How a Monthly Calendar Audit Improves Productivity When was the last time you looked back at your calendar and asked whether all those meetings, commitments and hours were actually a good use of your time?
In this episode of the Accounting Apps Podcast, I unpack the monthly calendar audit I use to understand where my time has gone, identify follow-ups that may have slipped through the cracks, and question activities that perhaps should not be there at all.
My process combines Google Workspace, Google Calendar, Google Apps Script and Google Sheets to turn a month of calendar activity into something I can review line by line. Colour coding and categorisation help me separate personal activities, non-billable administration, speaking engagements, podcasting, writing, CPD and other commitments.
The audit is not simply about productivity. It gives me distance from my calendar so I can consider my energy levels, protect productive hours, manage meetings more deliberately and ask whether the technology supporting my workflow still makes sense.
Key Takeaways - Audit where your time actually goes. Reviewing your calendar at the end of each month can highlight low-value commitments, non-billable work and meetings that took significant time without delivering meaningful outcomes.
- Use calendar colour coding and categorisation. Google Calendar categories make it easier to group activities and understand the balance between personal time, client work, administration, CPD, speaking, writing and other commitments.
- Protect your productive hours and energy. A calendar audit can reveal patterns around when you do your best thinking, whether meetings are consuming those productive periods, and whether late-night international commitments require additional buffer time.
- Use the audit as a second check for follow-ups. Looking back over meetings can prompt forgotten action points, unanswered requests, CPD that needs recording, projects that need finalising or conversations that require another follow-up.
- Audit the technology as well as the calendar. Calendly offers useful functionality such as meeting buffers and automated emails, but Google also provides appointment scheduling. Reviewing overlapping technology can identify opportunities to simplify workflows and reduce subscriptions.
A calendar audit takes time. Mine can take two or three hours, but that is partly because I use the process to stop, think and review what happened during the month.
It gives me an opportunity to ask some useful questions. Why did I take that meeting? Did anything come from it? Should it have been an hour, or would 15 minutes have been enough? Am I protecting my capacity and bandwidth? Is my calendar supporting the way I want to work?
The goal is not to create the perfect calendar. It is to become more deliberate about where time and energy are going, recognise what is working, and make better-informed choices about what deserves space in the calendar next month.
Episode resources and links:
Descript, Camtasia, ChatGPT, Google Workspace, Google Calendar, Google Apps Script, Google Sheets, Calendly, Microsoft
If this episode helped you, the best way to support the show is to leave a review somewhere as it helps more people find us. And if you want to continue the conversation, come find me Heather Smith | Accountant and Storyteller on:
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