Welcome to Episode 109 of the Time for Living Podcast!
TRANSCRIPT
show notes
Your calendar says Tuesday afternoon is free. So why does Tuesday always flatten you? Because your calendar is planning your events, not your time.
This episode is for busy, working moms who already live in their calendars and still get ambushed by their own week. If your calendar is full but somehow never tells you the truth about how much room you have, this one will make a lot of things make sense.
In this episode, you'll discover:
Why a one-hour practice on your calendar is really most of the afternoon and all of the evening.
The simple shift that changes how you use your calendar: plan time, not just events. An event is a moment; a block is the time it really takes.
Three moves to block your real week: real-size events, life as blocks, and your dream as a fixed block.
How to answer the three biggest objections to time blocking: "my calendar is for appointments," "it feels rigid," and "it looks cluttered."
Why adding travel time only gets you halfway, and what the real block includes.
How a quick look-back each week shows you how long things actually take in your house.
Resources:
Ready to take action? Go to timeforliving.co/anchormap. The free Anchor Map helps you find the right spot for your dream block, somewhere it can actually survive your real week.
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timeforlivingco/
• Email: hello@timeforliving.co
Final Thought:
Your calendar was never wrong. It was only showing half your week, and you can let it show the rest.
TRANSCRIPT - Plan Your Time, Not Just Your Events
INTRODUCTION
So, in the last episode I did something I'd never done on this show. I showed you my actual week, in the order it goes in. Sleep first. Then my son. Then date night and time with friends. Then work and cleaning in the mornings, meal prep before pick-up, and one fixed hour on my app after bedtime. And underneath it, my parked list. The gutters, the winter prep, the outdoor cushions.
If you're new here, that's all you need to know. Life goes into the week first, and the things that aren't this week's get parked, on purpose.
But a page is one thing. Most of us don't actually live off a page. We live off our calendars. So last week was the order of your week, and this week is how your calendar plans it. I want to talk about what happens when you take that week and look at it where it really lives, in the calendar on your phone. Because I think a lot of us have a calendar that's full, and busy, and still telling us something that isn't quite true.
What Building My App Taught Me This Week
Before we get into that, a quick one from the build. If you're new, I'm building an app. For me first, because it's not the app, it's the system, and I wanted an app that works for my system and the way my brain works. Maybe one day it'll be for you too. That's my dream.
When I started, I had a plan for how I'd build it. Every new piece, I'd use for two weeks before I built the next one. Test it properly, see if it worked, then move on. Very sensible. Very careful. And very slow.
So I've changed it. I'm shipping things faster now. I build a piece, I start using it straight away, and when something breaks, I fix it. Because what I need is for this app to be working for me now, in the week I'm actually living, not in some tidy future where every piece has had its two weeks.
And here's what surprised me. Using it in a real week shows me things that planning never did. On paper, everything looks like it fits. It's only when I'm living with it, on a Tuesday, with everything else going on, that I see what's really there.
And that's exactly what today is about. Your calendar looks one way on paper. Your real week is something else. And getting those two closer together, so what's on the screen matches the week you actually live, is a big part of why I'm building this app.
The Tuesday That Looked Free
Open your calendar and look at this week. I mean that. Have a look at Tuesday, or whichever day is your busy one.
Let's say there's a practice on there at half past five. One neat little box. An hour long. And around it, the afternoon looks open, and the evening after it looks open too. On the screen, that's a pretty easy day.
But you know what that box actually means. It means dinner has to happen early, so it has to be thought about and started well before that. It means the kit has to be found and in the car. It means leaving the house at five, not half past. It means the drive there and the drive home. It means getting back at a quarter past seven with someone who's tired and hungry and needs a bath, and bedtime that's already running late.
That one-hour box is really most of the afternoon and all of the evening.
And it isn't only the weekday stuff. Think about a weekend day out. A ski day, a day at the lake, whatever your family's version is. On the calendar it says nine till three. In real life it's the gear sorted the night before, the early alarm, the snacks, the drive, the getting everyone ready at the other end, the drive home, and everything that needs drying, washing and putting away afterwards. The calendar says six hours. The day says twelve, and some of Sunday too.
I know this one well. Remember how I said meal prep sits before pick-up in my week? That's why. On the nights we're heading straight out to hockey, dinner has to already be handled before I leave for pick-up. The hockey shows up on the calendar as one line. In my actual week, it reaches all the way back into the afternoon.
And here's where it gets costly. Because the calendar says the afternoon is free, the afternoon gets offered out. Someone books a call into it. Someone suggests a quick catch-up. You say yes to something yourself, because when you looked, there was nothing there. And then Tuesday arrives, and it was never free at all. It just looked free.
And there's one thing that's almost never on that calendar in the first place. Your dream. The hour after bedtime, or the fifteen minutes on a Thursday that you promised yourself. It isn't in there as a block. So as far as the calendar's concerned, it's empty time. And empty time is the first thing that gets filled.
So before we go any further, I'd love you to hear this. Your calendar isn't wrong. It's just only showing half your week.
Why Calendars Fill Up With Moments
So why does this happen? Because it isn't that we're bad at calendars. Most of us live in them. They're full, they're busy, they're on our phones and our laptops.
It's that most of what goes into a calendar arrives as a moment. The club sends a practice time. The school sends a date. Someone sends an invite for a meeting at ten. Every one of those is a point in time, and the calendar is built to hold points in time. So it fills up with moments, and it looks organised, and in a way it is.
But the time around each moment doesn't arrive with it. Nobody sends you the invite for leaving the house. Nobody sends you the twenty minutes to find the gear, or the early dinner, or the drive, or the settling back down afterwards. That part never gets typed in. It just lives with you.
It's a bit like booking a flight. The ticket says two hours. Two hours in the air. But anyone who's ever travelled with a family knows that a two-hour flight is the whole day. Getting everyone up and out. The drive. The parking. The queue at security. The waiting at the gate. The landing, the bags, the getting to wherever you're actually going. If you planned that day around the two hours on the ticket, you'd be in trouble by mid-morning. But that's how most of our calendars are set up. They show the flight time, and we live the whole travel day.
Remember the fridge from a couple of episodes ago, and all the steps hiding under that one line on the to-do list? This is the same thing, just in your calendar instead of your list. In the fridge episode, it was the invisible steps inside a task. Here, it's the invisible time around an event. Different place, same move both times: make the invisible visible. Because when it's hidden, you're the only one who knows it's there.
So here's the line I want you to keep from today. An event is a moment. A block is the time it really takes.
Most of us use our calendars to plan events. This week, I want you to use yours to plan time.
And when your calendar only holds the moments, you're the one holding the rest. You're the one who quietly knows that Tuesday is full when it looks empty. You're the one who has to say "actually, that won't work" when someone sees a gap. You end up being the living correction to your own calendar, every single week.
And that correction costs you something every time. Someone asks, "Can you do Tuesday at four?" and the calendar says yes, but you have to stop, run the whole afternoon in your head, and work out that actually, no, that's when dinner needs to be happening. It's a tiny piece of maths. But you're doing it over and over, for every gap in the week, because the calendar can't do it for you. That's mental load in its purest form. Not the events themselves. The constant quiet arithmetic around them.
You're Not Overbooking Yourself
I want to clear a couple of things away here, because I think a lot of us carry a quiet story about this.
The story goes something like: I keep overcommitting. I say yes to too much. I'm bad at judging time. And it ends with you feeling like the problem is your judgement.
I don't think that's it at all. You're making decisions with information that's missing half the picture. If your calendar tells you Tuesday afternoon is free, and you trust it, that's not bad judgement. That's a reasonable decision based on a misleading screen. Anyone would make it.
It's also not about needing a cleverer app. I'm building an app, so you know I'm not going to tell you apps don't help. They do. But any calendar, however smart, can only work with what's in it. If what's in it is moments, it'll plan around moments.
And I want to be fair to the way most of us use calendars, because it isn't wrong. Putting in the event works beautifully when your day is your own. If you're heading to a meeting from your desk, the meeting is the time. But a mom's week doesn't work like that. For us, the time around the event is often bigger than the event itself. That's not a flaw in you. It's just what a family week is made of.
So if you've ever looked at a week that seemed manageable on Sunday and felt flattened by it on Wednesday, please don't read that as you failing. Your week was always bigger than your calendar said. You were carrying the difference. And carrying the difference, week after week, is tiring in a way that's hard to explain to anyone, because on the screen it all looks so reasonable.
Plan Time, Not Just Events
So here's what changes it, and it's simple. Three moves.
The first is to turn events into real blocks. When something goes into the calendar, it starts when the time actually starts, and it ends when the time actually ends. Not when the practice starts. When you start getting ready for it. Not when it finishes. When you're home and the evening can carry on. So that half past five practice doesn't go in as five thirty to six thirty. It goes in as four to quarter past seven, because that's what it is. Suddenly the calendar is telling the truth. Tuesday afternoon isn't free, and now everyone can see that it isn't, including you.
And if you already add travel time to your events, you're halfway there. Travel time covers the drive. It doesn't cover the early dinner, the kit, or the bath and bedtime that run late afterwards. The real block is all of it.
You don't need to do this for everything. Do it for the things that happen every week. The practices, the lessons, the climbing session, the ski weekends once the season starts. Put them in on repeat, at their real size, once. Then the calendar holds the true shape of the week for you, every week, without you having to correct it in your head.
The second move is to put your life in as blocks, not just your appointments. This is where last week's page comes back in. All those things you put in first, in order, the time with your kids, the meal prep, date night, time with friends. Those aren't leftovers that fit around the events. They're blocks. They belong in the calendar as blocks, so they show up as taken, because they are.
And the third move is the one I care about most. Put your dream block in. As a real block. On repeat. The same way you'd put in a practice or a lesson. Whether it's an hour after bedtime or fifteen minutes on a Tuesday and a Thursday, it goes in as a block, so it stops showing up as empty time.
And this is where it becomes a boundary, which is the part that makes it stick. If it's blocked, it's taken. Your dream block is as real as hockey. You wouldn't book a call over a practice. You wouldn't arrange a catch-up over your child's lesson. And you don't book over your dream block either, and neither does anyone else, because now it's there for them to see.
Now, whenever I talk about blocking time in a calendar, I get pushback. A lot. And it's usually one of three things.
The first is, "My calendar is for appointments." Things with a start time, a place, maybe another person. And I get it, that's how most of us were taught to use one. But the time with your kids is an appointment. Your dream is an appointment. The forty-five minutes before practice is an appointment you keep every single week, whether it's written down or not. A block is just an appointment with your real week.
The second is, "It feels so rigid." Like once it's blocked, you're locked in. But a block isn't a cage. It's a picture. If Tuesday changes, you drag the block. That takes two seconds. A block you move is still far more truthful than a gap that was never really there.
And the third is, "It'll look cluttered." And it will look fuller, that's true. But the clutter was always there. It was just living in your head instead of on the screen. And you're not blocking every minute. You're blocking the handful of things that repeat every week, and your dream. That's a few blocks, not a wall of them. A full calendar that tells the truth is so much calmer than a tidy one that doesn't.
That matters in our house, because we share our calendars. Our work calendars, our personal calendars, the school calendars and the family calendar, all together, on our phones and on the desktop. So when the blocks are real, the real week is visible to both of us. If you share your calendars too, the same thing happens for you. The other grown-up in your house stops seeing gaps that aren't gaps. And if you don't share them, the blocks still help, because the first person they protect your time from is you, when you're the one about to say yes.
And while you're in there, the parked list from the last episode has a home too. The winter prep. The gutters. They don't need a block this week. But they can go in as one reminder further down the calendar, so you know exactly when you'll look at them again, and they stop following you around until then.
Now, remember what the build taught me. Don't wait to do this perfectly. You don't need to rebuild your whole calendar this weekend. Stretch one event to its real size this week. Live with it. See what it shows you. Fix what doesn't fit next week. You'll learn more from one real week than from a whole Sunday afternoon of planning.
And this is the part I love most, because it's where your calendar starts teaching you something. Once a few real blocks are in, you can look back. At the end of the day, or the end of the week, open it up and check it against what actually happened. Did that practice block really end at quarter past seven, or was it closer to eight by the time everyone was fed and in bed? Did your dream block get its full time, or did it start twenty minutes late because the kitchen still needed doing?
You're not marking yourself. You're just noticing. And then you tweak. Stretch the block that was too small. Shrink the one that was too big. Move the one that kept getting bumped.
After a few weeks of that, something really useful happens. You actually know how long things take in your house. Not the hopeful version. The real one. The school morning, the after-practice evening, the Saturday that looked like a day off. And every week you plan from that, your calendar gets a little more true. It's the same thing the build keeps showing me. You don't have to get it right the first time. You just use it, look back, and adjust.
And picture what it's like once a few of those blocks are in. You open next week on your phone, and for the first time, it looks the way it's actually going to feel. The busy afternoons look busy. The open mornings are actually open. You can see, at a glance, where the real space is, and you can see your dream block sitting there in the middle of it all, with its own edges, like it belongs. Because it does.
And here's why all of this matters to me, and I hope to you. When your calendar finally shows your real week, two things happen. You stop being surprised by days that were never as open as they looked. And your dream stops living in the gaps. It gets its own block, in the same place as everything else that matters in your week. Not squeezed in if there's room. Already there.
Your One Step This Week
So here's the one thing I'd love you to do this week.
Pick one event that happens every week. The busiest one. Open it in your calendar and stretch it to its real size, from when you start getting ready to when you're home and settled. Set it to repeat. Then add your dream block, at whatever size works for you right now, as its own repeating block.
That's it. Two blocks. One real one, and one for your dream. When both are sitting in your calendar for next week, you're done.
And here's the decision it takes off you. Next time someone suggests something for that afternoon, you don't have to work it out in your head. You look, and the calendar already knows. It's taken.
Not sure yet where that dream block could live, somewhere it would actually survive your week? This is exactly what the Anchor Map walks you through. It's free, you name the dream you want more room for, it shows you where your pockets of time really land, and it has you plant one 15-minute anchor in your actual day. About five minutes, at timeforliving.co/anchormap.
Your calendar wasn't wrong. It was only showing half your week.
And when it shows all of it, the week doesn't get any smaller. Tuesday's still busy. Hockey's still on. But it stops ambushing you, because you can see it coming. The days that look calm are actually calm. The yeses you give are ones you can keep. And your dream finally has a box with its name on it, in the one place you check every single day.
Next week, we're talking about what you do with the quiet once your week stops ambushing you. Because there's one habit that fills those quiet minutes faster than anything else, and it's sitting in your hand. We're talking about the scroll, and why its real cost was never the minutes, but the ideas that never get the chance to land.