What’s Your Ideal Schedule?

When we went to school, they told us on the first day what our class schedule would be for the year. When we got to college, we had a bit more control over what courses we took and when we scheduled classes.

As a business owner, you have the ultimate control of your schedule. Or do you? Have you built your business around the life you want or have you squeezed time in for your family around endless piles of work?

In his book ,The 4-hour work week, Tim Ferriss talks about how he streamlined his business so he could live the life he designed which includes travel. But when he travels, he never stays in a city or a country for less than a month. Yet, by working his systems on his schedule, he only has to sit down at a computer and with a phone for 4 hours on Monday – wherever he is in the world.

What is an ideal schedule? It’s simply a pattern for scheduling your time: days, weeks, months. Have you ever tried to design an ideal schedule for yourself in your business?

An ideal schedule in your business will be tied closely to your ideal schedule for your life outside of business. With an ideal schedule in mind you can make decisions about your time and your patterns for how you spend time.

For some people, cutting back on the number of hours they work each week is a paramount goal. For some people setting up a schedule that allows them to take a week vacation every month is essential. But for other people, taking them away from work or making them take one more vacation, won’t relax them or provide fun. They’re having too much fun in their business, to take that kind of time away from it. There is no one right answer.

An ideal work schedule is only a guideline to follow. It reminds you that you wanted to spend every Friday afternoon on marketing strategy or you wanted to spend from 9-10am every day calling customers and prospects.

An ideal schedule may follow Michael Gerber’s approach of free, focus and buffer days. An ideal schedule may just be a theory you test out in Outlook (did you know Outlook will allow you to create multiple schedules in addition to your actual schedule?).

The purpose is just like your financial budget – it’s not cast in stone. Rather it provides boundaries that help keep you focused on what is most important to you and where you add the most value to your business.

For some people their optimal time to problem solve and be creative is in the morning. Other people take hours to warm up and they aren’t humming along until after lunch.  We all know night owls who are in the zone until well after midnight. What’s your best time of day with the least interruptions that you can work on the most valuable activities in your business?

There is a natural flow to your workday and to your workweek. Track it for a week or look at your actual schedule for the past 4 weeks. Don’t try to fight what works well for you. Instead, adjust your ideal schedule to what actually works for you. Then design your ideal schedule. Keep refining until you have an ideal schedule every day.