This is where I find some challenge distinguishing and blocking time between ongoing fractional gigs and more traditional consulting. In the latter you typically have a point of contact or two; you may have recurring check-ins scheduled, and you're likely to have some kind of deliverables timeline that gives a very specific and...this is key...closed-end framework for your work together. It feels pretty easy to set boundaries about ad hoc communications, requests, etc. in that framework.
Meanwhile a fractional gig means you're part of the team...and are integrated into the team...and especially if the rest of the team is all full-time without any constraints, setting and maintaining boundaries is all on you. You just have to suck it up and set and maintain those boundaries and not worry so much about making everybody happy all the time any time.
my own approach is that I do try to do what I call flexible time-blocking. And I definitely have only recently learned to include all my *personal* goals into that time blocking too. Do I want to do a daily walk? Calendar it. Do I want to practice piano? Calendar it. I do this scheduling every Sunday once I see what my calendar of "musts" for the coming week looks like.
Trademark that! "Flexible Time Blocking". That's what I'm trying to do by breaking up my bigger blocks into smaller ones to enable calendar meetings and other external and personal. commitments. You nailed a key issue (or perhaps a bug) of fractional work: less flexibility to work on your own schedule.
I aspire to the color-blocked calendar and then.. i’m overwhelmed by it all! Was it a shift in thinking and discipline to develop this? or is it that comes naturally to u?
I just started doing this six months ago. And just decided to give it a go, not sure I would stick with it - my coach kinda directed me to do it (which, as a coach myself has been an interesting experience!). Not putting too much expectation or demand on myself around it helped me to not be overly resistant to the experiment and now I would never go back. I’m a visual person and find the blocks really helpful to flag time commitments I’m not even aware of. I’ve included client colours but also feeling colours - keep clear, investment in me or others, and loveliness. These feeling colours are helpful in me framing some activities in a way that helps me stick to them. Sharing in the hope some of this would be helpful to your thinking on it all.
You are blowing my mind with the feeling color concept. Can you share a little more on that. What happens in the blocks you've had identified for loveliness or keeping clear etc. How does that end up reflecting what you're doing in each of those kind of blocks?
So, I did it to help me with boundaries and not frittering time away. And also, when the client side is particularly busy (ie second half of the month in board meetings), small segments of "loveliness" or "keeping clear" really matter.
Loveliness is often friend related (a coffee/Zoom). Investment in me/others are things like mediation, yoga, pro bono coaching. Keep clear is used to put in travel time to and from meetings, after a coaching session, where I can see I'm super busy and need a few hours unscheduled, sometimes before rather than after a busy number of days.
Does this help?
I guess my encouragement is to really play around with it.
Kathleen, Jory's calendar looks overwhelming to me too. I currently have just 4 color coded calendars...my Optionality calendar, my non-Optionality personal calendar when all other personal and professional items go, my shared calendar with my sister about my mom's schedule, and my shared calendar with my s.o. about our schedule as a couple (which is very non-overlapping with my professional calendar most of the time). I find it very helpful, honestly. Particularly the shared calendars which help me not have to do as much communication around both of those personal responsibilities. And less communication saves me bandwidth ultimately.
So, not to overshare, but Optionality Meetings and work I put in two of my favorite colors, violet and teal. I'm calmed just looking at them on my calendar.
I really love the notion of feeling colors - how do I feel about my life and its components? I suspect tho that sometimes i’ll feel different ways at different times.
This is where I find some challenge distinguishing and blocking time between ongoing fractional gigs and more traditional consulting. In the latter you typically have a point of contact or two; you may have recurring check-ins scheduled, and you're likely to have some kind of deliverables timeline that gives a very specific and...this is key...closed-end framework for your work together. It feels pretty easy to set boundaries about ad hoc communications, requests, etc. in that framework.
Meanwhile a fractional gig means you're part of the team...and are integrated into the team...and especially if the rest of the team is all full-time without any constraints, setting and maintaining boundaries is all on you. You just have to suck it up and set and maintain those boundaries and not worry so much about making everybody happy all the time any time.
my own approach is that I do try to do what I call flexible time-blocking. And I definitely have only recently learned to include all my *personal* goals into that time blocking too. Do I want to do a daily walk? Calendar it. Do I want to practice piano? Calendar it. I do this scheduling every Sunday once I see what my calendar of "musts" for the coming week looks like.
Trademark that! "Flexible Time Blocking". That's what I'm trying to do by breaking up my bigger blocks into smaller ones to enable calendar meetings and other external and personal. commitments. You nailed a key issue (or perhaps a bug) of fractional work: less flexibility to work on your own schedule.
I aspire to the color-blocked calendar and then.. i’m overwhelmed by it all! Was it a shift in thinking and discipline to develop this? or is it that comes naturally to u?
I just started doing this six months ago. And just decided to give it a go, not sure I would stick with it - my coach kinda directed me to do it (which, as a coach myself has been an interesting experience!). Not putting too much expectation or demand on myself around it helped me to not be overly resistant to the experiment and now I would never go back. I’m a visual person and find the blocks really helpful to flag time commitments I’m not even aware of. I’ve included client colours but also feeling colours - keep clear, investment in me or others, and loveliness. These feeling colours are helpful in me framing some activities in a way that helps me stick to them. Sharing in the hope some of this would be helpful to your thinking on it all.
You are blowing my mind with the feeling color concept. Can you share a little more on that. What happens in the blocks you've had identified for loveliness or keeping clear etc. How does that end up reflecting what you're doing in each of those kind of blocks?
So, I did it to help me with boundaries and not frittering time away. And also, when the client side is particularly busy (ie second half of the month in board meetings), small segments of "loveliness" or "keeping clear" really matter.
Loveliness is often friend related (a coffee/Zoom). Investment in me/others are things like mediation, yoga, pro bono coaching. Keep clear is used to put in travel time to and from meetings, after a coaching session, where I can see I'm super busy and need a few hours unscheduled, sometimes before rather than after a busy number of days.
Does this help?
I guess my encouragement is to really play around with it.
Really welcome other thoughts on all this!
Kathleen, Jory's calendar looks overwhelming to me too. I currently have just 4 color coded calendars...my Optionality calendar, my non-Optionality personal calendar when all other personal and professional items go, my shared calendar with my sister about my mom's schedule, and my shared calendar with my s.o. about our schedule as a couple (which is very non-overlapping with my professional calendar most of the time). I find it very helpful, honestly. Particularly the shared calendars which help me not have to do as much communication around both of those personal responsibilities. And less communication saves me bandwidth ultimately.
So, not to overshare, but Optionality Meetings and work I put in two of my favorite colors, violet and teal. I'm calmed just looking at them on my calendar.
Heh, Optionality is purple on my calendar too...my favorite color :)
Exactly!
I really love the notion of feeling colors - how do I feel about my life and its components? I suspect tho that sometimes i’ll feel different ways at different times.