# Take charge of your calendar - how to create an "intentional calendar" and more **Creator:** Shreyas Doshi **Platform:** youtube **Duration:** 3m **Source:** https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI ## Summary The speaker discusses the concept of an intentional calendar, emphasizing how it can help individuals regain control over their time and improve their work-life balance. By structuring their calendar intentionally, they can prioritize deep work and manage meetings more effectively, ultimately leading to increased productivity and reduced stress. - An intentional calendar allows individuals to take control of their schedules, countering the feeling of being overwhelmed. - Morning routines and scheduling work blocks are crucial for maximizing productivity. - Limit meetings to create contiguous blocks of time for focused work. - There are three types of meetings: imposed, influenced, and initiated by you; understanding this helps in scheduling effectively. - Implement the LNO system to categorize tasks and meetings into leverage, neutral, and overhead tasks. - Schedule breaks strategically after meetings to manage energy levels and catch up on operational tasks. - Designate specific times for deep work, ideally on days with no meetings, to enhance focus and minimize distractions. - Mute notifications from Slack and email during deep work sessions to avoid distractions. ## Transcript [[0:00]](https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI?t=0s) [Music] I want to zoom out and talk about a mega habit which is the idea of an intentional calendar you see most people think they have very little control over their calendar and I used to think that too but that changed for me when I reached a breaking point where the business of my work was affecting my home life and my health so that stressful period forced me to change my Approach and so I want to share with you [[0:22]](https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI?t=22s) what an intentional calendar looks like right here's an approximate view of my intentional calendar this is what it looked like most of the time I was at strip for 5 plus years but I realized this is a lot to process so I'm going to show you step by step how I built my intentional calendar and one thing I want to let you know is please don't take any of this literally each of us has different working Styles each of us [[0:41]](https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI?t=41s) Works different hours so don't just stop looking at this because you say well you know I don't want to work 40 50 hours like she has did or I want to work 30 hours or somebody else says I want to work 90 hours like doesn't matter the whole point of the intentional calendar is it's based on your intent now we're going to go really fast so strap in okay first step is the morning routine which I already told you about next as you [[1:03]](https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI?t=63s) build your intentional Center very useful to recognize this which is when you do the work is as important as how you do the work so also schedule your work in addition to scheduling your meetings and you know you've already many of you have heard this your calendar speaks greater truth than your to-do list so here's how I like to schedule my work limit meetings so I can get long scheduled work blocks at the end of the day plan the next day fit the [[1:26]](https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI?t=86s) next day's task in calendar because it forces me to prioritize and then lastly plan the next week on Friday evening so that I go into the weekend with a clearer mind and I can be more present in whatever it is that I'm doing so as we decide how to deal with meetings in our intentional calendar we need to understand this simple idea there are three types of meetings which is the ones where the time is imposed on you [[1:46]](https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI?t=106s) the second is where it's influenced by you and the third is where the time is initiated by you the meeting and the time is initiated by you that brings me to this topic which is all of us have imposed meetings in our calendars so I try to schedule most of my o meetings and meetings around those impos meetings so I can create these contiguous meeting blocks that you see these are the gray blocks now by the way for those of you [[2:06]](https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI?t=126s) are wondering what n and O and L that's part of my LNO system which says that there are three types of tasks that you can perform L tasks are leverage tasks n tasks are neutral tasks and O tasks are overhead tasks and the same applies same idea applies to meetings too so once I have a bunch of contiguous meeting slots I add time for a break like for email or slack or other operational work because this time my energy is low right after a [[2:29]](https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI?t=149s) bunch of meeting so I can use a break but if I don't need a break I'll catch up on email or slack or other operational task so with that you now start seeing how my intentional calendar is getting filled out for the next week which is like now I have these contiguous blocks I have the breaks now let's move on to deep work so we are now going to add deep work blocks right one key part that makes deep work easy is a [[2:49]](https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI?t=169s) no meeting day which we used to have at stripe on Wednesdays anyway whether you not you have no meeting days look to see where you can schedule and this is the most important part is block off deep work time time in your calendar I do this for each week depending on my schedule for each week and what meetings I have and where my contiguous meeting blocks are and so on so this is kind of what my typical deep work time look like [[3:11]](https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI?t=191s) now this is 12 hours of deep work right here and trust me you can do a lot in 12 hours of deep work but you can only do it if you don't get distracted during your deep work so one key distraction is slack and email it's very hard to resist that red dot so here's the solution mute slack and email because see here's the thing many people say just CL close those tabs you can't close those tabs [[3:31]](https://youtu.be/HQRNkRkQBiI?t=211s) because as PMS we need email to be open sometimes we need slack to be open to do our work so it's better to resist the temptation of the Red Dot by just muting [Music]