Condren LifePlanner in the hourly format. I’ll put the link in the show notes. Love, love, love my planner.

I also use a digital calendar. I use the Google calendar and an app called Fantastical to keep all of my calendars organized. Because as much as I love having a paper calendar, and that is my go-to and how I really sit down and look at my schedule, having it also digital allows for ease, and obviously for appointments and sharing things and things like that.

So I do keep both calendars. And I’m actually gonna be hosting a time management workshop at the end of the month, so I will also share information about that. If you would like to participate in that, or if you’d like to schedule a time management block with me, you’re welcome to do that as well.

But resetting your daily and weekly routine. So establishing structured work hours, that’s a big one for me. I have specific work hours. I do my best to stay within those work hours. I’m very rarely taking work home or working beyond what I know to be my zone of productivity. But having an established structure ensures time for those focused tasks.

You can have scheduled days where you have client meetings or client interactions, and then you also need to have that creative planning, especially if you’re like me and you’re also having to create content and do all the things.

Another thing to consider when you’re looking at your daily and your weekly routine is to block off personal time to recharge and to avoid burnout, especially when you feel like everything’s been so hectic. I feel like as high-achieving women, we’re like, “Oh, I just need to get through the week. I just need to get through this next big project, and then I’m gonna take some time off.” And I’ve talked about this in previous podcasts, but really build in those margins in the daily routine and in the weekly routine, so that you’re giving yourself these small breaks to recharge.

Building a Morning Routine That Sets the Tone

Also, if your mornings feel rushed, implementing a consistent morning routine can really help you to set a productive tone. I am somebody who gets up at the same time every day. I get up super early before anyone else in my house is up, with the exception of my dog, because now he’s on my schedule. But I really need that morning time to just set myself up for success.

And that might look different for everyone. Some people like to work out, some people have their meditation time or their prayer time. For me, it’s a mix of just a quiet cup of coffee. I do my daily devotional. I spend time with my dog.

I am looking to get back into working out in the early morning, because that is when I feel best. And that’s a whole other podcast I can do about the challenges of perimenopause and autoimmune disease. For those of you, I’m sure you’ve heard, I struggle with Hashimoto’s, which is a thyroid disorder, and energy is hard. So a big goal for me in 2025 is to get back to a morning routine that energizes me and helps me set the tone for my productive day.

Streamline and Delegate

Number three is streamline and delegate. I cannot stress enough the importance of automating repetitive tasks, especially things like social media. If you do anything in your business more than once, then you should have a template for it. You should have a schedule or an SOP or a process for how you do that, because automating repetitive tasks can just keep the consistency in it. When you might lose motivation, or if you get distracted or easily derailed, automating can help keep you on track.

Also, don’t forget that as high-achieving women, a skill that we really need to master is the skill of delegation. When we can delegate tasks that don’t require our direct attention, we can outsource some of those tasks that tend to be the bottleneck because we procrastinate on them, or we think that they’re kind of low priority. So they get pushed to the side, and then they end up clogging up our processes and getting the things done in our business. So mastering the skill of delegation is going to be really, really, really important as you are trying to build the structure and routine in your business.

Time Blocking and Time Batching

And then I am a huge fan of time blocking and time batching, so batching similar tasks together to improve efficiency. I often say that as high-achieving women, we overestimate how much we can get done in a day, and we underestimate how much time it takes in transitions.

I really try to block all of my client work on specific days, so that I’m not trying to get admin work done and then, “Oh, I have to pause because I have a client call now.” Obviously things do pop up and things are gonna take you away from it, but the more you can keep like tasks clumped together, the easier it’s gonna be for you to avoid some of those transition times where you have to switch gears in your brain or switch focus.

And so like I said, not only do I recommend time blocking, giving yourself adequate time to work on tasks, but also time batching, where you have similar tasks grouped together. That’s really gonna help improve your effectiveness and your efficiency.

Find the Time Management Techniques That Fit You

Implement time management techniques. Like I just said, try time blocking to allocate specific hours to specific activities. A lot of people use the Pomodoro technique, which is a 25-minute focus session with breaks. So find time management techniques that fit you. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all.

I will suggest you try to limit distractions and try not to multitask. There was a study probably about a decade ago that I came across, and I’ll try and do some research to see if I can find the statistics on this. But it said something like, people believe that multitasking is a skill, but when they tested this study group on it, they found that for the majority of people, when they measured their productivity when multitasking, it was about the same as if they were trying to do those tasks while intoxicated or under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

That just blew my mind, because here I thought that I was this fantastic multitasker, and I realized that those distractions were actually reducing my productivity and the accuracy of the work that I was doing. I was actually just making it harder on myself, because I wasn’t really giving myself that focus time on specific tasks.

And so do some research. What are some time management techniques that work for you? Are you someone that needs to work in small batches? Are you someone who works on harder tasks earlier in the day? Are you someone that needs to do tasks later in the day, after you’ve done some client work in the morning?

I think that really understanding and being very self-aware of your own zone of productivity tendencies can help you customize a time management plan that really uses your strengths, rather than saying, “Oh, to be successful, I have to get up at five o’clock in the morning.” Okay, well, if you’re not a morning person, then you’re never gonna feel successful getting up at five o’clock in the morning and doing those things.

And so I really strongly encourage anyone to really know their own tendencies, rather than judging yourself or saying, “Gosh, I wish that I got up earlier,” or, “I wish that I could just devote a whole day to administrative tasks.” Maybe that’s not for you. And so stop judging yourself on that and just build a self-awareness around when you do work your best. What are those times? What are the scenarios and situations in which you’re most productive, and how can you replicate that in your time management to help you be the best you?

Prioritize Self-Care and Rest

Next is prioritizing self-care and rest. I talked a little bit about that in building in those breaks and the margins for you, but I just really wanna drive that home. We need to schedule downtime to avoid that exhaustion, whether that’s a short walk, a workout, or a no-work weekend. There’s no shame in that. There’s no guilt in that.

I was laughing with my coworker Aubrey this morning. My daughter got a dog, and so what it’s doing is, my daughter works a nine-to-five and she can’t come home in the middle of the day to walk the dog. And the only reason why she knew that she could get this dog was that I am able to step away and help her. I’m gonna walk my dog, so I’m gonna walk her dog too.

And having that time to step away from my desk, I’m actually super grateful for it, because it’s forcing me. I have an older dog now. He can go all day and wait for me for a walk at the end of the day, whereas this puppy kind of needs to go out every few hours. So it’s reminded me how much I actually enjoy being able to step away and take a break and get some fresh air in the middle of the day. And I’ve found that it’s made me a little more focused and a little more productive in my work.

Also, we all need to prioritize getting enough sleep. Where did it become this badge of honor that we could operate on so little sleep and just be overly caffeinated? So have a good evening slash bedtime routine. Set boundaries around your work and your personal life, and allow yourself to unwind in the evening and settle down and disconnect from work, and disconnect from technology, and really set yourself up for a healthy night’s sleep.

For Christmas, my husband got me these incredible noise-canceling sleep earphones, and I’ll drop the link in the show notes as well. I’m a very, very, very light sleeper, and I was noticing that it was getting worse, and my sleep was really suffering from that. And so my husband kind of did this whole theme for Christmas around rest and coziness and good sleep, and then some of my creative outlets, like puzzling and crafts and things like that.

It was actually a really sweet Christmas. He put really a lot of thought into the things that help me be my best. So good, so good. But sleep was one of them, and I will say, a full month into it now, I finally feel like my sleep is getting better regulated. I’m having deeper sleep, and I’m starting to feel a lot better.

Reevaluate and Adjust Your Schedule Regularly

So this isn’t something that we just do (I don’t just encourage this) when you’ve had a busy start to the year. I think that we need to reevaluate and adjust our schedules regularly. You need to check in weekly to assess if your schedule is working, and make those small adjustments when necessary.

Also, be flexible. Some weeks are gonna require more adaptability than others. When I start people with the time tracking and time blocking and using the calendar, I often tell them, “Hey, let’s start with sticky notes first before directly writing in your paper calendar, so that we can move things as needed until you really get the hang of it and really start to understand your own work rhythms.” So definitely be flexible in that, and understand that things are gonna move.

I love teaching the time management workshop. I feel like this is a skill that I really had to learn when I started my business 21 years ago. I was also starting a family at that time, and I was balancing a lot of different roles and responsibilities. Time management was something that did not come naturally or easily to me.

And so I think that the last 20-plus years of really figuring out how to balance those priorities (and I say all the time, if you’re not scheduling your priorities, they’re not your priorities), really allocating time for the things that are important to you, learning how to do that is going to be just monumental in setting you up in ways that you can show up as your best self.

So if you’re interested in learning more about my time management workshop, definitely check out the events page on my calendar. You can sign up for the workshop that’s coming up at the end of the month. Like I said, you can also reach out to me. I do read and respond to every email. If there’s something very specific that you’re struggling with in time management, chances are just a quick phone call with me and I can help you navigate that or adjust that, or just make some gentle tweaks to your schedule to see how you really can optimize how you spend your time.

I know for me, like I said, January came out like a fire hose. I had so many events and things happening in January. All good stuff, but it can leave you feeling a little dizzy. And I need this reminder. I need to step back and look at how I’m spending my time and what my priorities are, and get back to a schedule and a routine that works for me.

And if I can be of help to you, I wanna be that resource. So until next time, take the lead.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the Leading Lady podcast. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at www.leadinglady-coaching.com. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss any future episodes. And while you’re there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. This will allow me to be able to help other high-achieving women find inspiration, connection, and develop strategies to live and lead with purpose and intention. See you here next week.