Tips To Make Your Schedule More Flexible

I just got back from a brief vacation to the Northwest to visit my father-in-law and had a couple hundred emails to go through. Along with the waiting emails I had to get back into the swing of things in the middle of the week. I can tell you that today has been a bit more rocky than a normal Wednesday for me would be. I have not quite hit my groove and there is a lot of work to get done, and sometimes I wonder if there is enough time.

I have found in the past, and was reminded of it today, that it helps to plan my day expecting my work flow to be interrupted. It happens most everyday, and I have learned that as much as I would love to be able to stack up the calendar with back-to-back time slots that sometimes it does not work out according to plan. There are too many variables in any given day: a client does not respond in a timely manner, or my local environment runs everything smoothly and when I push it live the whole thing falls apart, etc, etc.

I can only plan for so much and the rest I need to be able to adapt to. I have found that if I plan on at least 1 hour a day of flex-time I will be on schedule, my stress levels will decrease and I will more often be better off for it.

I have made it a habit to schedule my time using Google Calendar, I admit I have not been doing to well as of late, but it is about time to kick it back into gear. If someone has a task that I think will take 45 min. of dev. time, I will typically schedule an hour in my calendar. I know it takes 45 min. to develop it, but then I have to email the client, attach a document, or talk to someone else in the office. And all of that plus the time it takes to transition into the next task might take me an extra 15 min. If it does not, now I have a 15 min. chunk of time I can flow the next task into.

I also find that instead of blocking off a whole day to work on “Mr. Smith’s” site, it helps to break it down into achievable and flexible chunks. Homepage – 3 hours, internal layout – 2 hours, contact page – 1 hour, etc. Now I have chunks of time I can move around if needed. Instead of just a general task I now have specific goals.

When my day has been going as planned or better than planned I can slide some blocks forward and continue on with my groove. If something is taking more time than anticipated, or that beloved IE6 is being its grand’ol self, then I can more easily slide my blocks around or have that time accounted for.

When I try to stack up tasks, I get overwhelmed when one thing goes wrong. Based off my experience, if I schedule in some flex-time, I find that I am less stressed, I can meet my goals and deadlines better and just enjoy the day more.

I would love to hear what our readers do to plan their schedules to make them more flexible. What they have found works to relieve some stress and help their productivity increase.