Controlling Your Calendar – Thoughts on structuring your time

Time is our most valuable resource.  Not maybe, not kind of, not quite. It is.  Hard stop.

Yet we rarely feel like we have control of it (we do), we rarely feel like we have enough of it (we do) and we rarely feel like we can do everything we want to do (we can).  

We recently had a chance to catch up with AJ Bishop CEO of of AJBishop.co and My Wealth Conscious Coach to ask her about her transition from the corporate world where her time was in a lot of ways outside of her control to the world of entrepreneurship where she had control of all of her time.  Here’s what AJ had to say.

AJ, when when you look at the corporate world there is a lot of structure, a whole lot of structure, and then you go into entrepreneurship and you end up really with every path you can imagine in front of you, how have you adapted to how you run your days?   Now that you have that freedom to really build out your days as you see fit, how have you managed to structure that and what have you done differently, and how have you adapted?

“Well, this is a beautiful question, because it was an adjustment to say the least, it was an adjustment, at the level of leadership I was at, I had no control over my calendar.  It was, go to this meeting, go to that meeting. Be on this conference call, go to St. Louis for this, go to LA for that. And it was always me showing up every day, and my calendar actually owning me versus me owning my calendar, and that was what I was doing for 10 years. I did what my calendar told me to do, so coming into entrepreneurship and owning my own businesses, it was a complete shift and a huge, very, very eye-opening experience to realize that I really sucked at time management.  I thought all these years I was great at managing my time, because I could have 10 or 12 meetings on my calendar. And I was there and I was present and I was doing all of the things, but when I had this wide open calendar, I realized I actually had no clue what it meant to be good at time management, I had no idea what it meant to be productive in so many ways rather than being busy.  I would say the first couple of months was me being busy, I was busy, looking busy, I was busy creating things, but I wasn’t productive.

What I did recently was sat down for, especially for 2021, at that time of year where everyone either looked at their New Year’s resolutions and they’re still on track or they’re re-adjusting, but I looked at 2021 and said:  What do I want my day to look like? I’m naturally a morning person, of course, now, because of the market here on the West Coast opening at 6-30, so I’m usually up by 5, 5:30 or 4:30 with the time difference. I used that time and I just found a brilliant book for anyone who’s listening called The 5 AM Club, I’ve been reading it, and it’s all about getting your mind right first thing in the morning, so I spend the first hour or just being mindful and present by myself and quiet versus in the past, it was me on conference calls or it was me getting prep for the day, and I find that that quiet time in that structure just helps me get aligned with what I need to do for the day. Every month I have five initiatives that I’m working towards, and I just slowly do what’s called time blocking, where I spend time every day on all five of those initiatives and to push those forward…

Obviously in corporate America, I had a big team, a big team to do the things that I didn’t want to do or I wasn’t good at, and now I am lucky, I do have a team, but we’re not a 20-30 person team. So a lot of what I’ve had to learn about time management as well as delegation, which as a type A personality is always… It’s always something I’m working on.”

The insight AJ shares here is brilliant.  High powered, uber successful corporate executive who really never had to manage her time because it was managed for her.  AJ ends up learning a lesson that all of us need to work through, being busy does not mean being productive.  Running through our day at full speed doesn’t mean we’re really mastering our day or our time.

If controlling your calendar and your time is a problem you find coming up constantly you’ll want to ask to join our private Facebook group: Entrepreneur Mastery Lab.  In the lab we focus on topics like these and others as we help people develop and maintain a Be RICH mindset.

Rise to Mastery

Inspire Greatness

Celebrate Knowledge

Help Others

You may also (this is strongly encouraged) want to take a look at our Time Mastery With Science course where we walk through EXACTLY how to manage your day and your time.

For those of you looking for even more assistance, we offer 2 on 1 coaching for service based professionals and entrepreneurs where we are hyper focused on improving positioning and presentation, powering up your productivity and supercharging your sales.

You can catch the rest of our conversation with AJ on our podcast here: 3 Coaches Chat about Consciously Controlling your Calendar ~ Episode 23

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