Weekly Planning: See below for instructions.

12-Week Sprint: Go here for instructions.

Your Year: A full-year planning tool.

You are the owner of your time. Show up by design, not simply by default.

Your calendar reflects your priorities and future; if it doesn't, that's on you.

Your calendar can be a crutch or a foundational tool for mindfully crafting your future.

Some people use their calendars as an organizing system and put today's calendar before the future of the business.

How you show up for anything is how you show up for everything: business, goals, and everyone in your life.

If you want to create the time to make your future, the following page is an exercise proven to be both enlightening and empowering.

In your work over the next six months, you will work towards your Three Essentials - your three focus areas to which you will want to commit hours on your calendar ahead of each week.

This is an exercise to help you see where you are spending your time and where you want to spend it, and where you will commit time.

Owning your calendar begins with understanding where you are currently spending your time and then deciding how you want to spend your time in the future.

Create 'time buckets' for different types of activity, and color code each one (meetings, networking, client service, finance, marketing, bookkeeping, partnerships, product development), and don't forget to add your exercise (and other personal must-haves) and meeting prep time. Color coding will help you quickly recognize the kind of day/week ahead of you at a glance, and even color coding the low-value and high-value work.

Examine and analyze where you are spending your time. Look for your time leaks and the amount of time you spent on low-value work. Go back one to two months and move your time into the color-coded buckets. From these weeks of color-coded time, you'll begin to see patterns emerge. Average it out into one week and call it My Current Time Spent.

To see how you value your time, come up with your hourly rate—based on the revenue you want to make this year or your salary divided by 1,920 hours—then multiply it by the number of hours you spent on low-value work.

$200,000 ÷ 1920 = $104 x 10 (low-value/low-impact hours) = $1040

Every hour you spend on admin or low-value work ready for delegation costs you money, time, and, therefore, your future.

Now, take back your time. Using the same color-coding system, map out the calendar you want and call it My Future. What would your ideal calendar look like, with dedicated time for working ‘on’ your business versus working ‘in’ your business?

You get to decide when this future calendar will be achievable: is it three weeks or three months from now? Begin by calendaring the must-haves: exercise, planning, strategizing, and super-thinking time.

This is where the CEO mind kicks in—it is where your thoughts get organized and serve your future. Determine what you want to do and what is best for the business's long-term future, and be ruthless about what you can outsource to reclaim your time.

With that remaining time, you will want to prioritize what you'll do based on high-value/high-impact work. This is where belt-tightening comes into play. If you spend 10 hours a week on low-value activities and want to reduce it to 1 hour, do it.

From that decision, evaluate the steps needed to make it happen. This could mean hiring a virtual assistant or delegating in another way. Awareness is a powerful thing, and with it, planning gets easier.

Seeing these two calendars will empower you to think differently about what you want and what needs to happen for your time to be more impactful.

Lookout to next week and the week after - Your WIP Calendar. What can you change today about how you want to spend your time? This is your work-in-progress calendar that looks different from the current calendar and looks closer to the future calendar. Each week, continue to work on owning your time to achieve the future calendar that will have you spending time working on high-value work with a higher degree of happiness.

Stop leaving your calendar up to chance and allowing someone else to book your time without your permission. If they have, take it back.

Doing this exercise will reduce your time wrestling with an out-of-control calendar.

When you prioritize your time, you will show up with more clarity and control over your most valuable asset: your time.