Calendar Worship and Time Tracking For Peak Flow

In this post, you’ll learn the importance of getting your calendar optimized for flow and peak performance and how to do it. Develop a weekly strategy session and daily power down ritual that will help you to separate strategy and execution, reduce cognitive load, leverage your clear goals and improve strategic thinking.  

1. Mapping Your Calendar for Flow
2. Having Your Weekly Strategy Session
3. Your Daily Power Down Ritual For To Future Prove Your Focus
4. Set Activities All the Way to Success
5. A Calendar Is a Liberating Constraint That Improves Everything. It Gives You Freedom and Not Chaos or Rigidity

1. Mapping Your Calendar Is a Massive Flow Hack

Helps Separate Strategy From Execution

You can block time to do strategy to determine what tasks you’re going to do to get towards your goals. And then you can use your calendar to map that strategy out in blocks or chunks in detail so that when it comes to execution you can execute with peak flow..

Avoids Unwanted Time Sucking Thinking

Over thinking and planning is another form of procrastination. We want to just be able to slip straight in and execute without analyzing or strategizing or wondering about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, whether or not this is the best way to do it.  

Improves Cognitive Health

You don’t have to hold information and working memory about what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it, when you’re going to get that thing done that’s related to this deadline, when you’re going to prep for your presentation, when you’re going to get your meditation in, when you’re going to get your workouts in. It’s already mapped as if you “could predict the future” of what is about to happen in your life.

You get to just live through your calendar mindlessly, which helps with being able to be present and not have to hold in mind questions about when all of these things you want to do are going to happen. You want to worship your calendar because of this. 

Leverages Clear Goals

Mapping your calendar for flow also leverages the clear goals flow triggers, because in order to put something on your calendar, you have to have that thing broken down into a clear goal. That thing has to be clearly identified and pulled out and broken out as its own task. 

Improves Strategic Thinking and Accuracy of Flow State

When you start thinking of your week and your months through the lens of a calendar, through the lens of this kind of literal block of time that you get to slot different allotments into and deploy resources against different things. And improves the degree to which you become strategic and the degree to which your flow state begins actually moving you towards whatever your key goals truly are. 

So, these sorts of time management skills using a calendar, having calendar worship has been shown by the research to elevate performance. 

Effective time management skills have been correlated with having a safeguarding effect for stress and are a key predictor of performance. 

Calendars allow you to become a time bender rather than a timekeeper. They allow you to create time and maintain and get control over your time. 

Ultimately a calendar is a liberating constraint that improves everything. 

2. Having Your Weekly Strategy Session

The best way to achieve your most ambitious goals is to break them down from annual goals, back to quarterly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, daily goals, and daily to dos. 

Every week we want to have a weekly review of our goals. During that weekly review of the goals, we want to calendar everything for the upcoming week. 

This way we’re going the whole way from our desired outcome goal to putting specific actions on our calendar that we’re going to know are going to get done in the upcoming week. 

The whole idea here is to create your own weekly strategy session. 

The Weekly Strategy Session

The Weekly Strategy Session Is The Backbone of The Art Separating Strategy and Execution

Every week spend one hour per week on this activity. Preferably on a Sunday or before the start of the next week, Ideally at the same time and same place plan your next week. It needs to be before the next week starts.:

1. One hour per week 
2. Ritualize it
3. Before the Week Starts

It’s a really high leverage activity you can do. Maybe even the most important thing in your entire week because it’s a force multiplier that determines every other activity that you do in your entire week. 

What To Do During Your Weekly Strategy Session

1. Review Your Top Three Long Term Goals
2. Assess Weekly Goals Against Monthly 
3. Set Weekly Goals & a Maximum of Three Weekly Priorities
4. Set Daily Goals & a Maximum of Three Daily Priorities
5. Map All of It on Your Calendar

And now, of course, we want to build a buffer in. We don’t want to rigidly schedule every single second of the day, leaving no room for buffer, leaving no room for variance. Because you want to be able to adapt. But, having this mapped out makes you more adaptable in the first place. 

3. Execute Your Daily Power Down Ritual

You will do Your Daily Power Down Ritual at the end of your day for 30 minutes. This is your way of powering down from the workday and mapping the next day. 

Agenda for Your Daily Power Down Ritual

1. Review Your Weekly Goals
2. Refine Daily Goals for Next Day & Schedule 3 Daily Priorities for Next Day
3. Prep All Tasks for the Next Day To Eliminate Friction
4. Clear Out Undone Tasks & Tie All Loose Ends

Prepping the day before allows us to enter into flow faster. By clearing out last minute undone tasks, it makes it easier to separate work from your day. It allows you to wind down with ease to a more relaxed mental state. 

Having a set schedule helps you get work and life balance leading you  to a healthier life with less stress. It also gives you a sense of victory and progress. 

Otherwise, not having a set time can lead to burnout and your motivation and willpower will dip. 

4. Set Activities All the Way to Success

Now that we have our high leverage activities in place for maximum flow and results we can dial in into the art of calendar worship. 

The Art of Calendar Worship

1. Fixed Container of hours

You want to have a fixed container of hours that you allow yourself to work with so that is kind of like a game of Tetris where you have a specific predetermined block of hours to play with for specific recurring events. 

2. Recurring Events for Protection

• Workouts
• Learning
• Time Off
• Meditation

3. Clear Goals for All Recurring Events

– For how long will you workout, what time, with who

– How many pages will you read

Deconstructing your weekly fixed containers will make it easy in the long run to always just enter into flow even when you don’t feel like it. 

With things always changing and getting in the way of life, this is one of the hardest activities for me. The more I work on my calendar and I optimize my life for flow the easier it gets. 

Having set time requires discipline and adaptability but once they become habits the flow kicks in. It’s sort of like the movie “Limitless” where you can just enter into flow in command, but without having to take any pills. 

5. A Calendar Is a Liberating Concentration That Improves Everything

A calendar gives you freedom and not chaos or rigidity.

Calendar Mapping = Strategy =

• Prioritization
• Velocity
• Delegation
• Deferring
• Elimination
• FLOW

Conclusion

The more I work on this every day, the more time I get back in my life. It has improved my overall life. Even my finances, relationships, and health. 

Having a set schedule and taking control over your time allows you to build the life you know you deserve. 

Even when unexpected life events happen, you feel more prepared for anything. You just ride along and make adjustments based on the results you’re looking for. 

This has done wonders for me. I’ve read books and have taken courses (specially one course that helped me the most) and I have improved my life drastically. Looking at time as a budget when you don’t spend more than you make (don’t over commit) and you spend your time where you want it to go gives you the freedom we often can only dream of. 

I hope this helps at least one person. Best wishes!