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Never Tell People You’re ‘Too Busy’ (But Show Them That Your Time Matters)

By Jon Bradshaw | Time Management | No Comments

Never Tell People Too Busy Show Them Your Time Matters

As a business owner, your time is always in short supply and you may feel like you’re constantly busy. It’s a struggle to fit every meeting, deadline, phone call, and commitment into your online calendar. That’s even before you make time for family and personal endeavors.

Part of this balancing act involves dealing with the people around you. You never want them to feel like you’re too busy to be an effective leader, business owner, parent, or friend. Giving them this impression can hurt your relationships, reputation, and business.

Managing your time while still showing others that their time matters to you is a challenge, but it’s not an impossible one. Here are a few methods you can implement to find a balance and keep everyone — including yourself — happy:

Communicate Your Priorities

Make sure anyone who wants to meet with you knows your top priorities. This will set accurate expectations for the future about how you use your time. For example, if you explain to your clients that your weekends are reserved for family activities, they’ll be more likely to respect your boundaries during those days.

Your responsibility is to then reciprocate that respect for your work connections. Intentionally set aside time where you’re able to devote your attention to work meetings and client phone calls without interruption. This way you’ll always be able to address your clients’ and colleagues’ needs as they come up without letting work spill over into your other time commitments.

Make Efforts to Reschedule

When you have to decline events, which will happen on occasion, make an effort to reschedule if possible. This will show others that their time and concerns are still important to you.

If you need to cancel a scheduled meeting, be the one to take the initiative when rescheduling. Words are empty if they’re not backed by actions. By reaching out with your updated availability, the person you’re meeting with will know that you actually want to meet with them and respect the time they’re setting aside for you.

The biggest problem with rescheduling is trying to resync calendars. This can be easily bypassed by using scheduling links. You can send over a link containing your availability in a single email. The other party can then select an available time slot to reschedule the meeting. No extensive back-and-forths are required.

Focus on Shorter Engagements

Instead of continuing to turn down meetings and commitments because you’re too busy, try focusing on shorter engagements. They will take a smaller portion of your day while still allowing you to touch base with the many important people you need to interact with.

Those long, weekly meetings can be replaced by emails and quick phone calls interspersed throughout your day. The best part is that you don’t have to tell anyone that you’re taking this new approach because you’re feeling too busy to commit to large time blocks. All they’ll see is that you’re committed to reaching out regularly and making an effort to respect their time by being brief and direct.

Improve Your Time Management

If you truly value your personal time and that of others, you’ll make a greater effort to improve your time management. Few people are actually using all of their time effectively. There are many improvements you can likely make that will open up more time for other people.

For example, you might have missed the last team brainstorming meeting because you had a few conflicting deadlines to address. How many of these conflicts could have been avoided through better time management? It might be time to start time blocking or looking for ways to fight procrastination so that this doesn’t occur in the future.

Recognize When Being Busy Isn’t Enough

An important side note is that there is a key difference between being “busy” and being productive. Being busy isn’t always a good thing, especially if you’re not accomplishing much. Not only will busywork make it more difficult to show that your time matters, but it can also lead to higher levels of stress and anxiety.

Those are good reasons to begin prioritizing your regular task list. Some commitments, such as meetings with tenured clients or nightly dinners with family, will receive higher priority. Conscious prioritization will help you to decide which tasks and events you can justify putting off or rescheduling and which ones deserve your attention the most each day.

Of course, this doesn’t mean those low-priority tasks should be completely forgotten. You can’t get out of cleaning out your inbox forever. What’s important is not allowing these smaller tasks to derail everything on your schedule, especially those responsibilities that are of greater magnitude.

Respecting your time and the time of others is one of the most important things you can do as a business owner in any industry. Keep working on it, and everything from project management to client retention will become easier for you.

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Why You Should Use Scheduling Software

By Choncé Maddox | Scheduling | No Comments

Using scheduling software improves time management. But not everyone is making use of this new technology. When you don’t utilize your time management software — it’s similar to having a new Ferrari, but driving it barely five miles under the speed limit.

To unlock a sports car’s ultimate speed, you must understand its engine. You must learn software advantages and how to leverage the power it has to boost your productivity. You’re only getting surface value for your software if you’ve looked at it solely like the Ferrari above — and only been interested in the paint and leather seats. Change how you think about your scheduling software.

Anticipate What Your Software Can Do for Productivity

Living in the moment is exciting but not very productive when you’re thinking about software. So you need to plan if you want to maximize your time using the software. Ask any industry leader or successful entrepreneur how much planning goes into their daily lives — and the same goes with using a piece of software.

You should plan daily, weekly, and monthly by changing your schedule program’s perspective. Above all, with daily planning, you may schedule challenging tasks at times when you know you are more productive. For example, plan all meetings and deadlines weekly. Monthly planning allows you to review your own KPIs and prepare for a more productive month. Meanwhile, your scheduling software lets you and others cooperate and plan together when you all have open times.

Leaders must juggle several jobs, duties, and deadlines. Your scheduling software will also assist in decreasing manager-team misunderstanding and miscommunication. For example, X’s new blog post is due tomorrow morning, with editing by an in-house editor at the end of the day — is that on the editing schedule? You need to have a spot to manage your team’s metrics for your scheduling software. He says the metrics help team leads and managers plan their time for each development cycle.

Personal-Professional Balance

Even if your profession is vital to your lifestyle, your family and yourself should always come first. According to a Deloitte study, organizations that promote work-life balance see double the employee productivity. Therefore, the most excellent scheduling software encourages work-life balance.

Set aside time for family. Schedule dates with your spouse and your children’s athletic events and recitals. These events should be non-negotiable, and you may arrange them using the same tools you use for your business.

The balance between work and life is much easier to accomplish. Use scheduling strategies that help you maximize your productivity while on the clock. For example, the Pomodoro technique divides work into little blocks with brief pauses in between. Using this scheduling strategy will help you focus better during the day, do more things in less time, and take less work home.

Color Coding for Geeks — Great at-a-Glance Scheduling

A unique color-coding system helps you to comprehend your itinerary quickly. Each item on your timetable can be assigned a different color. Red can be used to highlight important client meetings. For example, yellow can represent longer-term tasks like planning or reporting. Blue may stand for family time, personal obligations, etc. To complete activities faster, you’ll want to establish your schedule’s priority. There are many ways to accomplish this.

Visual cues can help people understand information faster, so go ahead and be colorful. Once you learn your color code, your daily schedule will inform you where and when you need to be. For example, a red light indicates a board meeting that you must prepare for. Consequently, no matter what the event is, a sliver of blue at the end of your schedule will remind you that you can’t work late tonight because you have a family event.

Set Alerts on Scheduling Software

Scheduling an event isn’t always enough — you’re not using scheduling software to its full potential if you don’t set reminders for important events. Therefore, setting up reminders for each meeting or appointment will help you keep track of your schedule. Remember to set an alarm for your travel time as well.

Your reminders will serve as a backup if you forget something or misplace your paper notes. There’s nothing worse than missing a critical meeting or giving the incorrect impression — these types of things damage careers. Use your scheduling program to avoid this.

Reminders can also help you prepare for upcoming occasions. Consequently, a half-hour notice before a big presentation provides you time to gather your thoughts and organize your materials. You should know yourself well enough to see if you need more time than a half hour. That’s all you will need if you have prepared the night before and have everything ready to go for that meeting.

Others to Contact in Scheduling Software

Preparing and attending a meeting where the other party does not show is counterproductive. Both parties must agree on a schedule. Even if you do everything perfectly — there are times when someone may be late or not show up for a meeting. All your planning and organizing will be for naught.

To avoid this, send reminders to folks with whom you have made plans. Most scheduling software allows you to set up reminder messages.

Leaders can create the perfect reminder once and use it for all future engagements for everyone on their team.

People won’t have to worry about colleagues or clients skipping meetings or writing personalized emails every time. They may also share a meeting agenda or a scheduling link to improve collaboration — and the same process and work while managing your hybrid teams’ hybrid work schedules.

We need to cease utilizing our scheduling software for only the basics. Instead, leaders should use this software tool’s array of valuable features to boost productivity companywide.

Start today to make the most of your time. Remember that using your scheduling software — “now” — spelled backward means you’ve “won.”

Why You Should Use Scheduling Software was originally published on Calendar by Choncé Maddox.

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Why You Should Say Goodbye to ‘Crazy Busy’ Once and for All

By Jon Bradshaw | Time Management | No Comments

Lots of professionals like to brag about how loaded their schedules are and how many events and projects they have on their plate. While it certainly is admirable to be a productive contributor to society, this attitude can have a negative impact. It isn’t always a good thing to be crazy busy all of the time.

When you’re busy just for the sake of being busy, you’ll jump around from task to task without accomplishing much. You’re also more prone to experience high levels of stress and anxiety when your schedule is always jam-packed and you’re rushing from place to place. Not to mention, you’ll likely miss deadlines you have to meet due to the pressure you’re under.

By improving your time management skills, you can get just as much done in less time. Instead of being insanely busy, you can enjoy the same accomplishments while also having time to spend on yourself and your family. This leads to a much more fulfilling life. Ready to say goodbye to the crazy busyness once and for all? Here’s what you need to do:

Learn to Say ‘No’

It can be a real challenge to decline a meeting or an appointment, especially when it pertains to your business. What many business professionals often overlook is that firing on all cylinders 24/7 can lead to high stress and burnout. Your business will be in greater jeopardy if you’re not taking care of your mental health than if you miss a single meeting.

When your social meter is drained, don’t force yourself to accept an event invitation. If the other party has something important to meet about, they would much rather you be there when you are functioning at 100%. You can always delegate a representative to attend the event for you or ask for a reschedule while you take some time for yourself.

If you struggle with putting yourself first, add self-care time to your calendar. People will respect that you are dedicating time to recharge so that you’re always operating at full capacity. With numerous changes to the workplace, such as remote work and flexible schedules, you’ll need to resist the impulse to be always “on.” You’ll be surprised by how supportive many people will be when you openly discuss your personal needs.

Create Time Blocks (Including Breaks)

When working on several projects each day, you’ll find a lot of success by setting time blocks for yourself. This is a scheduling tactic that involves breaking down your day into set time increments. Within each of these schedule blocks, you focus all of your time and attention on the individual task at hand and nothing else.

This time management method works in two ways. First, it helps you focus your attention on one task at a time. If you stick with your time block, you won’t let distractions stop you from accomplishing your daily goals. Secondly, time blocks allow you to map out your day more effectively. If you’re trying to get less busy and more efficient, your time blocks can reflect that.

You should also include break time in your time blocks. During a busy day, it can be hard to take a step back from your labors or even justify doing so. If breaks are purposefully scheduled into your day, you’ll find it easier to step away for 10 minutes and keep your energy and morale high throughout the entire workday.

Set Goals for Each Meeting

Some people hold meetings just for the sake of having meetings. Gathering together looks like productivity on the outside. In reality, business professionals are wasting an unbelievable number of hours in meetings that could be used in dozens of more beneficial ways.

Never hold a meeting without a definitive plan. The lack of an agenda is a red flag that an upcoming meeting has no real purpose or direction. Instead of sitting in an hour-long meeting grasping at straws, you could be wrapping up projects or making sales calls.

When a meeting has a specific goal, it offers actual value. Everyone in the meeting can now work toward an endpoint, whether it’s a new tagline for a rebrand or analyzing the financial numbers from the last quarter. Once you’ve met the goal, you can adjourn the meeting without taking up any more precious time from the team’s schedule.

Get Into Automation

A lot of business is busywork. It might feel good that you’re chipping away at tasks that benefit your company, but there’s often a better way. Many of these menial tasks can be automated and completed with just as much efficacy.

Examples of automation include email marketing, employee time tracking, and even data entry. The more tasks you are able to automate, the more your schedule opens up. You can now focus your time on larger projects that require higher-level attention rather than going from routine task to routine task trying to keep your business running every day.

Try to replace busyness with enhanced productivity in the coming weeks. Pay attention to how you feel at the end of your trial period. Do you feel less stressed? Now look at your achievements during that same amount of time. You’ll be amazed to see how much you can accomplish by making this simple shift in your mindset.

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Reasons to Stop Planning Too Much — Live in the Now.

By Choncé Maddox | Knowledge Base | No Comments

It seems easy enough, yet we humans struggle to appreciate the present. Why? We frequently speak only of our future plans — but what about building your now? You hear, “Know your why.” Start thinking, “Know your now.”

Some people think we lose out on fantastic moments because we are too busy rehashing previous events or preparing for the future. We seldom pause to smell the flowers. We don’t enjoy the moment. Keep the destructive process from becoming the precedent.

It’s sad not to be in your own personal time zone — since we don’t know how many more moments we’ll have. Meditation and many of the healthy habits we work to learn are all about living in the now.

Go ahead and plan your life in detail.

This is not suggesting we spend less time planning. To leave out the planning is terrible counsel. Setting goals is critical to our personal and professional happiness. Setting and achieving realistic objectives fosters personal accountability. Careful planning is a kind of goal-setting that gives significance to our lives since it requires devotion, hard effort, and tenacity to achieve.

Some people feel our culture has gotten obsessed with planning. We frequently speak about constructing for the future, but what about building the now? We all want true pleasure, and to experience it, we must live in the now. Focusing only on the future causes tension and negative thoughts and even uncertainty to enter our thought processes.

Why should you concentrate on living now instead of preparing too far ahead?

1. Right now is the only moment you can control.

No matter how much you plan, you can never predict how life will unfold. You will only know when you are there.

The only moment you can control is this one right now. You may either appreciate or despise the situation. And of course, you may also choose to squander the moment by ignoring it, but the choice is yours.

Planning won’t get you out of the moment. It may help you achieve your objectives, but it will not enhance your current quality of life. Planning for the future won’t ensure a desirable result, so why not focus on the now?

2. Enjoy every minute in the now.

Nobody knows how many moments you will get to experience. This is vital to understand. Nobody knows when their next moment will be gone. Your next moment isn’t specific, so why not make the most of it?

You can’t have this perspective if you’re always planning your next level. You can only feel this excitement for life by living in the now. It’s trite and impractical, but it’s true.

Don’t waste time. Plan when needed, but not at the price of enjoying the moment. Life is brief, so enjoy it while you can.

3. Being present reduces stress.

Too much future and past thinking generate stress. Some of the stress that comes from not living now may be harmful to one’s mental, physical, and emotional health. Yes, your thinking takes a controlled effort to remain within a balanced life — but the effort will be worth it.

The over-planners hinder themselves from living in the present and cause unneeded tension in their life. Invigorate your life with present-focused living practices.

You certainly don’t have time to meditate for five hours a day and not make plans for the future, but making tiny adjustments will help decrease stressors and help you be able to get a jump on the inevitable problems that come up in life.

Observe when your mind starts focusing on the future instead of the current moment. Ask yourself whether this is required. Being conscious of your thoughts can help you be more present.

4. Plans seldom come to fruition as expected, so live in the now.

Know that you have planned the best you know-how, and expect that things don’t always turn out as your plan dictates whether you like it or not. How often have you attempted to plan something that didn’t work out? What happened? Did you become offended, or did you accept and comprehend the situation, do something else, or move forward?

Plans go awry. You fail a lot as an imperfect species. It is inevitable.

Trying to plan every stage of your life is tricky and unhealthy. Plan for the best — but be determined that you will not be annoyed or disturbed when those plans don’t work out.

You don’t have to prepare for the worst — just have contingency plans here and there in your life — then, just let life happen and be.

Make preparations if that helps you, but don’t lose sight of the moment. If your plans don’t work out, try to accept them.

5. Being present makes you happy now and in the future

Some people don’t like using the term “makes you happier” since nothing makes you happier than yourself. With that in mind, living in the now is one of the surest ways to achieve true joy in your life. But, yes, happiness is a choice most of the time.

Without going into all the statistics and studies, it is clear that living in the now is one of the most important keys to happiness. Too much long-term planning will keep you from enjoying the moment.

Take a moment each day and observe how living in the now has made you feel? How can you make a better plan? How can you remain in the present if your plans take a dive off the planned course? Plan when necessary, but keep an eye on the present.

Strike a balance between spontaneity and forethought. You can only control the present moment.

You’ve heard it before if you’ve worked on mindfulness at all — this moment is a gift. Try to believe that and be okay with the statement. Enjoying the present reduces stress. Recognize that plans don’t always go as planned. Accept the moment and be joyful.

Plan as you see fit. Save for a family and a home — then invest in yourself. Set and achieve objectives. As you plan, put yourself first and don’t lose sight of where you are now.

Reasons to Stop Planning Too Much — Live in the Now was originally published on Calendar by Choncé Maddox.

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5 Ways to Streamline Your Schedule So You Don’t Miss Anything

By Jason Barnes | Scheduling | No Comments

How you use your time each day is extremely important. If you want to be as productive as possible within an 8-hour workday, you need to learn how to best allocate your time. By following a proper schedule, you can get a lot more done in the same time period.

Slapping events and projects onto a calendar is only the start. Once you’ve got a schedule laid out, you need to maximize it. A few simple adjustments will get your schedule firing on all cylinders, streamlining your personal workflow without missing any important details or activities.

1. Use Collaborative Scheduling

Team calendars are a great way to optimize not only your own time, but that of everyone in the office. In a collaborative workplace, a lot of your schedule will be dependent on the people you work with. Meeting times, hybrid work schedules, deadlines, and more need to be coordinated throughout the entire organization without missing a beat.

With a shared team calendar, all of this information can be found in one place. This way, everyone knows what’s going on and can check each other’s schedule before booking meetings or appointments with one another. This will keep you in the loop even during a busy week where keeping track of all of these events seems impossible.

2. Take Advantage of Event Reminders

You can’t always rely on your memory, even if you have a mind like a steel trap. Reminders will provide a failsafe for every event and appointment you book so that even if you do forget about one, you’ll be able to jog your memory in time.

Consider the best event reminder strategy for each meeting and appointment. Instead of accepting the 10 minutes prior default, you may need to set some reminders a couple of hours in advance. That will give you time to prepare for the meeting beforehand and still arrive on time. Reminders set the night before an event might remind you not to overbook your schedule for the upcoming day. In some cases, you might even benefit from multiple reminders to help you through every stage of the process.

3. Avoid Overbooking

Whatever type of time management or scheduling software you use, make sure that it has a feature that prevents you from scheduling events that conflict. If your program of choice doesn’t alert you to potential overbooking, you may inadvertently stack events together and get yourself into quite a predicament. It won’t be until your events collide in real time that you realize the mistake you’ve made.

The right software will ensure you don’t actively have to think about overbooking. While you’re making plans, it will stop you from scheduling too much. This will allow you to shift events around or reschedule various commitments so everything works out. If you’re not getting any alerts from a program with this capability, it means you’re good to go.

4. Set Up a Scheduling Link

One way to streamline your schedule is to get other people to organize it for you. This might sound like an abdication of responsibility, but it’s actually quite practical. All you need to do is set up a scheduling link for yourself.

This link will be connected to your online calendar software. You can attach it at the end of emails or on a website for others to access. By using the link, coworkers, clients, and others can see your availability and schedule a time to meet with you. This eliminates the seemingly endless back-and-forths that occur when two parties try to coordinate schedules.

You can update your scheduling link to only allow certain times of day to be made available to others. This way no one will book a time slot where you’re at the gym or taking a lunch break. If every day follows a different routine, you can adjust your scheduling link accordingly.

5. Don’t Overdo It

If you don’t want to miss anything on your schedule, stop overpacking it. If your schedule is constantly at its breaking point with meetings, phone calls, deadlines, and events, you’ll run a higher risk of missing something important. This could create a catastrophic domino effect — or at the very least be incredibly stressful to handle.

Cutting back can be easier said than done, especially for busy professionals. Instead of hoping that your schedule will magically develop breathing room, try a new approach. For example, you can force yourself to include 10 minutes of buffer in between each commitment. This will ensure that you always have time to make it to your next appointment or prepare for back-to-back meetings.

Another thing you can do is track your time. Certain calendar apps will monitor how you’re spending your time, which can help you plan more efficiently in the future. By tracking your schedule, you may realize that you’re spending too much time in meetings and can take steps to cut down the number or duration of those you schedule.

To improve your time management, try to review your schedule at least once a month. Make some slight adjustments and continue pressing forward. By year’s end, you’ll have the most streamlined schedule possible.

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Maintaining a Schedule Can Help You Live Longer

By Abby Miller | Scheduling | No Comments

Some may go on and on about how a schedule of activities or routines inhibits creativity or spontaneity. Of course, there may be a situation or two where that would be true — however, there are other situations in which this is not the case. Maintaining a schedule frees up time for your creative ventures.

People who do not adhere to a schedule, are more likely to skip appointments, postpone necessary work, live or work in an unorganized environment, and haphazardly finish projects if they finish at all.

It’s a recipe for catastrophe in every sense of the word. So how do you plan for uncertain times?

If you want to be successful, you must recognize the importance of having a schedule – one that sets dates and times that will allow you to arrive on time, finish the duties at hand, and prepare for extra successes.

The Best Way to Get Started With a Schedule

So, what is the best way to get started with a schedule? One of the most important things you can do is ask crucial questions. It is to ensure that you fully comprehend the timetable given to you.

For some individuals, keeping a timetable is as easy as checking off the items on a to-do list as they come across them on their computer. On the other hand, others may find that more specifics allow them to simplify a timetable or completely integrate a calendar into other parts of their lives.

Asking which activities on the schedule are the top priorities or which items on the plan may be postponed or swapped with other things are examples of questions you would ask.

Track Your Time — do Some Research

After completing your research, you may find that you need to change certain aspects of your life. You may find there is no link to your work or school schedule. As you would expect, not all of these activities are time-suckers; instead, they merely need a reorganization of your time.

Taking a two-hour lunch break, for example, may need to be shortened to one hour or half an hour to complete other tasks on your to-do list within that period.

If your goal is to spend the early Saturday morning hours with research at the library it may be necessary to shift your shopping habits to Sunday nights if you have been used to doing it on Saturday mornings. And remember that not all timetables are etched in stone. For example, you may change your schedule to accommodate new jobs or projects that need more or less time to complete than initially planned.

Following your experience, a few well-placed questions, and some minor rearranging, you will have a timetable that you can safely follow—knowing that your new schedule will lead you to achieve the essential tasks vital to your life. Much less effort has to be expended when you make a reasonable plan for your essential work.

The times, they are a-changin.’

Yes, the times change. Our schedules reflect this volatility — or they should. But sometimes, we keep our heads in the sand. Like the ostrich, we do not wish to see what’s happening around us, and we may try to duck out on reality. With careful observation, you’ll be able to see what types of procrastination are interrupting your schedule. Don’t be one that refuses to schedule in needed changes in your life. Go ahead and admit that your time management skills need a little refurbishing and just do it.

Being Flexible is Not the Same as Being Careless

When scheduling conflicts arise, as they will, a quick response is usually best. However, hemming, hawing, and beating around the bush is an excellent way of alienating others. Instead, be decisive with what commitments you say you will make, then stick with your decision. Opportunity melts like frost, and, especially as an entrepreneur — you have to take the reins and move quickly.

The most significant fatality to time management success is being noncommittal and deciding not to decide. After all, who looks back with pride at all the appointments they didn’t keep — and the decisions that were put off? There never seems like enough time, but actions that were never planned won’t be something you are proud of in the future.

It’s all in the timing

Professional comics say it’s all in the timing and point to the times to speed up and when to slow down. When the comedians hold a pause or stomp the punchline at the right moment — it’s magical. Timing can basically be applied in the same way for business leaders and organization managers. Timing is everything.

The Bible intones “there is a time and season for everything.’” So it is in business — there’s a time to start — and a time to end. A time to let go. A time to meet — and a time to lock the door and go over the audit yourself.

The trick is to know when to do what. And that trick is simple. Psychology Today has a great time management test. IF you follow basic time management principles, you can adapt to your particular circumstances. And IF you take advantage of the latest time management technology and theory, you will be a lot further ahead than if you don’t.

Basics of Time Management and Living Longer and Peacefully

Every MBA course offers dozens of classes on how to untangle the basics of time management.

Nobody has an easy schedule. Nobody. Not the janitor. Or the CEO. Not even the poet in her ivory tower. But once you learn to dance to the tune that time plays for you, life becomes more bearable and more your own.

Some say that minutes are hard cider, hours champagne, and days become flagons of the finest mead. Just ask those who seem to have nothing to do. An accident? Nope. They have come to grips with their time and they wrestle it to the ground.

If you plan correctly and make time yours — you’ll come out on top. You shouldn’t dream of doing anything less!

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4 Ways to Get Your Customers on a Regular Appointment Schedule

By Gunjan Saini | Scheduling | No Comments

Get Your Customers Regular Appointment Schedule

Life is so much easier when you have a well-planned schedule in front of you. Unfortunately for appointment-based businesses, this isn’t always the reality. Customers can be quite spotty when it comes to making their appointments, which leads to a lot of last-minute adjusting of schedules and bookings.

While a lot of appointment booking is out of your control, there are some things that your business can do to promote a more regular appointment schedule from your customers. Being able to plan further out in advance allows you to be more prepared to serve every customer well and not lose time and efficiency in a scramble.

If you’re ready for more appointment continuity and stability, here are a few ideas you can try this year:

1. Enable Recurring Appointments

There are a lot of customers who would appreciate a regular appointment schedule as much as you do. One way you can make this possible is by enabling recurring appointments. This allows customers to book appointments on a regular cadence rather than sporadically.

For example, your car garage might get a lot of business doing oil changes. Customers who make daily commutes and like to take care of their vehicles might come in for a bimonthly oil change as part of their maintenance routine. Being able to designate a particular day of the month makes it easier for them to organize their schedule, in addition to helping your business to get regular bookings.

Recurring appointments also work well for small businesses that have personal interactions with their customers. A customer might look forward to the hour she gets to spend with her masseuse each week, and being able to set a recurring appointment in her calendar ensures that her preferred booking slot is always secured.

2. Send Automated Text Messages

Sometimes your customers need a little nudge to kick-start their appointment streak again. Automated text messages are a quick and effective way to reach out to your customers who haven’t scheduled an appointment in some time. Such messages can notify them about upcoming deals they won’t want to miss or be used to send them a personalized offer.

Within an automated text message, you can include a direct link to your online appointment software. Send the right message to the right customer at the right time, and you can start getting bookings from them immediately. Of course, you should always leave the option available to opt-in and out of messaging as customers see fit. Otherwise, your text messages will drive customers away rather than pull them back in.

Emails and phone calls can also be effective methods of issuing reminders. Best of all, allowing customers to choose how they receive messages means you know that your nudging messages are being sent in the best way possible to every single person.

3. Keep Them in the Loop

If you keep customers in the loop with everything going on with your business, they’ll have more reasons to visit your website and regularly book future appointments. New information can also reinvigorate the interest that consumers have in your business.

If you don’t already, try creating and sending out a monthly newsletter containing information regarding upcoming events at your business. This can include special promotions, new services you’re offering, and other announcements as you see fit. Learning that you now offer a trendy new beauty service or will be offering two-for-one mani-pedis next month may be just the thing to spark a patron’s interest. Full calendars of events will prompt many customers to start booking their appointment slots earlier than normal.

Some pieces of news will need to be issued more immediately. For instance, if you’re planning on altering your business hours for an upcoming holiday, you should let your customers know as soon as possible so they can plan their appointments accordingly. Last-minute changes on your end will only cause complications with existing bookings.

4. Incentivize Consistency

If consistency is what you want from your customers, incentivize that behavior. Many businesses encourage return visits by handing out punch cards that provide additional services or rewards after so many uses. You can take this a step further by adding some more parameters.

Many appointment-based businesses prefer a regular appointment schedule over a quick string of appointments booked in pursuit of punch-card rewards. To change the trajectory of your incentives, you could build a reward program that offers points for cyclical visits. Bonus points can be awarded for consistent streaks set by customers, such as triple points earned for three consecutive monthly appointments.

Of course, your incentives program should be specifically tailored to your business, what it offers, and the customer base you’re working with. By thoughtfully taking your business’s particular variables into account, you’re bound to find a formula that works.

While you’ll never have a set-in-stone schedule as an appointment-based business, there are things you can do to promote continuity. Embrace these tips, you’ll benefit from the consistency they can help bring to your organization.

Image Credit: Mart Production; Pexels; Thank you!

5 Tips for Using Appointment-Based Businesses in 2022

By Jason Barnes | Appointment | No Comments

Tips For Using Appointment Based Businesses 2022

New year, same bookings you’ll need to keep scheduling at your appointment-based business. Celebrating the turn of the calendar is always fun and exciting, but now it’s time to get back to the old grind. That includes scheduling any upcoming appointments for services you’re going to need in the coming days.

Whether it’s a check-up at the dentist’s office or getting an oil change for your car, there are a few things you should remember as you schedule your appointments. By following these five tips, you can be sure you’ll be well received — and well served — in 2022.

1. Be on Time

This should be a no-brainer, but try to be on time to your appointments whenever possible. Being punctual limits the number of variables that appointment-based businesses have to deal with. If you arrive late to your appointment, you end up pushing back everyone else’s appointment bookings as well. This makes it difficult for appointment-based businesses to keep up with their schedules and keep everybody happy, even though they didn’t do anything wrong.

If you have a problem making your appointments on time, elect to receive appointment reminders directly from the business. Through online appointment software, establishments can send you automated reminders specifically for your bookings. You can choose to receive them via text, email, or phone call.

If you’re not already using an online calendar, consider doing so. There’s already one installed in your smartphone, with dozens more available to download. Online calendars are perfect tools for the perennially tardy, helping to develop better time management habits — including getting to appointments on time.

2. Double-Check Everything

One thing that will really help you stay on time is to double-check the time of your appointment bookings. Even if you’re getting appointment reminders, a passing glance and a wrong idea could cause you to miss your appointment by as much as a day or as little as an hour. If you make it a habit to always double-check when you’re scheduling appointments, you’ll be able to fix the commitment in your head accurately.

You should also double-check the information you provide when scheduling an appointment. This ensures you can be contacted if something changes and that you’ll be getting the service you need when you arrive.

Say you’re looking to have your hair colored by your favorite stylist. If you accidentally select a bang trim when booking the appointment online, you might be able to fix the error when you show up. Chances are you’ll need to reschedule your appointment, though, as your stylist probably won’t be able to complete a full color treatment in the time she allotted for snipping a half-inch off your bangs. Even if she does have the time, it will be an inconvenient last-second switch.

3. Be Patient

We live in a world where convenience is no longer considered a luxury, but a requirement. Answers to questions can be Googled in an instant, entire meals prepared and purchased in minutes, and the latest movie streamed from any device the moment it comes out. Even with that expectation of instant gratification, you shouldn’t let a hiccup in your appointment experience cause you to lose patience with your service provider.

Try not to get upset with the person at the front desk when you have to wait, even if you were on time. They cannot help that your doctor is seeing another patient at the moment. Perhaps the person before you arrived late, or the examination revealed a significant problem that required immediate treatment.

Stay in good standing with those at appointment-based businesses because they are still working during uncertain times to serve you. Working through waves of a pandemic isn’t easy, especially if many of the staff are home sick or getting tested for COVID, leaving the rest of the workforce stretched thin.

4. Practice Good Hygiene

Whether or not you attend appointments regularly, maintaining good hygiene is always important. This will help minimize the spreading of germs, especially during the winter when the cold and flu are more common.

Be sure to wash your hands or use hand sanitizer when the opportunity presents itself. The point isn’t to engage in health-and-safety theater, but to help prevent any illness from spreading, which is the courteous thing to do. After all, wouldn’t you hate to attend your scheduled appointment only to get sick the next day?

5. Practice COVID (and Common Cold) Courtesy

If you yourself are feeling unwell, reschedule your appointment. During this unpredictable time, many businesses are more willing to accommodate clients who need to make last-minute adjustments to their bookings. Try to give a heads up at least 24 hours in advance if you can. Most businesses are likely to understand and be willing to work with you on a scheduling solution.

If you do end up having to go out, try to be courteous by wearing a mask when inside business property. COVID-19 is still a pressing concern for much of the nation, and nobody wants to get sick, even if it’s just a nasty 24-hour bug and not the latest coronavirus variant. Wearing a mask for an hour is such a small sacrifice when it can help your community stay healthy and strong.

Keep these tips in mind, and every appointment you make in 2022 will run smoothly. There are bound to be some challenges that you will face with appointment-setting, but after everything you’ve endured these past few years, it shouldn’t be anything that you can’t handle with ease.

Image Credit: Alex Green; Pexels; Thank you!

4 Outdoor Activities to Try This Winter to Boost Your Productivity

By Deanna Ritchie | Business Tips | No Comments

Winter is the season of the year when many people begin spending most of their time indoors. You’ll want to get outdoors this winter to boost your productivity. Consistently being indoors has the effect of blending days together. The blending of days isn’t mentally healthy for anyone — so let’s mix it up a little by adding outdoor activities to our Calendar.

This Winter Boost Your Productivity With Outdoor Activities

It’s much harder to feel like your life provides the variation needed and desired when you stay inside all of the time. Even a quick “nippy-cold-walk” at lunch will boost your productivity and confidence for the long-haul afternoon. You’ll want these outdoor breaks for that very reason and there are plenty of exciting things to do outside that will help clear your head. Here are four outdoor activities to treat yourself to when your motivation and productivity are low.

1. Go for a Mindful Stroll

When you find yourself stuck in a confusing loop of working without motivation, take a walk outside to refresh yourself. While it can be painfully cold outside, it will actually help feel that cold. Sufficient clothing will keep you comfortable as the breeze hits your face, making it easier to focus your mind on the walk itself. The outdoors provides a natural separation from work indoors. Focus on what’s physically ahead of you for the best results.

This change in environment, this combination of low temperature, fresh air, natural sound, and sunlight, puts you in a different mindset than the one you’re working with indoors. It allows you to think of other things, to look at the world outside of your work, and to experience it authentically. So grab someone from the office to walk with for a refreshing walk-talk, or set aside a permanent time to walk around once a day to break up the monotony of being at your desk.

2. Immerse Yourself in Nature-Based Activities

Take a pilgrimage to the next level by seeking out activities designed for nature like hiking or skiing on the weekend. You can, for example, trek out into the forest away from town for a few hours and be fully separated from the work that’s stressing you out. Skiing and hiking are perfect for solitude if you’re overwhelmed by your relationships at home or work.

If water doesn’t freeze over in your area, rent a rowboat and set out into the water for some time alone. Still, it’s exciting to do these things with friends or family too, and they are always welcome to join if that works for you.

You may not be the kind of person who needs solitude for you to recharge, so bring along everyone you want to stay in touch with. Getting out in nature is about getting your energy back however you see fit. Understand that everybody is different, and give yourself time to figure out what’s best for you.

Remember that you don’t have to bring people along if it stresses you. Instead, being alone with your thoughts gives you the chance to renew yourself — and that’s what you’ll want for higher productivity.

3. Return to Your Childhood

When you’re immersed in work for any period of time, it’s essential to fit in exercise for both your physical and mental health. But structured exercise can easily feel like another chore and cause you more stress in the long run. Instead, make your nature exercise something to look forward to — in this case, try stretching the meaning of the word “exercise” as much as you want. Growing up in a warm or cold climate, you’ll surely remember how winded you’d be coming in after playing in the ocean or snow all day. You felt exhausted — and it was great. Think “kid” again, and be that kid.

Snowy days (well, ocean days, too — I’ve had both) are perfect for unstructured exercise. Building a snowman (or woman) is a blast, though I’d rather not do most activities alone — how about you? Instead, explore the neighborhood, and start a snowball fight — it’s an excellent way to burn energy with the snow bearing down on you. Neighbors may think you’re nuts, but that is invigorating too.

Then, you can come back inside and settle back in with a warm cup of tea with a renewed sense of motivation. At the very least, the contrasting environments and mindsets are great for getting away from the more structured work. You’ll come back with renewed focus, and you can work longer, too.

4. Head for the Mountains to Boost Your Productivity

Sometimes longer breaks are needed after a long work week — especially if you have a family with their own responsibilities. Consider a more extended, more involved activity that you can get excited about, like sledding, skiing, or snowboarding. Drive out from the home to find the best hill to barrel down or the closest mountain resort to dust off those skis and relax your brain. Watch for freebies — like Tuesday, ladies’ night at the local ski resort is fun — you’ll spring out of bed the following day with motivation.

It sounds counterintuitive to go so far from work to be more productive but in fact, the opposite is true — you need this time to recharge.

A nice break in the great outdoors will put a spring in your step — and make it much easier to focus at work and get in the zone. It also will allow you to partake in hobbies that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to participate in — benefitting both sides of the spectrum. You’ll be surprised how much of a difference it makes.

Taking a break where, when, and how you want it will help you recharge. And, yes, if you haven’t taken this type of time for yourself in a while — you may be a little stiff (okay, really stiff). But it feels so good — and you’ll feel alive. Working too much (without a break) makes Jill a dull girl.

Trade your work shoes for snow boots, and they’ll be much more comfortable when you return.

Image Credit: Julia Larson; Pexels; Thank you!

A Beginner’s Guide to Intuitive Calendar Management

By Max Palmer | Time Management | No Comments

Entrepreneurs and business professionals have a lot on their plates. There are forms to sign, meetings to attend, and a work-life balance that’s always teetering on edge. But, while the focus of business is almost always money at the end of the day, the real currency for businesspersons is time. The adage “time is money” is more true today than ever before.

If you can genuinely harness your time, there’s almost nothing you can’t accomplish. However, mastering time management is easier said than done. A lot of effort is required to manage time effectively, as well as a solid desire to structure your life and business with extra precision.

To satisfy the time management needs of every person possible, the calendar in its physical and digital forms was made. By learning better calendar management, you can make huge strides forward in your personal time management. Here is a beginner’s guide to help you get started:

Aim for Purpose and Results

When it comes to time management, everything you do should be intentional. Don’t just fill your calendar for the sake of looking busy. You will find a lot more success by aiming for a specific purpose and focusing on results.

One way to ensure that your scheduling remains intentional is to follow a tried-and-true planning method from a time management expert. For example, the Rapid Planning Method from renowned motivational speaker Tony Robbins is crafted with intentional time management in mind.

Use an Organizational System

Once you have a good idea of how you want to use your calendar to improve time management, you need to keep it nice. If you purchase a three-ring binder but fail to follow an organizational pattern, you’re not going to get much value out of it. However, if you’re utilizing a system by using things such as tabs and dividers, you’ll find the binder to be quite useful.

Your online calendar of choice will have various options and features you can use to stay organized. One of the most common and effective options available is color-coding. This will change how your events appear based on how you want to organize them. For example, you can match work events with your company’s logo to easily differentiate them from the rest of your schedule.

The great thing about online calendars is that they are highly flexible. You can use your own combination of color-coding and organize in a way that works specifically for you. Key points to remember are not doing too much and using a practical and memorable system. Too many colors can be challenging to keep track of.

Take Advantage of Recurring Events

As you’re setting up your calendar, note any repeat events you see. For example, you might have a team huddle every Monday morning or attend a spin class on Friday nights. Instead of manually inputting every single one of these events into your calendar, you can take advantage of recurring events.

When you set a recurring event, it pops up in your calendar at an automatic interval. This can be done for monthly, weekly, or even daily activities. This will save you a lot of time when planning out your schedule, as you don’t have to input the same event over and over again manually. This also will ensure that you never accidentally miss an event because you didn’t happen to add it to your calendar once.

Recurring events are also helpful for scheduling routines. You don’t always need to put a morning routine into your calendar, but doing so for a few weeks can help you adapt to a new schedule. For instance, if you’re moving from day shifts to night shifts, you might want to plan out the specifics in your calendar with recurring events until you’re used to the new schedule.

Learn How to Batch

At this point, you should have most of your calendar squared away. You can now start working on fine-tuning your calendar to make it work even better for you. One such thing you can learn to tune up your calendar is how to batch tasks. This will condense your calendar, making it appear less cluttered while still getting just as much done.

Most people batch tasks by starting with a to-do list. This is separate from the schedule that ends up in their calendar. Once you create a to-do list, you can organize each task by function and priority. This will give you batches of tasks that can be added to larger time blocks in your calendar instead of individual pieces that have you bouncing all over the place.

Don’t Forget Buffer Time

If you’re still concerned about how to fit everything into your busy schedule without overlapping, be sure not to forget about buffer time. Adding buffer time to all of your events can be a daily life saver. More often than not, you’ll be glad you included buffer time even if you didn’t need it.

Always leave some amount of time in between your meetings and events. For example, if you have back-to-back meetings, you might try and schedule them on the hour to fit them nicely into your calendar. Including 15 minutes of buffer time in between meetings will protect you if one meeting happens to run long and threatens to make you late for the next.

If you don’t need to use the buffer time, you can always have a backup plan for how you can use that time. For example, you can do some bonus prep as you move on to your next meeting, take care of some emails, or outline your next blog post. Of course, none of these tasks are urgent, but you might as well take advantage of any opportunities you find.

Who knew that something as simple as a Calendar could be used for so much. Simply using a calendar regularly is already a step in the right direction. Add these details along the way, and time management will begin to come naturally to you, and there won’t be anything you can’t achieve.

Image Credit: cottonbro; Pexels; Thank you!