Take control of your own schedule

One of our main purposes when coming back from vacation is to be able to take control of our schedule. Every year we tell ourselves that this is the year. We don’t want that chaos anymore, no more problems derived from bad planning and no more overcrowded calendars that  leave us no time to focus on our work.

Not keeping track of our agenda has a negative impact on our personal life, our performance at work and, as a result, on a larger scale, on our company’s productivity. It’s not unusual to feel overwhelmed about our agenda. The most important thing is not letting it overpower us and, especially, to be the ones who keep the control.

At Gamelearn we give some tips and advice that you can follow to take control of your planning:

• Arrange short meetings and go straight to the point. How much time do we lose everyday at meetings that lead nowhere? Stop doing this. Make a list with of the important subjects to be debated and set a specific  time for every point. If necessary, you can use a timer.

• Take advantage of the opportunities provided by technology. Particularly when we talk about optimizing time. It’s not necessary to always arrange face-to face meetings, we luckily have acces to a wide range of tools that allow us to connect with almost every region of the world from a distance. Skype, Hangouts, Facetime… they exist to make your life easier. Use apps to improve your productivity.

• Learn to say NO. You don’t only have to plan meetings; sometimes you have to decline them. How many times are you perfectly conscious, before starting a meeting, that you aren’t gaining anything from it? Ask yourself if this particular meeting is in line to achieve your primary objectives and your company’s mission. Avoid improvising dates, meetings with people that are not scheduled. Doing this will blow out your time-management.

These are patterns based on the philosofy that inspired us when creating the Triskelion, the training simulator in Time Management and productivity we designed to help people develop their time-management skills.

Do you have any more tips? Have you successfully taken control of your agenda? How did you do it? Which is the personal touch you usually add to your calendar, what are your own techniques? We’re looking forward to hearing from you :)