Schedules get a bad rap if you ask me.

I don’t know where it comes from, but there’s a general distaste for having a schedule outside school and work.

Imagine a scene where a friend asked you,

“Let’s go see that new movie next week Thursday.”

And you replied,

“Wait, let me check my calendar.”

From the discomfort, you felt saying that to the look you get from your friends hearing that, you think you’re a bore now.

Who have you become?

So rigid and robotic.

There’s no room in your life for spontaneity or flexibility if you’re living by a schedule, right?

Are you really being told when and what to do by an app on your phone with colour-coordinated blocks?

This is exactly how I felt once.

In 2022, I did my first-ever 90-Day Sprint.

To make sure I was consistent and stuck to my 90-Day Sprint I had to plan and schedule my days.

Every night, I sat down to plan out the next day and put it in my calendar. In the beginning, it was tedious and I had resistance towards it.

But to my surprise, scheduling my days become one of my favourite things to do.

They increased my productivity, time management and improved my relationships.

From the 90 days, I experienced 3 major benefits from scheduling my life, that might change your mind about schedules.

1. Structure

I remember how excited I was to leave school and experience the freedom of young adulthood.

I remember how quickly I learned that “with great power comes great responsibility.”

Everything was quickly blurred when I entered university.

Between my classes, activities, friends, free time and personal life, I was losing track of time.

Even worse when I started my business.

I started saying “I’ll do it tomorrow” and when tomorrow came, I’d push it back again until it was too late.

I came to learn that I love and thrive with structure in my life.

When I know when and what to do I feel a sense of certainty and control that allows me to get things done efficiently and to the best of my ability.

I planned my days in such a way that I rarely got overwhelmed.

This isn’t to say that there weren’t 2 am mornings here and there but they were a lot fewer.

2. Reduced Decision Fatigue And Increased Mental Clarity

Decision fatigue is defined as:

“the mental overload and exhaustion someone experiences from making a lot of decisions and the deteriorating quality of those decisions over time.”

On a given day, from the time we wake up, we are faced with thousands of decisions to make:

• what do I eat,

• what do I wear,

• what do I need to do today,

• when will I do them and so on.

The more decisions you have to make in a day, the more exhausted you will be.

This will affect the decisions you have to make in your business or career.

Scheduling your day the night before prevents this from happening.

I found that I had a lot more mental energy at the end of the day than I did before.

Having a schedule kept my head clear because I already had my day and its priorities planned out.

I wasn’t always left worrying or trying to remember what they were — they were already there.

I could wake up with certainty in the direction I was going in and all I had to do on that day was make decisions that were in line with my schedule, instead of wasting energy weighing out the options.

The clarity of knowing what I was doing, how much time I had for it and when to do it was refreshing because once it was done, it was done.

Ticked off in my head.

The mental space I had from this was a huge advantage, which kept my mind clear and calm.

Even if I didn’t achieve the output I imagined, there was a feeling of accomplishment because at least I put some work in.

It was better than ending the day wishing I had done it or forgoing sleep to do a little bit of it and then doing it poorly.

3. Time Freedom and Focus

Have you ever ended your day thinking, “Where did the time go?” then you’re not alone because I had a lot of these.

I would sit down to work or escape from it onto social media and suddenly, it was five hours later.

I expected to feel overwhelmed when I started using a schedule, but the opposite happened.

Once I started time-blocking my priorities for the day, I was getting more done in less time and had more time to relax.

I was experiencing the other side of Parkinson’s Law, coined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in his essay, The Economist:

The clarity of knowing where my time was going and how it was spent, meant I could also allocate time to relaxing.

I had a lot more time available when I laid out everything.

By creating time blocks for my work and using Parkinson’s Law to my advantage, I experienced tons of flow.

Time constraints are a great way to keep you focused and working on the right things, given that you have an allocated time to do them.

You stop bouncing from task to task and being busy instead of productive.

By staying focused on a task at a time, you could finish in 2 hours rather than 3 hours and produce a better quality of work.

Final Thoughts

There are pros and cons to scheduling, like many other productivity and time management techniques tips.

Nothing is perfect or standard.

Everything doesn’t work for everyone.

So even if you see others using schedules — get curious and do some self-enquiry.

How do you feel about schedules?

Do you even need one?

What kind of person are you? More type A who likes structure or more type B who likes to go with the flow?

Even if the pros of schedules could improve your external life, it could make you more anxious and stressed.

So don’t be afraid to say, “No, schedules don’t work for me”, and move on with your life.

As long as you get the things you set out to do done, that’s all that matters.

However, if you are considering it, try it.

Sit down each night and start by planning out your priorities or time-restricted tasks.

If there are other tasks you need to do in the day, add them as well — grocery shopping, admin, etc.

You’ll find times when you don’t have anything to do or as you go through the day, you’ll find that some tasks take longer than you expected.

You can plan better going forward if it’s something recurrent.

After a month, you’ll find out your time management style and whether you are suited for schedules or not.

Either way, it’s a great tool to have in your arsenal that could greatly improve your life, but you’ll never know if you don’t try it out.

— Shana

p.s. If you have an in-depth guide to remove distractions, grab my 10X productivity guide here.