My Favourite Tip: Lisa Leong - How a colour-coded calendar can help you both on and off the clock

You might not be surprised to find out Lisa Leong has a colour-coded calendar. She’s the host of hit ABC podcast This Working Life, after all. But what might surprise you is how her attention to diaristic detail helps her when she’s not at work.

Her ABC work is orange, and the sessions working on her new book were red. But she also blocks out her e-bike commutes and social activities. Why? 

For one thing, it ensures nobody schedules her into a meeting when she’s meant to be out for dinner. But perhaps more importantly, it means she has something like a birds-eye-view of her life, one week at a time. 

Too much orange and red? Not enough yellow and blue? At a glance, Lisa knows whether she’s overworking (or spending a bit too much time on the town!).

Lisa also gives you what she calls a “compassionate challenge,” and asks you to work if you might have more autonomy at work than you initially thought. 

Pick up a copy of Lisa’s book, This Working Life

Or connect with her on Instagram or Twitter

You can find the full interview here: Lisa Leong wants you to forget work-life balance and cultivate work-life cohesion instead

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CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're about to listen to My Favorite Tip episode, where
I select one of my favorite tips that I've heard
on this show. But I want to know what your
favorite tip has been that you've heard on How I Work,
because I'm putting together a short series of listeners favorite
tips that I'll be releasing next month. To submit a tip,
email me a voice memo or a note to Amantha

(00:24):
at inventium dot com dot au. That's Amantha at inventium
dot com dot au and you can get my email
from the show notes. You might even want to mention
how you've applied the tip in your own life. Lisa
Leong is the host of the hit ABC podcast This
Working Life, and therefore you might not be surprised to

(00:46):
find out that Lisa has a color coded calendar. But
what might surprise you is how her attention to diaristic
detail helps her when she's not at work. Her ABC
work is orange, and the sessions working on her new
book were read. But she also blocks out her e

(01:06):
byte commutes and social activities. So how does her rainbow
colored diary help her live a better life. My name
is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist and the
founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, And this is how

(01:27):
I work, a show about how to help you do
your best work. On today is my favorite Tip episode,
we go back to an interview from the past and
I pick out my favorite tip from the interview. In
today's show, I speak with Lisa Leon about color coding
her calendar.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
So if you look at my calendar, you could be
frightened because every hour is accounted for, so looks scary. However,
the color codes make it okay. So blue is actually
on a space in my calendar, but because I've scheduled
it in, it's just got a block of space. And

(02:05):
so the block of space could be transit and I
commute by e bike, so all of those beautiful blue
blocks in my diary are actually me enjoying my bike
ride as I'm going between events or between activities. So
that's blue. There's a lot of blue in my calendar.
Actually there's a lot of other things. And then ABC,

(02:27):
so that's orange, so you know, I'll know, okay, I've
got these interviews, and so my eye is now accustomed
to knowing, you know, where the interviews are in my
diary because it's orange and then the book was red,
so you know I had red there. And then yellow
is like social activities. So there was not a lot

(02:50):
of yellow in my diary at one point, but now
there's more yellow. And then sometimes there's too much yellow, Amantha,
so Lisa needs to tone it down. So that's an example,
and then different projects might have different colors. Orthough I
am running out of colors in my Google calendar, I
must say I have a few duplicates.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
That's funny. I use color coding so I time block,
but not as extreme as you. But I do love
using colors just so I can look at the week
and get a sense as to am I like putting
enough energy into the things that matter to me? So

(03:31):
I use it as a bit of a check for that,
and also just thinking about what kind of energy am
I going to need for the day. So the main
activities that don't go to the default color, which is
a sort of a soft pastor purple. Yeah, is podcast interviews,
so they are in blue. And what I call delivery,

(03:53):
which generally is keynote speaking, whether that be virtual or
starting to get back into face to face, which cris
a different kind of energy. And then also sales meeting.
So part of my job is sales or business development,
and I like to know that I'm just doing regular
activity with that because that obviously feeds into inventory. Yeah,

(04:17):
that's proactive. So they're the things that I color code
at the moment, and I find that really very useful.
Like given given, I am a time blocker or a
time boxer like you, but I like what you've done
in terms of color coding non work activities to see
if you're almost having enough time for replenishment and rejuvenation

(04:39):
and those sorts of things.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
So and it means that meetings don't go in there
over the top of a space that I really need yes,
yes for other And it's about how do you prioritize
things as well. So let's say you've decided, okay, so
I really do you know health is the most important thing,
family is the most important thing. Then I will go

(05:00):
into my diary and make sure that they go in first,
and then everything actually goes around that. So in my
anti rotting phase, I you know, doctor appointments are really
important and don't they just get you know, delayed when
you're not prioritizing health. So they go in first and

(05:22):
then around that you know, then I'll start scheduling other
things because I mean I can because I have control
over my diary. So there is an autonomy thing. I mean,
one of my questions is, you know how much autonomy
do you have? And I still believe, and this is
what I call a compassionate challenge, that you probably have
more autonomy than you think. So this idea of job crafting,

(05:47):
so you can cognitively craft, you can relationship craft, and
you can task craft. If you look at those dimensions
and you think, actually, how much budge do I have?
And you know, do I need to have a common
with my manager around it? I think that you might
have a little bit more sway than you think if
you can align it to the greater goals and the objectives.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Especially I hope that after listening to Lisa, you are
up for taking her compassionate challenge. Maybe you might schedule
a conversation with your boss this week to take back
some more control over your diary and insure that your
calendar aligns with what matters most to you. If you're

(06:32):
looking for more tips to improve the way that you work,
I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool
things that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging
from software and gadgets that I'm loving through to interesting
research findings. You can sign up for that at Howiwork
dot code That's how I Work dot co. How I

(06:53):
Work is produced by Inventing with production support from Dead
Set Studios, and thank you to Matt Nimba who does
the audio mixed for every episode and makes everything sound
so much better than it would have otherwise. See you
next time.