How To Set Up A Schedule For Yourself

When information technology comes to making a daily schedule, nearly people fall into one of two camps:

The Overscheduler: Their calendars look like a kindergartener's finger painting. Meetings overlap meetings while reminders for events, breaks, tasks, and more meetings are going off like information technology's New Year's Eve. Their days are determined from the moment they wake upwards to their evening routine.
The Minimalist: Besides known as "The Dreamer". They've got i or two recurring events, merely a whole lot of white infinite and so they're "free" (at least on paper) for long stretches of piece of work.

The problem is that both of these approaches are terrible for their own reasons.

Beingness overscheduled leaves no fourth dimension for the inevitable "urgent" tasks that popular up. 1 job takes longer than y'all causeless (thanks to the planning fallacy) and your whole day is thrown into chaos.

And the minimalist? They've but offloaded their schedule to another format—most likely a to-exercise listing, scheduling app, or series of aroused emails request "Where is this?"

The truth is that a good daily schedule is a blueprint for a successful life. Knowing what you're meant to exist doing (and when) creates a sense of purpose, pregnant, and focus. It helps y'all avoid procrastination, stay motivated, and properly manage your time.

Unfortunately, few of us have full control over our days. Instead, you demand something flexible. You need a daily schedule template.

In this guide, we're going to encompass how the most successful founders, creatives, and deep thinkers use a templated arroyo to their mean solar day to stay focused, organized, and productive (and how y'all can do the same with your day!)

How to make an effective daily schedule in 5 steps

Showtime your day with your most important work
Map out your perfect daily schedule according to your personal "productivity curve"
Use "time blocking" to switch from beingness reactive to in command of your time
Set your availability to the minimum you can (10–xv minutes)
Follow your flow (of both tasks and energy)
BONUS: Do a regular calendar audit to clear out dead time

Ready to truly take back control of your time? RescueTime is the world'southward nearly powerful time tracking and productivity tool. Find out how it can assistance and sign up for gratis today!

1. Starting time your day with your almost of import work

The most successful people consistently get their most important work done first.

This could mean "swallowing a frog" (i.e. getting your well-nigh difficult task out of the style) or blocking out time for meaningful work earlier anything else. What they don't practice, is start the twenty-four hour period with distractions, emotional triggers, and stress (i.e. email, social media, and Slack).

As Farnam Street founder Shane Parrish explains:

"If I got up in the morning and the first thing I did was check email, I'd be allowing others to dictate my priorities for the day."

In that location are a ton of great examples of this in practice, just one of my favorites comes from founder and bookish Kevin Taylor, who sets recurring daily, time blocks for writing in the morning:

Every bit Taylor explains:

"If you're similar most, you schedule what others demand of yous first and only after look for empty slots in the calendar where you might 'fit in' what is important to you. (Good luck finding focus time in that type of 'reactively-designed' agenda.)

"Instead, flip the prototype by scheduling what is important to you beginning."

Setting a recurring commitment to yourself showtime thing in the morning starts your mean solar day with the correct intention and ensures that no matter what else happens, y'all've washed something meaningful.

Only maybe fifty-fifty more importantly, this is ordinarily the most effective time of your day. For most people, their energy is naturally higher in the morn and there are fewer distractions, which means you can really dig into important work.

According to Alex Pang, writer of Balance: Why You Go More than Washed When You Piece of work Less:

"2 hours where you can really get into the problem yields solutions that are going to exist better than if you spent 10 hours broken upwardly by meetings and bouncing effectually on Slack channels."

Making progress like this has a domino effect of motivation and productivity that carries you through the balance of the day.

If you lot want a tool to aid you commit to this fourth dimension, try the RescueTime Calendar integration. Only add #focustime to the championship of your morning cake on your daily schedule template and all distracting websites (like social media, news, and entertainment) will be blocked for the duration of it.

Lastly, you lot don't always take to know exactly what you'll do during this time. It's enough to only commit your best hours to meaningful piece of work.

2. Map out your perfect daily schedule according to your personal "productivity curve"

The reason most successful people dedicate their first hours of the 24-hour interval to meaningful work is because that's when their energy levels are highest. Yet, with a little bit of work, you can use that same arroyo to match the rest of your daily schedule template to your energy levels.

We all become through ebbs and flows of energy throughout the day cheers to something chosen our Circadian Rhythm. This is an internal clock that sends our heed and body through moments of alacrity and sleepiness.

The key to a successful daily schedule template is to friction match your energy levels to the type of work y'all're doing.

When our energy is low, we're less artistic, have a harder time making decisions, and become more easily stressed and overwhelmed. On the other hand, studies show nosotros're up to 500% more productive when our energy is high and we can get in a state of flow.

So how do yous discover when your energy levels are naturally higher and lower throughout the day?

1. Experiment with your Cyclic Rhythm

The majority of people follow a similar Circadian Rhythm throughout the mean solar day.

Afterward waking up and breaking out of our sleep inertia our energy levels kickoff to naturally rise. By around x am we've hit our superlative concentration levels that ride out until a natural post-tiffin energy dip between 1-3 pm.

In the afternoon, our energy levels rising again until falling off again erstwhile betwixt 9–11 pm when almost of us become to bed.

So for example, you might create a daily schedule template that follows this pattern:

Loftier-free energy piece of work until around apex
Calls, meetings, and emails from 1–iii
Gratis time for urgent tasks or more than meetings until the end of the mean solar day

This is a pretty good beginning, but what if it doesn't work for yous or y'all desire to exist more accurate?

2. Use your personal productivity data to map out your "Productivity Curve"

Instead of relying on self-reporting or mood tracking, it's much easier (and more authentic) to use a fourth dimension tracking tool like RescueTime to automatically gather information for you.

Subsequently gathering a bit of data, your RescueTime dashboard volition bear witness you what apps, tools, websites, and projects you spend fourth dimension on, when you're being productive (or distracted), also as trends in your activities, and more than.

For our utilize instance, the productivity trends over a week report will show when you're most probable to be productive vs. distracted on any given twenty-four hour period. This is under Reports > Productivity > Time of Mean solar day.

RescueTime lets you easily run into trends in your productivity and how you lot spend your time each day.

Looking at this report, we get a clear daily trend of productivity and lark so nosotros can create a daily schedule template that matches:

Focused, heads-down time during peak hours
Meetings, calls, and email when energy levels are low
Breaks when you're most likely to be striking a slump

In essence, y'all're switching from scheduling your twenty-four hour period around time to scheduling information technology around your energy.

( Check out our full guide on how to find your well-nigh productive hours here! )

3. Use "fourth dimension blocking" to switch from being reactive to in command of your time

Your productivity bend is a map of how you can fill up out a full 24-hour interval in your daily schedule template.

This isn't the same as the daily schedule of The Overscheduler who fills their days with other people'due south priorities. Instead, this is a template of when yous're almost suited to practice certain types of work.

I instance of this kind of daily schedule template in practise is what designer Jessica Hische calls her "Ultraschedule":

This daily schedule template is like a skeleton on which you build your week. And if y'all match it to your daily productivity bend, you know you're being as productive as possible with your time.

For Hische, this meant keeping Monday every bit "Admin Day" for regular calls and meetings, while setting aside time on Wednesdays and Fridays for "Analog Piece of work":

"There are scheduled times during which I tin can be fully immersed in email and for the balance of the day I'm forcing myself to ignore information technology. Near of all, in that location are scheduled blocks of time where my wifi will exist off."

One of the best parts about this approach is that it helps y'all visualize your ideal workday—an important skill that few of us practice, according to writer Ryan Holiday:

"So many people take big goals for the future. I think it'southward better to know what your perfect day looks like. And then yous can enquire yourself with each opportunity and choice: Is this getting me closer or further away?"

The impact isn't merely that you know what you should exist doing, but that information technology helps yous say no to the things that take away from your ideal day. Equally designer Brad Frost explains:

"Accepting a coming together invite requires me to take time away from something else, and now that is actually visualized."

You can utilize a technique called Fourth dimension Blocking to create your own daily schedule template like this. Check out our footstep-by-step guide hither.

iv. Set your availability to the minimum you tin (10-15 minutes)

With your meaningful forenoon and daily schedule template set and matched to your productivity curve, the next question is: How do y'all fit in the inevitable tasks, appointments, meetings, and responsibilities that creep upwardly and throw your daily schedule out of whack?

An ideal daily schedule protects your time. For Facebook VP of Production, Fidji Simo, this ways changing the default time for meetings to the minimum possible:

"Many people don't check in to figure out how much time should be realistically allotted to something. They just default to thirty minutes for a small conversation and lx minutes for a larger conversation. This contributes to calendars looking like Swiss cheese."

Instead, Simo sets the minimum time for meetings at 10-15 minutes (Elon Musk famously breaks his entire day into 5-minute chunks). This way, it's up to the person booking the meeting to request more time if they experience they need information technology.

This makes both you lot and the meeting's organizer responsible for deciding how much time you really need. (Which is a great place to start when fixing our obsession with meetings).

Simo besides recommends setting buffers around your coming together times, as well as setting aside intentional open slots into your 24-hour interval for concluding-minute surprises. This manner, y'all're not being naive near the distractions yous're spring to face up.

In Google Agenda (every bit well every bit many other Calendar apps) you can even change the default duration of meetings and add in automatic buffers.

An effective day isn't ruled by the tyranny of the sixty-minute coming together. As Simo explains:

"I'm most focused when I set my own agenda versus when I allow others set my agenda."

5. Follow your menstruation (of both tasks and free energy)

When done correctly, your daily schedule should requite you momentum, not take it away.

However, we ofttimes forget to call back about our state of heed when scheduling meetings, events, or tasks. Nonetheless, think virtually the cerebral spring it takes to become from a deep-thinking exercise like coding a new feature to a daily grab-upwardly calls.

According to the American Psychology Association, recovering from shifting tasks like this can take upwardly almost twoscore% of our productive time.

While we already talked about the importance of protecting your energy catamenia (and matching the right tasks to your energy levels), y'all also demand to be aware of your task period.

Our brains take time to get into the flow of a chore. Just once they're warmed up, it's easier to continue going and stay motivated.

For author Paul Jarvis, this means "chunking" his day up by activities. An afternoon might be dedicated just to writing, while a forenoon might exist customer back up.

"The longer y'all tin can focus on a single type of chore, the faster you can get it washed. Then grouping all the writing I have to do into a morning means I can write 5–6 articles in 1 barbarous dive."

This is likewise what Y Combinator Paul Graham calls "Maker Fourth dimension"—the long stretches of fourth dimension needed to work on cognitively demanding tasks similar writing or coding (vs. Manager Time, which is chopped up into brusk segments).

As you make full in your daily schedule template with your tasks and to-dos, try to group together similar tasks. And when information technology comes time to really do the piece of work brand sure y'all're focused and free from distractions.

At that place are lots of tools that can assistance support your task catamenia. Four Hour Work Week author Tim Ferriss has his phone in airplane style lxxx% of the fourth dimension. While RescueTime's FocusTime feature can block distracting sites and notifications from derailing you.

Personally, I like to apply FocusTime for Pomodoro sessions where I work intensely for 25–30 minutes and and then accept a brusque pause.

BONUS: Do a regular calendar audit to clear out dead time

Finally, this daily schedule template means zip if your agenda is already total of recurring meetings and tasks.

Well-nigh people apply their calendar as a forward-facing tool to plan what'southward coming. But it's also a groovy tool for reflection. A calendar audit is a uncomplicated do where you get through and inspect past obligations.

Every iii months, Facebook VP of Production Fidji Simo does a calendar audit to find out:

The time she spent on each projection
How her time was divided meeting with individual leaders versus in big meetings
The percent of time she spent recruiting versus managing and building

With this data in hand, she tin run into if her time spent matches upwardly with her intentions. And if not, she adjusts.

"All of the other things on my calendar were less important but were taking more than fourth dimension for legacy reasons.

"There were recurring meetings that didn't require my attendance anymore, meetings to make decisions on less important topics, etc…"

The RescueTime Calendar integration gives you quick insights into how much time you spend working each 24-hour interval, total meeting time, your average productivity, and whether you hitting your daily goals or not.

Look at your weekly or monthly schedule right now. How many of those recurring meetings could be shortened or scrapped?

Do your time commitments match up to your goals?

If non, it's time to take those hours back.

Lastly, continue all your fourth dimension commitments in one identify

It might seem like a good idea to separate your personal and professional calendars, simply this is just request for problem when commitments overlap. Instead, use color-coding to differentiate between activities or create a different "template" calendar to continue things make clean.

You lot can think of your calendar as a big empty jar. Each job yous add together—whether personal or professional—fills up space. And while y'all might assign different levels of importance to tasks, your calendar doesn't.

An hour is an hour no affair what you spend it on.

Ready to truly take back control of your time? RescueTime is the earth's most powerful time tracking and productivity tool. Find out how it tin assistance and sign upwards for costless today!