Mastering Chaos and Doing IT all: How To Transform Your Schedule and Gain Back Lost Time with Google Calendar Hacks

Feeling like your life is a never-ending whirlwind of chaos?  I share my transformative journey from disarray to tranquility through mastering Google Calendar. Discover how overwhelm led me to adopt time-blocking techniques and create dedicated calendars for everything. I emphasize the critical role of effective time management in maintaining a healthy work-life balance, sharing strategies for setting aside time for unforeseen events and holding space for potential opportunities. You'll find a personalized method to manage life's demands more efficiently. Tune in to transform your daily hustle into a well-structured, manageable routine

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl, the podcast helping you filter out the BS in pursuit of becoming the next it girl. And this podcast episode hits really close to home, hits me right in the type A. We're going to talk about how you don't have enough structure in your life to have free time. Now, recently I have hit absolute co-red. What I like to call co-red means I am way too busy. I've probably said yes to too many things. I'm on the verge of burnout and I was in a very touch and go situation, meaning I would just do the task that was right in front of me that had to be completed and then have to move on to the next thing. There was no structure, no organization into what I was doing. It was pure chaos and pandemonium. So in this episode, I'm going to talk about how you can structure your life to make sure you get enough free time. Welcome to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. I'm your host, marley Fregging, and I'm here to help you filter out all the bullshit and become the next big girl. This podcast explores the reality of what it really takes to make it out there. As it turns out, it is way less Instagrammable than I thought it was going to be. I'm still very much a work in progress, but there's simply nothing else I'd rather be doing than chasing my dreams. So let's learn from my mistakes and work together to achieve our dreams with more confidence, clarity and direction. Let's get after it Well, and I'd have to say that the biggest thing that I realized was that I was having no structure in my life.

Speaker 1: 1:37

It was very touch and go. I was handling the things right as they came in and that was not productive in the long term, also led to a lot of burnout, because I was switching multitasking between different things. Like I said, way too code red. I would go from teaching Pilates, planning a wedding, doing an acting class, maybe thinking about something for the podcast, and then just trying to live a normal young adult life, which is not so easy. Oh, and then an audition would come in, because that's just how the cookie crumbles. That is way so unstructured, and the lack of structure was really the root of the problem. Having structure, knowing that things are going to get done in a certain amount of time or a certain chunk of time we're going to dive into time blocking here really allows anxiety to go down, knowing that you've scheduled in time for that thing to happen. Now, remember, growing up, I was the type of girl who, on Friday night, would go home and get all of her homework done so that I could have the rest of the weekend to be like homework, worry-free. So this is a little bit of a type A method, but I am really excited to try to help explain my way of achieving this structure using Google Calendar or whatever calendaring app you prefer. Or, if you're still on the middle school planner vibe, I'm with it. I wish I was too. It just stopped working for me. So here's what you're going to do. We're going to dive into Google Calendar now.

Speaker 1: 3:09

So I've talked about Google Calendar on the podcast before Not a sponsor, but I'm open to it. The best thing about Google Calendar is you can do a couple different things. You can have a master schedule hooked up to your, so that is your main schedule, that is your main place. Now you can go ahead and build calendars within your calendars. So, for example, I have a calendar for teaching Pilates as well as taking Pilates. I put in there. I have a calendar for acting, which also pertains to entertainment industry stuff. I have a calendar in there for podcasting. And then the two I'm going to really talk about a lot today are I have a podcast for just personal life events and what I call strategy. Also, the thing I love so much about Google Calendar is that you can color coordinate your calendar to be whatever you want to be in the aesthetic flow. Mine's really honestly not that aesthetic, but colors really help me to differentiate what I am doing from time to time, so like it allows me to see, oh, there's this much acting today, oh, this is more of a podcast heavy day, whatnot, because of the different colors I have assigned to the said calendar within my calendar. All right, so let's drive into those two little calendar things I was talking about called personal and strategy. If you're watching on YouTube, I don't know why I decided the hang loose thing was going to be my two for this. I guess because on some level they're a little different.

Speaker 1: 4:33

Okay, so let's dive into personal events thing. Personal events on my Google calendar includes things like doctor's appointments, dentists, whatever, oil changes, whatnot, and I'm not even kidding. Sometimes that involves shower time. I'm blocking out my shower on the Google calendar. Yes, I know neurotic, but sometimes I just don't know per se if there's going to be enough hours in the day to make sure I get at least six hours to seven at least. So I'm chunking out time, taking out that space within my calendar, so I don't overcommit or think I have to include that. In the past not something I'm currently doing luckily, I think I've gotten a better hold on this is I also used to calculate within my calendar driving time I live in Los Angeles traffic ain't easy or just transitioning time, travel or transitioning time.

Speaker 1: 5:26

I would also block that out in my calendar. Letting yourself mentally shift from thing to thing, or the time it takes you to get from place A to point B, because those are times that were always unaccounted for in my life and then I would end up stressed or late or out of place way too short of a time because I didn't realize I had to leave. So blocking in those extra times Now I'm talking about. Also, sometimes I block in times for showers. Now I don't do that every day. I don't feel the need that I need to block out a shower every single day on my calendar and it might not be the shower for you. For you it might be to eat lunch Another problem I have run into is I like to fill up that space because I'm not accounting for it. Now I'll talk about the fact that I've recently added in a lunch catch-up time to my calendar.

Speaker 1: 6:14

It is a blocked out time in the middle of the day that I need to hold space for because inevitably I'm going to take the time to do those things anyways. Sometimes I forget to eat and I'm eating in a rush, but that's a whole other podcast and a whole other problem. But I'm blocking out that time to make sure I'm rechecking all of my messages. I do every single message in one big swoop. I'm talking DMs, I'm talking TikTok, notifications, whatever. I'm talking emails and I'm talking text messages. I do those all in one sprint, as well as emails. That's the really important one. I do emails in there. I do that all in one big sprint down right smack in the middle of my day and then maybe at the end of the day when I catch another breaky minute. But I'm blocking out that time to have this reset. I'm holding that space in my calendar because I found it was kind of something I was doing, naturally, but not accounting for it, and then I'd be like, holy fuck. I'm so behind on my day. I have all these other tasks blocked out in my calendar. That's the thing too.

Speaker 1: 7:15

A lot of people just use Google Calendar for things like meetings and appointments. I use the scheduling part, not just the task part, to schedule in physically, take up the amount of time in my schedule and be like this is the amount of time I'm going to record a podcast. This is the amount of time I am going to work on that audition, this is the amount of time I'm going to send pitches. I'm blocking those things out. And here's the reason I made the big switch from a physical writing planner to a digital was because I was fucking up. I was sometimes forgetting appointments and or inputting the times wrong, and a lot of businesses and places do have an option to input this into Google Calendar. So you know there was a little safety net of me checking myself to make sure that times were right. I found myself fucking up that a lot. But the other big reason I made the switch to a digital calendar is because you are able to block out a chunk of time. Let's say in this example it's going to be sending acting career updates.

Speaker 1: 8:23

I block out two hours on my calendar. Well, today didn't go quite as planned as I thought I was going to, so I'm just going to drag and drop the two hours and move it to the next day, still chunking out that same amount of time. Then I don't have to go and erase and rewrite the thing. I just found that Google Calendar makes it a lot easier to plug and drop what needs to get filled in. All right. So remember how I said that I had the life events thing kind of digressed from there. But I want to talk about strategy. Yes, this pinky is strategy, I guess. Strategy A newest calendar I have added to my Google Calendar life Strategy.

Speaker 1: 9:03

I use this calendar to block out what is the undertone or theme of the day. I found that code red means I am shifting between too many things too fast and I never really understood what I was doing that day. Maybe wasn't giving my highest quality of work that day because I was shifting between things so quickly. And this really clicked for me when Taylor was on the podcast talking about how she handles the craziness of this. She's an amazing marketing specialist for social media. She owns Melrose Marketing. Check her out. She was on a previous episode of the podcast as well. She was talking about how on Mondays she usually does just emails it's more of an admin day, and Tuesdays were always her podcast recording days and I was like what the fuck? That is definitely something I should be doing. Maybe at some point I thought to do and I've just totally let that drive to the wayside. So now I do look at my week and I try to make sure that there's like an admin day. Usually for me now that's going to be Monday. I have a podcast day. Usually that's Tuesday or Thursday. Tuesday is kind of split in half with acting. For me Now that's going to be Monday. I have a podcast day. Usually that's Tuesday or Thursday. Tuesday is kind of split in half with acting. For me, wednesday is Pilates and acting. See, I'm picking some undertones and themes, so it feels like everything is getting attended to All right.

Speaker 1: 10:30

So let's talk about why not having this structure is keeping you from having free time. It's because you have the fear that you're never going to get it done. Now, from somebody who lives in the world of anxiety more than I would like to admit, I would say that 90% of my work anxiety literally comes from the fear of saying this phrase. I don't have enough time to get this done. Well, I hate to say it, but you probably do. It's probably because you're managing yourself not as well as you could be Now. I know I'm extreme and there's people who are more extreme and there's people who are way less extreme.

Speaker 1: 11:02

Going back to, you have to chunk out your time to make sure you're getting in free time. Some days we're going to go back to talking about that lunch period, that lunch thing. I don't really have that many emails to catch up with. I don't know. Today was a slower day. I'm going to just eat lunch and play on my phone or do whatever I want to do, or go for a walk or get a coffee. You need to schedule in time that is kind of shiftable. Schedule in time that is kind of shiftable, like it could be used or it could be not, and it's not going to offset you If you don't catch up in your emails.

Speaker 1: 11:42

At this time I found that I wasn't leaving in free time for auditions to come in. I don't get an audition every single day, or you know a brand deal per se or whatever it may be for you. I don't get one of those every single day. However, I was like, why am I not leaving in time in my days in case those things happen? And it did happen to me this week. I got an audition and I was like, oh, thank goodness I've blocked in this time already because I know that everything else is going to get time and I do have time to do this audition.

Speaker 1: 12:10

I think blocking out those times for the things we want in life, as well as free time, is manifesting for ourselves, sending it out to the universe and also reminding yourself to do it that you have blocked out time for that thing. So for me it's auditions and sometimes for me it's free time. Blocking out that time Now, if it gets used or not, who's to know, and sometimes just because I'm neurotic and crazy, if it didn't get used that day, just to be like I didn't do it or it didn't happen, I delete it from the calendar. But again, I think holding space for those things we want in life brand deals to come through, networking calls, holding space within those in your week, as well as free time is going to manifest it for you in the long run.

Speaker 1: 13:01

Something else I've been doing to make sure that I have enough time to get everything done and also giving myself a backup of having a free time is what I need at this moment. I can do it because I have a backup time scheduled in. I'm talking about triple or double scheduling things, for instance. We'll use this podcast as the example, because this is true life for me. I have scheduled in time to do this podcast at least five times over the past week and a half and I say podcast recording today, this time to this time, and then I wrote in the next day or a day following, saying podcast backup recording, and then I put one more for safety podcast recording on this date.

Speaker 1: 13:43

Now I know neurotic, but it is giving me so much peace of mind to know that I have so many tries, so many potential to get this done, and one of those and two of those might've been on the weekend, and that's okay. I'm giving myself multiple times to make it happen, because there are plenty of times that I come home and I'm doing 8 million other things and I don't feel like sitting down and doing that thing that I scheduled out, and that's all right. I have scheduled for it to happen at another time. So I'm blocking out, I'm creating a backup situation for whatever it needs to be done task and you know what you get to use or get to do. If you don't use that time, you can do whatever you want, or you can make it free time.

Speaker 1: 14:30

Again, like I said, the reason we're not having enough free time in our life is because there's a certain level of fuck it. I'm just going and moving, grooving, throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks energy, and then when we start to really succinctly think about what days and what times and lay it all out in a place we can physically see it, it becomes a lot less throwing pasta at the wall and a lot more focus. It also really cuts down on the amount of multitasking and switching back and forth too quickly, and I find that that really increases my quality of work. All right, to wrap it up, I'm going to bring it home by saying the points of you need to find a method for yourself to create some structure in your life. Now, for me, that's Google Calendar. For you, if that's a list or post-its notes organized in different colors, it's your own method. It's your own way to do it.

Speaker 1: 15:28

I just wanted to share some tips and tricks about how I'm managing myself in a Code Red situation to structure it, to create more time. I'm talking about those backup times, color coordination, blocking out too much time to get what I think is realistic for a task and, of course, leaving true time for things like showering, life, eating and, of course, even scheduling in relaxation time. Guys, thank you so much for listening to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. We'll see you next Tuesday. Thank you so much for listening to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. Don't forget to rate and subscribe to the show. As always, we'll see you next Tuesday.