Transcription
For many years, I've been telling my clients to get your habits in line. You need to schedule them. We all have intentions of going to the gym, meditating, doing our yoga, whatever it might be that we want to get done, but if it's not in your calendar, a lot of times it gets pushed out.
You know the thing is, we have things that are important, and we have things that are urgent. And typically, the things that go on our calendar are things that are urgent, like a meeting. Okay, if I'm going to meet with somebody, it's got to be a certain day at a certain time. And sometimes we might schedule tasks on our calendar. Um, but when it comes to our habits, things we want to get done on a regular basis, often we don't.
So what I found is when I started trying to put habits on my calendar, like do yoga at 9:00, or whatever it might happen to be, that I tended to not really do them. And if I didn't get them done at that particular time when I would put on my Google Google calendar as an event or as an appointment, once it was passed, then it didn't get rescheduled. So I just didn't do it. So it would slip into the past, and I found myself ignoring these things a lot of times. Let's say it was even working on my podcast at, say, 11:00 on Tuesdays, which is an example. I would actually do—uh, I would put that on my calendar, but if an appointment got scheduled then, or I was doing something else, it wouldn't happen.
So I was looking for a solution that would be able to be—I could put things in my calendar, but they would also be flexible. And so I could say I want to do this, for example, three times a week, and I could give it ideal times, but if I didn't get it done in those times, it would keep track. Okay, you didn't get your yoga done three times this week. So it would schedule it for me again.
So I found—uh, I was looking at some AI solutions, and I came up with a couple. One's called Morgan. I actually bought the Morgan tool, M O R E N. Frankly, I didn't find it—I found it kind of user-unfriendly when it came to the AI part of it. So I—I bought it, but I found I didn't use it.
And then I discovered reclaim.ai from Dropbox. Um, I found it—I think it was November of 2024, November, December, somewhere in that frame—and I did a week-long trial on it, and I loved it, and I'm using it more and more. So I want to do is show you today how this AI tool has really helped my—my scheduling.
So what you see on the screen is my calendar—uh, for this week. And today is Wednesday the 12th. As you can see here, Wednesday, it's with the 12 in blue. You can see the things behind me that I've done; they're kind of grayed out. And then you see my day today. Um, you see things with the dash lines around it; those are not scheduled hard and fast, but those are things that will float as I get things done or don't get things done during the day. The way I've coded my calendar is if I have an appointment, I have it show up in this kind of gold color. This also—this actually is an add-on to Google calendar. So—uh, thing is, you have to use Google calendar to use this. It's just an add-on; it's not a standalone at this point.
So—um, on my Google calendar when I schedule an appointment, I will color code it—uh, with this yellow color. And that way, when I look at my calendar really quickly, I know, okay, these are things I have to get done at this time today. I know I've got these appointments. Uh, everything else is—is flexible. Uh, if you see the purple color, those are personal things for me, and I use green for things that are work. So there are basically a couple different categories of things you can put on your calendar, I guess maybe you could say three. Of course, there are meetings; those are be with other people. There are tasks, which are kind of like one-off things. And there are habits, things you want to do on a regular basis. And as you can see, I've got a mix of green and purple on my calendar. Again, of course, along with the yellow.
So this is the—um, the view that I see when I go into my calendar. And if I look at it on Google Calendar, it looks pretty much the same way right now. Now this might—if you're—if you're not used to doing something like this, it might look crazy—Um, because it looks like my whole day is full, but as you can see, these things are very flexible. And just a little thing, the way I use it, I will glance at it during the day and see the things I need to get done during the day, but I don't follow it religiously. Like, for example, you see check in with Clay there; that's my—my CRM. That's where I go in and check every day to see what emails I need to send out or who I need to follow up with. Um, if I see—if I'm sitting here at—what is it, nine o'clock now—and I've got time to check in with Clay, I'll do that. And usually that's scheduled earlier in the day. But—um, so I'll just kind of glance, and I'll see what I need to do during the day. And then I might start the task, and I'll show you what that looks like. If I click on that, I can start it, and it'll start the timer on it. And—uh, I've got it set up for a 15 to 30 minute duration. And so it'll mark that done at the end of the time when I started it.
Now tasks can be scheduled to start automatically or to start manually—Um, and frankly, the automatic one I don't really like because it'll start it at that time, and then supposedly if you don't actually mark it done, it doesn't mark it done. But I don't—I—I actually start mine all manually. And I'll talk a little bit more about that—Uh, well, I'll talk about it now. Um, one of the shortcomings I found with Reclaim was they don't have an app. And the thing is, it's great on my desktop, and I'm at my desk most of the day, but a lot of times I'm on—I'm out—I'm on my phone, or if I'm away from my desk, say I'm doing my meditation, I wanted to bring it up and start my meditation on—on the reclaim. I didn't want to go to—to—uh, Chrome or whatever. Well, they've actually got a way you can—I have an iPhone; you can also do it on Android. You can set it up so it looks almost exactly like an app on your phone. Uh, there's a little technique, and if you go to the reclaim site, they'll show you how to do it, but basically you go to the reclaim site, and you create an icon that you then make on—you put it on your screen on your phone, and it look—it works like an app, and that—that to me was like a game-changer. So now if I'm doing my yoga or I'm doing my meditation or whatever, I can start it from my phone, and I can actually do all these things I'm showing you now from my phone as well. So it does work with the phone and the desktop.
So to give you an idea, again, this is the—this is what they call the planner view. You can look at on a weekly basis, a daily basis, whatever. I showed you—I wanted to show you the weekday view here, but I typically look at it as on a day basis. So again, I'll just come here and glance and see what I need to get done today, and I'll start a task or a—um—or I'll start a task or I'll start a habit as—as needs be.
So let me show you what this looks like. Now there's a—it comes with a—I believe it's a 7-day trial, and—uh, there's a free version, and there's the paid version. Now I'll be really honest with you, the free version, I think you get like three habits—um, and the paid version is unlimited. And I find the habits are the most useful thing. So I quickly upgraded to the paid version to get more habits.
So let me show you what—um—what tasks look like. So under tasks, these are tasks I have scheduled. They're not really that—u—that—uh—interesting, and I don't have a lot of tasks scheduled, at least right now, because I pretty much, you know, as they get done, they get checked off. Um, so then if I want to create a new task, for example, I would click here, and I would give it a name. So say, let's—um—let's say it's—I want to follow up with a client, with Sammy. Um, and I set a duration for the task. How long is this—is this going to take? Now it's trying to find the person. So we can forget that. Um, I set a duration for it. So let's say it's going to take me 30 minutes. Um, it's flexible, but you just put this in because this will tell it when to schedule in your schedule because it'll look for a 30-minute slot. It's going to be during working hours. Um, you can set up your own working hours, personal hours. I have what's called evening personal hours; I have sleep hours, and I have my weekends. Uh, you can change these categories, add as or subtract as you like. So it's going to be during working hours, schedule after. So if you know I may not want to do this today. Let's say it's—it's Wednesday; I don't have time. I know I don't have time today. I might say I want to do this next week. So I would say schedule after—say Monday the 17th. And then I give it a due date. So what it'll do, it'll start looking for a spot. And it depends on the priority I give it; I can give it critical, high, medium, or low; it'll start looking for a spot in my calendar to schedule it after March 17th and before March 20th, and it'll slot it into that—into that slot. So—uh, that's just an example of how you would create a task. It's pretty cool. You can put an icon on it, too. I like the icons on my calendar, so they're kind of—uh—nice.
So the tasks are pretty—I think it's pretty self-explanatory. Again, something I know I need to get done, I want to get it done in, say, a certain time frame, but like, let's say it's a—it's a one-off. Uh, this is—I want to do a workshop for Substack—uh, to tell—tell people how to do work—uh, Substack. I—I don't have time to get this done right now. Today is the 12th of March. So I scheduled to start on the 28th, and it's due by—uh—the 11th—uh, of April. So tasks are—are there. Habits are—I think are what's really cool. And you can see I've got a lot of habits here. And you can actually share your habits with other people, too. I'm not really sure I understand why I would do that, but I could.
So—um, these are things I want to do on a regular basis. As I said, some of these are business-related; some of them are personal. You can see I have water my plants every Wednesday at—at 10:00 a.m. That's coming up real soon. Um, so what it'll do—that's my ideal time; it's called—it'll look for a Wednesday at 10 a.m. If that time's available, it'll schedule it then. But if it's not available, it'll move it down later in the day—uh, and even roll it out if it needs to. And—um, if it does schedule it, and something else need comes up, like someone wants to make a meeting, it'll overwrite that and move it automatically. Um, so these are the tasks I've got, and what I have found is, like, for example, my social media stuff, I've gotten so much better at posting to social media now that I've got it on my calendar that reminds me to write an article for one of my—my solar paneers—uh, Substack, or write an article for my regular Substack, my grief to growth Substack. Um, working on my podcast, I've got that set up for every Thursday for an hour and a half because my podcast comes out on Tuesday. And I find I'm so much better now at getting my—get my podcast done on a timely basis now that I've got it scheduled on Thursday. And it—it—I—because otherwise I was waiting till Tuesday morning a lot of times to do it. Uh, pay my credit card bill. Uh, trim my dog's nails. Um, since I put this on the calendar for every Saturday, I have not missed a Saturday and trimming her nails, and I used to miss them a lot.
So what I like about the habits is it really helps keep me in line. And that's why, like I said, that's the—that's to me, this is the—this is the premium—this is the gold feature of this—is worth paying for. Okay, let's say I wanted to create a new habit. So I would click on create new habit, and let's say I want that habit to be to—uh—let me think of something—I—I need to do. Let's say it's cut the grass. I don't cut the grass anymore, but let's say that's what it is. And I would choose—I can choose a Nikon. So maybe it's a little like grass sprout here. Right. So this is not a high priority; I'm going to say this is a low priority. Um, this is going to be personal. Um, I'm going to schedule it during personal hours. So I'm not going to do it during the day—during—during the week or whatever. Uh, ideal day for doing this. Let's say—um—it's going to be—uh—let's say it's going to be weekend. So my personal hours, I chose that earlier, but it's going to say I'm going to do it on the weekend. So now you see it changes Saturday and Sunday. So when you set this hours—um—here you can—it'll schedule—it'll—it'll force you to schedule during these hours again, working hours, personal hours, etc. You can also choose one-off hours. So let's say I wanted to be—um—I wanted to be Saturday for some reason; I could say Saturday; I could choose a day and time. Um, I can choose ideal day and time. Uh, how long it takes, I will add this in. It would say an hour. Um, I can change to—if it can't be scheduled for whatever reason. Let's say I'm marked out of town or I'm busy all weekend. I can either leave it on the calendar so it stays there—Um, so I can manually reschedule it, or if it can't be scheduled for a particular time, it will remove it from the calendar. Now, again, you can see this is going to be weekly, right? So every Saturday I'm going to hit this reminder. I can make it public so it shows that it's blocked off if someone sees it on my calendar if they have access to my calendar. I can set it to my default visibility, or I can make it private so people wouldn't see it on my calendar. Um, but it will just show busy. Now I don't care. The only person access to my calendar, my public calendar, is my wife. So if she sees on my calendar, I don't care. Um, this is how aggressively it could—it should defend the event on your calendar. So if it's something that's really low priority, like say cutting the grass, u—I would say always free. So if anything gets—wants to—someone wants to schedule something over or whatever, then it would allow them to—I can use Reclaim's AI that will either mark it free or busy based upon its priority level where I marked it in terms of—um—how important it is up here—um—right there. So if it's high priority, it's going to—it's going to be more aggressive about blocking it out and the availability. So if it—if it's going to—if it has to be done at a certain time, Reclaim might block it out and let people schedule there. Or if it's really important, I would probably mark it—high priority, and I would mark it always busy. So if it's something I needed to get done at a certain time, a habit, I would make it high priority and say always busy so nobody can schedule anything over that, and then I would save it to my calendar, and it would start putting it on my calendar at that—at that time—uh—every day.
So the habits, again, I—I can't emphasize enough how important these are to me, and I'm finding I'm using it more and more and more. Um, I have—I have—uh—twice daily meditations. I have a morning meditation that's usually when I shower. So I'll go for my walk; I come—I work for a while; then I take my morning meditation, and I shower. So I've been much more—um—regular about my meditation since I started doing that.
So going back to the planner view, this is my view for the day. And again, you can see where we are in the day. You see this red line; it's where we are right now. Um, I should be recording this—writing an article for grief to growth Substack. Instead, I'm recording this video. So what'll happen is once this time slot passes, based upon the availability of that event and how the priority, it'll move it down to later in the day—um—and it'll keep shifting things around as we go forward. So, for example—um—I said do yoga is going to be at 3:30. I'm probably going to do my yoga when I finish this. If I do—um—something that's scheduled for later in the day and I want to—u—mark it as done, I can either just click on it here and go here and mark it as done, or I can start it now. Um, so it'll just start counting off now. And then what happens is when it's done, it'll put it in the appropriate time slot. Or the third option is I can grab it and drag it to the current time. And I'll show you what that looks like. Uh, if I drag to the current time, once it gets in the past, it marks it as done, and it'll rearrange the rest of the day.
So that's what I wanted to show you about—uh—Reclaim. As I said, it is an add-on to Google calendar. I've—I use Google calendar, so that wasn't a problem for me. If you're using another calendar, I think they're going to have other integrations in the future, but as far as I know right now, it's only for Google Calendar. I—is—again, I'm—I'm finding it to really make me more productive. It helps me to keep things in view of what I want to get done for the day. Um, I think it actually probably saves time in some ways because I'm not as—as much bouncing around. If you do—if you're the kind of person that does want to follow it the way it is—the way it's set up here, it'll really—I think save you time because you can switch from one task to another. It'll keep you focused on your tasks. Um, I've got a—in fact, it's not even on here today—Uh, I guess it wasn't available. I've got what's called a morning catch-up. So when I first come in in the morning, I will open my emails and stuff. And that's a kind of a low-priority thing. And it looks like it got bumped out for today. But you know, it's something I—I can do.
Anyway, so I'm—I'm not a person who's like really rigidly—like married to my calendar. Like, again, I don't check this like every 15 minutes, cuz I'm recording this, and I'm supposedly writing that article. But the thing is, I will get that article written today because it is on the calendar. And what I love about it is that if I'm not writing it right now and I'm—and I'm going to get right this afternoon, as that time gets—as that time goes past, it'll move it down during the day for me. I don't have to rearrange it.
Um, so that's—that's—uh—that's Reclaim in a nutshell. I'll have a link if you want to buy it. I'll tell you it's an affiliate link. So if you do—uh—if you do do the trial and you end up paying for it, I do make a little bit of money off of it. But I—I wanted to share this with you because, again, for my clients who are trying to get into better habits in terms of doing their mindfulness—um, I find this to be really helpful. You might want to put your—your gratitude routine on here; you might want to put on here, take breaks during the day. If you're—if you're someone who works from home, you're a solopreneur; a lot of times we don't take enough breaks. So as I said, you can see I've got my meditations on here, and I've gotten much more regular about taking those breaks, which I think makes me more productive when I'm back at my desk. Um, so anything you can think of, really, you can put on here. Now I've got sleep on there; I just put that on there for fun. Of course, I sleep whenever I feel like sleeping, but—uh—when I was—when I was first setting up, I just thought it'd be cooler to—to put that on there.
So I'd love if you try it to let me know what you think. I—as I said, I've tried other AI calendar tools. I find this one to be really intuitive; I find it to be really easy to use. It's not super expensive, and I—I've bought so many tools in the past that I buy them, and I don't use them. And this is one that I literally use every day. Uh, thanks a lot for listening.