We're planning our agenda full of things. Appointment by appointment, by appointment. Somewhere in the agenda, not for long. A common statement: “My agenda is constantly full of meetings, I can't even get around to my own work...”. How do you become the boss of your agenda again and keep focus on what's important? We'll give you 3 simple tips to help you get back in control and increase your personal effectiveness.

Three simple tips as the key to success

1. ‍Prioritize: set priorities and communicate them to your environment. Realize that you are in control of your time and agenda.‍
2. Reserve work time: reserve sufficient time to work things out, such as following up and preparing meetings. Give this time a place in your agenda and allow yourself to stick to these reservations.‍
3. Reduce meetings: think about which meeting you are joining. Ask yourself if the meeting fits into your priorities and activities for that week.

1. You set the priorities

Good agenda management starts with clearly and transparently setting priorities. Keep in mind that efficiency is closely related to the number of priorities you pay attention to. So try not to take on more than two to three “big” focus areas per week. This ensures that you have focus, which increases your personal effectiveness. After all, humans are not made for multitasking...

A handy tool for this is the Eisenhower matrix. This allows you to place activities in 4 different quadrants based on the degree of urgency and importance. Organizing activities on this matrix helps you organize and make choices. In other words, determining what to do immediately, which activities to schedule (later), what to delegate and which activities to eliminate.

After determining your priorities, it is important to communicate them to your environment so that they can take them into account. Sometimes your priority assessment “conflicts” with that of your environment, for example your colleagues. Do you feel that people expect too many “priorities” from you? Or that your priorities don't match your environment? Start the conversation and think together about how your priorities match the goals of your team or organization. If you still can't figure it out in terms of priorities/or the amount of activities, talk to your manager and come up with an idea of how you want to deal with this. Of course, it's just a compliment that people want to involve you in something. But it won't make anyone happy if you end up not being able to do your job properly or, worse, not getting around to it at all!

2. Reserve sufficient processing time

The next step is to block sufficient “processing time”. Does this help? Absolutely! Unfortunately, actually reserving (sufficient) preparation and development time is often omitted. Not entirely strange either. Sometimes people feel that this time is simply not important enough, and sometimes it is simply forgotten. And then it's too late... Our tip is to take the time each week to look a few weeks ahead and reserve work time in blocks in your agenda. All activities other than meetings that you need to do to fulfill your priorities will be included in your agenda.

It helps to take into account the order of appointments in your agenda. The nature of the activity often affects efficiency. Switching between creative and routine work costs energy and may cause inefficiency. So try to organize your agenda strategically, make sure you have to switch as little as possible in the nature of the work.

“A reserved block for preparation or follow-up is your moment”

Sometimes it happens that people schedule an appointment about your scheduled work time. This is not a problem in itself, we'll just go back to basics. In other words, setting priorities in accordance with the consideration of importance and urgency. Based on that consideration, you decide whether or not to accept the consultation request. Make sure you don't just drop the required processing time, because it's not for nothing that you've reserved that time.

3. Think about which consultation you'll join

Even after following the above advice, it can still be a challenge to manage your agenda. The final challenge lies in finding the right balance between meetings and independent work. Within your priorities, you still have to make choices here. You decide what number of weekly hours are required to prepare, carry out and follow up meetings and how many hours you need for other activities. This also applies: do this proactively, look ahead and share this with your environment. Not being able or daring to make choices creates extra pressure. And that is exactly what we are not waiting for.

Again, you are the boss! Others can invite you to meetings, but you are the owner of your own time spent. A practical guide can be found in a number of standard questions that you can ask yourself with each consultation request: “What is the purpose of the appointment?” , “Is it important?” , “How urgent is this meeting for me?” , “What is my role in this meeting?” and “Do I have to be there?” Based on this, accepting or rejecting appointment requests makes your agenda clear and provides transparency to your environment.

‍Finally

With all these tips, the challenge is to find your own method and stick to it consistently. We wish you the best of luck with this! If you want to read more about this topic, we recommend these books:

• Grip (Rick Pastor)
• Getting Things Done (David Allen)