Hey friends,

Hope you had a good weekend.

Here’s this week’s 1 Doodle · 1 Do · 1 Direction.

1 Doodle

One of the questions I ask the people I coach is: “Show me your calendar, and I can tell you about your productivity.” I was not a big fan of digital calendars until 2015. But when I started grad school, things began to pile up: my own classes, professors’ office hours, midterms, finals, my office hours, deadlines for department awards, and cumulative exams. Keeping track of all of that in my head was just not possible for me.

At the time, I did not even have an iPhone. I had a Nokia with me, a Nokia Lumia 925. Gosh, I miss Windows Phone. Anyway, back to the story. That was when I started using Google Calendar on my phone. Learning to put the things I could not change on my calendar, like everything I listed above, and then filling in the things I needed to carve out time for became part of my weekly and daily practice.

In this doodle, I combined the time management matrix with a calendar. Scheduling important but not urgent tasks on my calendar gets me much closer to actually doing them instead of ignoring them. I drew this doodle as a reminder.

1 Do

Think of one task that is important but not urgent. Put it on your calendar, block time for it, and commit to that time.

1 Direction

Living by a digital calendar does not take your freedom away. It gives you the freedom to design your day and take control of how you want to spend your time.

That’s all for this week.

Warmly,

- Ehsan /a-🌞/

P.S. If this newsletter made you think of someone, feel free to forward it to them.

P.P.S. I recently made a video on Log Your Daily Focus like an Engineer. You can watch it here.

P.P.P.S. Feel free to reply and say hi. I always enjoy hearing from readers.

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