Playing with ‘Calendar Zero’

Probably I’d be more productive if I ever quit experimenting with productivity techniques and just settled on a system. It’s fun for me, though, and often I learn something useful that seemed counterintuitive at first. An idea I’ve been playing with is the concept of Calendar Zero.

‘Calendar Zero’ means you schedule every hour of your day in advance, including fun and relaxation.

This was revolutionary for me. I tend to procrastinate more on relaxing than on anything else. It goes along with my tendency to buy some kind of trinket for myself, never open it, and then either give it to a friend or donate it to charity without ever using it. I also often keep desserts until they get stale or freezer-burned. Maybe I should put ‘enjoyment’ on my to-do list.

Here’s how I began my experiment. I made a list of ‘Ten for Ten’ projects, with hour-long time slots running across a long workday. I like things like read-a-thons, and games like this feel exciting. I figured I would probably wind up veering off my schedule at some point, due to an interruption or miscalculation of how long it would take to do something. Also, I was still recovering from a cold, which gave me a free pass on running out of energy.

On my list:

Do laundry
Take out trash and recycling
Get haircut
Grocery shopping
Work on blog
Make soup
Talk to hubby (out of town on business trip)
Balance bank statement
Itemize receipts
Finish audiobook

Much to my surprise, I did everything on my list except for making the soup. (Hubby called at a different time slot than I expected and I wound up eating something else). I also found myself spending extra time on my financial chores, which are very boring in my world, and did a few other random electronic administrative tasks.

Something else relevant about this Calendar Zero experiment is that I found myself indulging in something I almost never do. I sat on the couch and binged three episodes of a true crime show that I had been wanting to watch for about six months. This is why I did more admin stuff than I’d planned, even at the end of a busy, low-energy day. I got into a groove, and it gave me an excuse to pair the work with something I consider frivolous.

My list started with my absolute most-hated chores, but also included a few hour-long fun breaks, some stuff I don’t mind doing, and some things I’d been procrastinating. It worked so well, at least from the variety, that I immediately made a different list for the next day.

What I normally do is to schedule my days by time blocks. Laundry on Monday and Thursday, like that. It works for exercise and regular chores, but I didn’t have a formal routine for the sort of odd, anytime projects that might linger unfinished for weeks or months. I didn’t even have a formal routine for kicking back and relaxing, which of course is much worse.

What’s different about this method of leaving no time unaccounted-for is that it forces you to make room for the fun. You have to write in when you’re going to bathe, eat meals, talk to your friends, and walk your dog. It gives a sense of having plenty of time. For instance, knowing you have a full hour to shower, get dressed, style your hair, and get your bag ready completely eliminates the feeling of being rushed. It even gives the sense that maybe you have a little extra time to do something extra, like spending ten minutes on a crossword puzzle, playing with a hula hoop, finishing a full episode of a podcast, or learning a new way to wrap a scarf.

The other thing about scheduling every single hour of the day is that often, the scut work takes less time than you had allowed. You’ve folded and put away all your laundry, and you still have time left to mess around! If you’ve already done everything you needed to do, then you know you’re free to fully make use of the remaining time doing a headstand or whatever you want.

In the week that I’ve been playing with Calendar Zero, I’ve done all my ordinary work and chores, sure. I’ve gone to my usual meetings. I’ve also fit in an extra conference call, done two weeks of newsletters, blasted through my email and news queue, gone shopping, and rearranged my closet.

Probably the main feature of Calendar Zero, the thing that works, is that it crowds out the junk hours. You know, the time you spend unintentionally scrolling (scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, keep those junk hours rolling) whether it’s through social media, online shopping, or entertainment options. For instance, I can easily spend half an hour or more trying to choose my next audiobook, when I could have read an entire chapter or a magazine article on paper by then. There’s certainly plenty of time in the day to be idle like this, with the difference being that we ANTICIPATE IT pleasurably and CHOOSE to indulge in it purposely.

Now, when I know I want to scroll around idly downloading podcast episodes, or ordering something off a website, I can choose to do it while I eat lunch and take my own sweet time on it.

The novelty hasn’t worn off my Calendar Zero game. That’s great, because I still have a few odd tasks on my list to knock off. I’m going to keep using this system and see how much more playtime it builds into my day.