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Productivity

Energy Calendar: How to take Control of Your Time

A look at the method of managing and evaluating your calendar based on your energy levels.

I prefer to have a schedule of things in my calendar so that I have an idea of what to focus on on a particular day. During weekends I try to plan my upcoming week in advance using Google Calendar. I’ve tried multiple calendar apps in the past, but have reverted back to Google Calendar as it is simple, free and syncs flawlessly across all my devices. I was looking at a way to track how I feel during the day and came across this method of colour-coding your calendar events by Sahil Bloom. He recently named it ‘Energy Calendar’, a method with which you can colour code a particular event in your calendar according to how you feel. Looking at the colour patterns in your calendar, you can get a holistic view of your day and prioritize tasks that are less daunting.

The Method

The framework or method is simple. Simply, colour code the events in your calendar at the end of the activity or day using the following or something similar:

  • 🌲Energizer: Energized me and made me think about it for hours
  • 🔵Energy Gainer: Created some energy.
  • ⭐️Neutral: Not too great or too bad
  • 🔺Energy Drainer: Sucked the energy out of me
energy calendar
A screenshot of last Friday’s calendar. See the different energy levels!

How to Take Control of Your Time

  • At the end of the week, have a look a the past week’s events and reflect upon what all events drained your energy.
  • If two consecutive events are draining your energy, try to reorganize them. Revisit these events again next week.
  • Revaluate those events that are constantly sucking out your energy.
  • If any particular item in your calendar is not appearing too great, even though you expected it to be energizing, analyze what happened. Maybe the timing was not correct.
  • Be grateful for the energizing activities.
  • Strive to make your calendar fully green!

Disclaimer: Even though this hack sounds fancy, I’ve discontinued this method as it adds a lot of friction to my process.

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4 replies on “Energy Calendar: How to take Control of Your Time”

This was a novel idea and intriguing. I’ll admit I’m not used to having a structured (daily) schedule and the prospect intimidates me, but the prospect of wasting my days intimidates me more. Several articles I’ve read lately have recommended making a calendar and I appreciate this unique approach. I’ll give it a shot!

I just started colour coding my calendar few weeks ago based on colour palettes so that it looks aesthetic.

But this is a great way to use those colours for yourself (Great idea), I think changing the colours after they are done would be helpful for me.

Surely I would try this out starting Today!

Try it out and let me know how it went. I realised that many of the meetings were actually draining!

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