“Busy” is just another word for “overbooked”.   Packing your days with dozens of tasks isn’t the best way to get ahead.  What if there was a less stressful way of getting things done?

In this episode, Melissa reveals the secrets to creating the perfect calendar for your business and your body.  She’ll map out how to generate white space, avoid overscheduling and prioritize your time to increase productivity.

If you feel like a slave to your “to-do” list, you’ll want to tune into this one!

Topics discussed in this episode:

• white space
• clearing your calendar
• overscheduling
• make space
• stress free
• control your calendar
• CEO
• prioritize your calendar
• productivity
• flow state
• time blocking
• bodies build businesses
• overwhelm
• entrepreneur
• LinkedIn

Connect with Melissa:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-henault/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissa_henault/

For free resources and information on Melissa’s current offerings: www.burnouttoallout.co

Free LinkedIn Productivity Checklist: http://www.burnouttoallout.co/linkedin-checklist

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I know you're so busy. I don't know when I'll be able to get into your calendar. And it got me thinking. It's interesting that from the outside looking in, some of you think that I'm incredibly busy. Um, and I actually do not like that word. Um, to me, I'm blessed and I wanna talk about calendar management today and reveal, take kind of the curtain, lift up the curtain behind my calendar, and I think you'll be wide, wildly surprised.

I have not prepared it. I am just riffing off with you this morning because, um, I'm thinking about it. Here it is Friday. The reason I can riff off with you on a Friday is because, believe it or not, I never schedule anything in my calendar on Fridays. Um, and here's why. This is a huge topic I wanna talk to you guys about.

But also to have space to address fire drills that are happening in business. And if we are overscheduled, we are underestimating the ripple effect of work that needs to be done between each call. And so if you are finding your yourself at the end of your workday as an entrepreneur, or even you know, an employee, Working at night, picking up your computer and responding to emails and catching up on projects.

But then find yourself working at night, getting up super early in the morning, not taking care of yourself and addressing your business instead. Right? So how and why did I get to the space of not. We're like not taking calls on Fridays. And let me, let me, um, clarify this. Okay. What I have learned, and this is what works for me, is that I am not willing to take any standing calls ever in my calendar on Fridays.

That's business, that's life. There's gonna be things that come up when you're running a business. Um, And so that's number one is that Fridays are designed so that for instance, this week we're having issues with our processor, our payment plan. Some of these things are, are dropping and we're not understanding what's going on, and we're having to organize calls with authorized.net and Thrive Car, and we're trying to get my CFO together.

I've got, I've got time in my calendar, let's make it happen. Right? And I laughed cuz my c CFO was like, well, um, we need to, we need to start having a standing call, but I know your calendar's really busy. When can we get together? And I'm like, Friday's wide open for me, right? And she's like, oh, well I can get together in two weeks.

Right. But that is what I'm talking about is it's not that I don't take calls on Friday. It's not that I don't work on Friday, it's that I do not let my team or myself ever proactively put anything in the calendar on Fridays until the week of. When there is absolutely no other way to fit it anywhere else in my calendar, that is what it's reserved for.

So another great example. I had a call with a, a dear friend of mine that I'm collaborating with on a jewelry line. We're building a capsule, um, for my, my brand. And this morning I was going back and forth with my photographer v via text, and we're trying to decide on the photo shoot and how we're gonna do it.

I've actually just anticipated put it out to the universe and made space for miracles that are coming to me. I hope this is making sense. Okay. The third that I said, it was kind of a three-pronged approach, or, you know, a couple of benefits of, of clearing calendar calendars on Fridays is, Like I said in the very beginning, when we go day to day with back-to-back calls, and I'll tell you man, my, I have like an accordion, like squeezed calendar of where I go back to back, to back, to back on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, um, especially Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, I am really tight and scheduled and it's on purpose and I time block.

It depends on what my calendar is blocked for, but during the week, I am really tight on my calendar unless it's extremely urgent. I send emails out during the week of things I need as the c e O for people to get to me. But I do not respond to emails until Friday. Emails are someone else's urgent needs not yours.

Right? And unless it's extremely urgent to your business, you have to decide, are you in reactive mode, spending too much time every day in your inbox, responding to other people's needs instead of addressing moving the business forward as a C E O? Right? So where I'm going with this is that yes, depending on my calendar each week, I may spend a little bit of time in the afternoons catching up and cleaning up on email.

Create a white space myself. Um, and that is, and even in, as in an entrepreneur, before I learned to really completely block Fridays until I figured this method out. And I'll walk you guys through my calendar in a second before I. Came up with this. I was up late at night catching up on emails, even as an entrepreneur.

Um, before I had figured out the Friday piece. Um, I was following up. You know, how many of you have calls back to back to back? And with each of those calls, there's action items. That need to be followed up on, but you're scheduled so tightly to the next call, you can't actually follow up. And your to-do list starts to get really, really long.

Maybe you're working on Saturday and Sunday mornings trying to catch up with your week before the next week starts, right? This is poor calendar management and it's poor calendar prioritization. Okay? A lot of you would be really surprised to know as a multiple seven figure c e o. I actually do not take calls before 11 o'clock any day of the week.

Even on my Monday c e o days, I spend an hour and a half exercising daily. I spend 30 minutes to an hour on breath work and meditation daily. I refuse. To take a call before 11 o'clock. So if you're listening to this and you're one of those people who's been trying to get in, let's say my calendar, my executive assistant is like, the first slot I have with Melissa is in four or five weeks.

It's a Friday, so my full day's blocked off. So I could do this anytime, but in general, um, my calendar, I don't take calls before 11 o'clock any day of the week. I am taking critical action in my business. I am creatively thinking, I am creatively creating. I have record podcast, right? But I, I do what requires a large, large majority of my energy.

I'm ready for my week to get, you know, get going because energetically I'm saving all the creative juice for me during the day on Fridays of what I'm following up with what I need to do. Um, and so even during the week, if people are trying to get into my calendar and get a call with me, my executive assistant is gonna look for the latest time slots in the day, which is typically four, because I wanna spend time with my family after that.

And by being a ninja with my calendar, it makes me healthy. It makes me wealthy and it makes me happy. Right? So I hope this episode has been really good for you guys. Like I said, it was just something I wanted to pop in and share with you. Um, let me give you really quickly, just a lay of the land of my calendar, um, is on Mondays as c e o day.

So I have calls throughout the day, which don't start until noon. So there you go. Um, that morning of the morning of I am spending my time looking and forecasting my calendar for the week as the C E o I look at my calendar for the week on Monday mornings and choose what needs to be canceled. Give yourself permission to cancel.

I spend the first four hours of my week. Creating planning and reprioritizing my calendar, right? The back half of that day is all, um, c e o I call them c e o days. I have a call with my team every single week. I have, um, a call with individual contributors on my team, um, certain ones of them through, uh, during that day.

So if you, for instance, make yourself available through. Calendly link for people to book calls with you like at any time throughout the week, and it's peppered in around projects that you're working on. Know that you are giving away ultimately hours of your time and productivity, which is impacting your bottom line because you're not being ridiculously, um, uh, con cognizant of how you're managing your calendar.

And this is what I mean. I will every other week, Tuesday, Wednesday. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, every other week are what I call creative weeks. I go into those weeks knowing I am gonna be hanging out in my satin pajamas, drinking my coffee, and running my, um, essential oils while sitting on this little white couch if you're watching me live.

Being comfortable in my Jamie's with no makeup on creating something magnificent. And I know some of you guys have experienced this. You're getting into flow state, you've got a lot of great ideas, and then you're like, shit, I've gotta jump on this coaching call. Shit, I've gotta get on this call with this client and now I've gotta stop what I'm doing and switch gears and it's really bad for productivity.

I'm not on. I'm not talking. I'm not on screen critically thinking and problem solving with my clients. To me, creative weeks give me energy. And, um, they're a totally different vibe. So when I sit down on my calendar on Mondays, I can brace myself for a coaching week and see, okay, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, back to back coaching calls, I'm gonna crush this.

It's like game day. I'm getting ready for it. And then as I get into that Friday and look at my calendar for the next week, my reward is a week of creation. The next week beyond my CEO day on Mondays, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is predominantly creative work, right? And so. I encourage you to consider, and maybe you're not in a space in your business where you can time block every other week like that.

If you're trying to juggle them both throughout the day, each day of the week, over a period of 365 days, I promise you, you are wasting thousands of hours in productivity. So, um, that is, so I switch weeks. So Monday, CEO day. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Alternates between coaching and creation. And then Fridays are always clear, right?

But those all happen on Fridays and so I'll always have space to take care of myself. I always have space for miracles and I always have space to clean up the overwhelm for the week so that I can reset the following week, right? And so if you are feeling overwhelmed in your business and scattered tough love, that is on you with, with not making your time blocking a priority.

Because businesses, because bodies build businesses, right? So we have to create white space in order to be. Not only successful, but to thrive. And not feel like you're in a state of overwhelm and keep us from working over the weekends and late into the night. Right? So, lemme know if this resonates with you.

Drop me a comment if you're watching this live, who's committing to creating more white space in their calendar? Um, if you're watching this episode on record, definitely let me know. Shoot me a DM if you're making changes in your calendar. After listening to this, I hope you guys have a great weekend.

Those of you guys who are watching live and um, with that I'm off to enjoy my Friday.