According to a 2023 study by Small Biz Silver Lining, a company that offers tools for entrepreneurs, 75 percent of small business owners are concerned about their mental health. More than half (56 percent) have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression or stress-related problems by a doctor or mental health professional.
I personally felt the weight of this as I started my own financial education company in the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. But ever since I hit my first FIRE milestone, I started to practice the habit of being voraciously protective of my calendar – literally and metaphorically. It’s the habit that allows me to work 20 hours a week, while still making six figures a year and actually love the work I get to do.
This weekly habit of releasing the time suckers to focus on the activities that drive the most results toward your financial independence goals requires a few routine components:
- Spend twenty minutes on Sunday evenings or Monday mornings to optimize your schedule for the upcoming week.
- Use an online app such as Google calendar that you can edit quickly and from anywhere. Paper planners are not efficient in managing a hectic schedule.
- Color code your energy types. You don’t have to keep the same colors every week, but it’s helpful to see the different types of meetings you have. For example, I code health and exercise as green, social gatherings as purple, client meetings as blue and non-client meetings as orange.
- Group similar activities together. If you have too many types of activities on a particular day, shifts to no more than 3 types of activities in a day.
- Use a scheduling tool like Calendly or Acuity to let people know your availability, even for personal time. I’ve noticed I get a lot cancelations because they have to be intentional about it.
Decline Meetings That Feel Like A Trap
In order to build this habit, it’s critical to have hard boundaries around fewer meetings. Have you ever sat in a work meeting or a social gathering where you thought to yourself, “I feel like I’m wasting my time?” If the answer is yes, and if it’s happened on more than one occasion, you must practice when you say yes or no to adding time to your very limited calendar.
Quite simply, I decline a lot of meetings and I won’t lie. It’s hard and I wonder if I’m being a jerk. Especially as a Filipino American woman, I feel the expectation to be likable and available to anyone that asks for my time. But as my business and wealth grew, more people asked me for face time that just wasn’t sustainable without sacrificing my own freedom.
Now, I’m very strict about declining any meetings personally or professionally if that meeting meets any of the five following rule breakers.
First, don’t take any meeting that doesn’t have a clear agenda. If you don’t know why you are going to a meeting, you need to ask specifically and ensure that all parties should agree to the agenda beforehand. Speaking as a former HR professional, don’t ever put yourself in a position to be caught off guard, by entering a meeting in which you’re not sure why you’ve been called in.
Second, decline any meeting that should have been an email. This sounds pretty straightforward, but is often underutilized. If you can accomplish the agenda with one or two emails, just make them emails. Reserve meeting time for deeper dive discussions.
Third, decline any meetings asking to ”pick your brain.” This has been the hardest because I want to help. But many requests I get from strangers either have no intention of following through on the advice or no intention of ever paying me. I learned to say yes by sharing previous content or offering consulting, for a fee.
Fourth, decline meetings with unpleasant people. Life is too short to spend it with people who don’t value your time. If one of these unpleasant people is someone you work with, address their behavior sooner than later. If it’s once or twice, give them the benefit of the doubt that they had a bad day. But three times or more is a pattern.
Lastly, don’t attend any gathering that is less than an enthusiastic yes for you. I used to go to social gatherings out of obligation, even if I didn’t feel comfortable around those people, and I’ve felt so much more freedom that I only go when I’m excited to go!
Imagine how much farther you could be in your finances had you taken all those meetings and put them toward your budget, investing, or meeting with a valuable money mentor instead. Money is abundant. Time is what’s scarce. The catch to having these clear meeting boundaries is that you yourself must practice it consistently.
Scheduling Self-Nourishment Helps To Execute On Your Money Goals
Whenever I share my strict calendaring habit to new financial education students, they often assume that it’s restrictive rather than liberating. But an effective budget requires allocating funds and time toward taking care of your physical and mental health, in order for your routine to be sustainable over the long term.
Before I practiced a regular budgeting routine and the weekly calendar review, I worked 50 hours or more a week. I would only schedule any health-related appointments when I was well into burnout symptoms. When I started to plan my personal care expenses as a top priority, I learned I could afford them as long as I planned to do them at the beginning of the month, rather than ad hoc.
Now, I allocate at least 25% of my monthly budget toward healthy activities that revive me including yoga, dance classes, counseling and rest. Those items are non-negotiable — both on my budget and my schedule.
Keeping a drama free calendar means you’re enthused about what you will accomplish and who you will cross paths with that week. It also means that you’re not scheduled every minute of every day. It means that you have actual white space to be spontaneous or just to rest.
What does this have to do with your money plan? Absolutely everything! Remember financial freedom is not about the numbers alone. The true test of freedom is when you can look at how you spend your life as moments you got to choose out of joy and not out of obligation.
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