This time of year is pretty special. Sure, beginning of the decade and the newness of a fresh start day and all that. But for another reason too: our calendars for the year are pretty empty. But by the end of the month, we'll be fully back into work-mode and reacting to emails, deadlines and, anything urgent. Which is why this month, we're sharing some calendar hacking tips to set yourself up for a productive and on-task 2020. Here are 5 tips to help you own your time this year.

1 Time Blocking
In his book, Deep Work (one of our favorites and inspirations for Caveday), Cal Newport talks about scrapping to-do lists in favor of time blocking. We shouldn't set ourselves up to play defense, by working a different to-do list every day. Instead, build better work habits and protect time.

You can do this with an app like Plan, TickTick, HourStack, Planyway, or Skedpal (read a review and guide of all 5 here). Or you can just do it directly in your calendar app. Block out your ideal week and don't forget things like commuting, lunch, and the gym. Other categories might include deep work, shallow work, meetings, social, rest, learning, culture/adventure, morning routine, and email! Limit that inbox time.

2 Daily and Weekly Wrapups
At the end of every day, create a short recurring calendar event for a daily wrapup. Mine is set from 530-545pm. in the meeting description, I have a list of what to do– clear out any urgent emails and slack messages, close unnecessary tabs, and write a to-do list for the next day based on my schedule. Some people also choose to do a special weekly wrapup to evaluate some highs and lows of the week.

3 Monthly Goal Check-ins
On the last day of each month, schedule a recurring reminder to check in on your goals. How'd you do? What got in the way? What was actually accomplished? What is a priority for next month and are there any personal challenges you want to take on based on what happened this month?

4 Change Default Times
Parkinson's law suggests that work tends to fill the given time. So what if we shortened our default meeting times? There's a setting in Google Calendar to change your default meeting times to as short as 10 minutes. And to end at :25 and :55, to give you a little time to mentally transition. Both those changes can buy back hours and hours on your week and keep you feeling energized.

5 Use a Scheduler
One of the biggest time-wasters is scheduling meetings over email. 10 emails later and you have a date, which someone flakes or cancels. Instead, when possible, use a calendar scheduler. Calendly, MixMax, and Doodle are highly recommended (and cheap or free) but there are tons of others.


Take ownership of your calendar while it's still empty. There's always an excuse not to do something, but at the end of the year, we'll all be grateful that we protected our time and energy and made the most of our calendars. Here's to a productive, and effective year all of us!

Caveday is a company aimed at improving your relationship to work. We write regular posts on Medium and send out monthly newsletters with productivity tips, life hacks, and recommendations. Sign up for the mailing list here.

Jake Kahana is a cofounder of Caveday. Sign up for his personal emails, called “The Email Refrigerator” here.