"Oh, it’s a calendar" I hear you cry. Yes it is, in fact integrating blocks like this into your calendar is an excellent way of being notified of when the blocks start and end; so worth considering if you need a reminder of what you need to be doing.

As you can see, his actual role as a designer (fulfilment) is probably not featured as heavily as you may expect. If you actually think about what you do day to day it won't just be one task and this is why breaking them down is a great thing to do.

Everything from looking at emails, checking social media, writing content, doing bank reconcilliation etc is in this - as well as fulfilment. If it's something Col needs to remember to do it has a place in the week in which he can concentrate on that specific task.

Calls and in particular Sales Calls are not ad-hoc either; we have a Calendly booking system where people can book to speak with us, but it isn't through lunchtime and it certainly isn't at the very start or the end of the working day.

Emails at 11?!

Yep, we don't read emails until 11am. The reason for this is it allows our day to be planned the way we planned it. Projects scheduled, what the team is working on, what calls are booked in etc. If we look at our emails at 8am there is a very high likelihood that your morning (and often your entire day) becomes influenced by an email you received.

Not looking until 11 feels like cheating, but it really isn't. People send 'urgent' emails all the time; how many times have you replied straight away, to then not get a response back for a few days? It wasn't that urgent.

Don't be worried about missing something that someone else deems as 'urgent', if it actually is incredibly urgent you'll probably receive a phone call or text message about it, rather than someone drafting an email.

Col has some further insight into emails and how to manage when to read them:

"Turning off email notifications on my phone is one of the best things I've ever done. As a business owner I'm glued to my phone, but I found that when I was at home in the evening I'd be checking my emails then too. Rather than trying to relax and settle down for the evening I'd be checking my emails and if something negative or urgent came in it'd ruin my night. I wouldn't be able to sleep, I'd potentially boot up the laptop and start working... by turning off the notifications I choose to be ignorant to whats happening outside of our actual business hours. It can wait until the morning and nobody should be emailing me out of hours anyway - that's their problem, not mine."

So if the emails can wait until the morning, they can wait between 9am and 11am too. Allowing you to focus on the other things you need to do first, and then you can look at your emails and respond. 11am is what we do, but feel free to make yours 10am or later in the day.

Your little secret

Another great concept behind the Default Diary is, it doesn't need to be publicly shared with anyone, it's your little secret.

It's there to help you manage what everyone else tries to throw at you. It's a way of ensuring you can give tasks you know are important the actual time they deserve and it's about ensuring you take time for yourself too.

So turn off those email notifications, create your Default Diary and get time back in your day to focus on what really matters and when it matters.

Download

Download our Default Diary template below to get started. Make your own copy and have a think about what the ideal working day looks like for you. You can then implement your finalised Diary into your actual calendar to remind you of when to start and stop on your day-to-day tasks.

The Default Diary: Planning your day and avoiding overwhelm