Time is more valuable than money. You can always make more money. You can never make more time.
Jim Rohn
If a year of working and schooling from home for a year did anything for the world, it focused, even more precisely, the need for us to balance our work and home lives.
An absolutely excellent tool that I have used to help me with this balance is the Reclaim.ai tool.
I wish I recall how I came across this tool, but I absolutely do remember the pain I was going through that got me looking for it
I was failing at managing all my calendars
Solopreneurship and Time Management
Two years ago, I was squarely in the solopreneurship category (aka freelancer). While ConnectedWell has grown quickly since then, each client I brought on board created a set of problems I had not yet solved for. Each client brought an email address, slack channels (or, heaven forbid, teams chat) and calendars to manage.
- Slack was easy to add in to my slack app. Done.
- I solved the email issue with the grace of a ballerina with Missive app.
- Calendaring was killing me
I found myself relentlessly trying to block out meetings and keep things from getting double booked
And it wasn’t working.
Reclaim Blocks Your Calendars For You
And a lot of other smart things as well.
Basically, it can smartly two-way synchronize between your calendars, allowing you to either have a copy of your personal calendar events on your work calendar, or creating “busy blocks” of time so that when a dance recital or spelling bee shows up on your personal calendar, your work calendar gets a “BUSY” calendar item automatically placed there so the time is preserved!
Hack: Multiple Client Calendars
To solve my multiple client calendars issue, I do use Reclaim to share/sync my work and personal calendar.
But then I also setup a reclaim instance with my new client’s calendar syncing to my work calendar as if it were my personal calendar.
I don’t copy events over, just “busy” blocks of time.
The result is that if any event is booked against any of my calendars, within 3-5 minutes, there’s a smart busy block on each of my other calendars, to ensure Client A doesn’t schedule a meeting during an interview for Client B. And vice versa.
Where Did The Time Go?
No worries, Reclaim has your back here, too. I get these reports on Fridays helping me get a little insight into the time sucks that I didn’t see coming. For example, TWENTY hours of meetings? Ugh. No wonder last week felt like a bit of a slog. 😉
Final Thoughts
I’m not affiliated with Reclaim. Their tool is currently free. If they ever charge for it, I will be first in line to pay, though. They have saved my life. If time is money, then I need a reclaim tattoo right on my wallet. They have saved me so much stress in managing my personal and work calendars as well as multiple client calendars as I have juggled my growing client base and company.
Tell me what you think!
