Do you want to learn the right way to review a schedule at work, home, or beyond?

Are you tired of wasting your precious time focusing on the wrong things in your planning?

Reviewing your schedule on a regular basis is a great way to keep up-to-date on all of your appointments, meetings, and events.

It may be tempting to quickly glance at your schedule and nod your head knowingly (oh, but that were the case!).

There is a marked difference between looking at a schedule and understanding the information on a schedule.

In this post, you’ll find a collection of tips to help you review your schedule the right way.

As odd as this may sound, reviewing a schedule is not a hands-off task: it requires careful attention and consideration.

Yes, the process does involve looking at individual items on a schedule. But you’re also taking into consideration the broad overarching flow of your schedule as a whole.  

Here are some tips to help you review a schedule, the right way. 

Take a bird’s eye view of your schedule.

While it’s a good idea to notice the details in your schedule, it’s even more important to take a look at the bigger picture.

Yes, you may have a hair appointment scheduled for 10 A.M. on Saturday and a conference call scheduled at 2 P.M. next Tuesday, but what’s really going on?  

Instead of reviewing your appointments and meetings as individual, stand-alone entries, you should review them as large blocks of time.

Viewing your schedule in this manner will help you see exactly where, and how, you spend your time.

What’s going on overall in your schedule? Are you extremely busy…or not?

Are there certain days of the week when you are busy? What time(s) of day are you most and least busy?

What areas in your schedule seem to be completely unaccounted for or potentially lost?

Be sure to keep an eye out for any obvious patterns, such as recurring weekly meetings, when you review your schedule.

Make sense of time surrounding appointments and meetings.

You’re probably used to looking at specific events in your calendar.

But what about the time surrounding those engagements?

These often-overlooked pockets of time can provide you with some extremely valuable nuggets of information.

What you do between your appointments and meetings is just as, if not, more important, than the events themselves.

This includes travel time, time spent preparing materials, and performing other tasks related to your upcoming activity.

It’s a good idea to ask yourself some pointed questions about how you are making use of this “in-between” time in your schedule.

Here are a couple of questions you can ask yourself:

• Do I have enough time to travel to, or from, each of my appointments or meetings?

• Do I need to set aside time to collect information and/or prepare materials before leaving for an event or function?

• Have I given myself time to rest and recuperate from each of my appointments and meetings?

• Have I given myself enough time to take care of or address related issues, such as last-minute travel changes, confirming information, and the like? 

Edit your schedule accordingly.

Okay, so you’ve taken a bird’s eye view of your calendar and have evaluated the time surrounding your appointments.

The next step is to make adjustments to your schedule. The goal here is to anticipate trouble spots and neutralize potentially difficult time situations.

Go through your schedule, day-by-day, hour-by-hour. What do you see? What don’t you see?

Feel free to make any necessary modifications based on the information you uncovered in the tips above.

Don’t be afraid to make changes to your schedule.

You can lengthen travel time, reschedule a non-urgent appointment, or evaluate whether or not it’s necessary to hold a meeting in the first place.

Remember, this is your schedule. You get to decide how it is organized and structured.

Here are a few schedule editing suggestions to get you started:

• Reschedule non-urgent meetings or appointments, if necessary 

• Confirm any appointments that haven’t yet been finalized

• Evaluate whether or not it is necessary to hold a meeting

• Add sufficient preparation and travel time before a meeting

• Add rest or downtime for yourself between appointments

How about you? How do you approach reviewing your schedule or calendar when it comes to managing your time? Join the conversation and leave a comment below!