Prompts to plan, audit, and protect your time. Use them when your calendar is winning, when you keep overcommitting, or when a great plan keeps getting eaten by reactive work.
A calendar that matches my energy, not my fantasies.
Design an ideal week for me. Wake/sleep: [PASTE]. Top 3 priorities this quarter: [PASTE]. Hard commitments: [PASTE]. Lay out a 7-day calendar block-by-block: deep work, shallow work, meetings, recovery, exercise, family. Match cognitive tasks to peak energy hours. End with the 3 blocks most likely to be hijacked by reactive work, and the defensive rule for each.
Turn ambition into a concrete schedule.
Help me plan next week. The 3 outcomes I owe myself: [PASTE]. Hard commitments: [PASTE]. Available focus blocks: [PASTE]. Sequence the work so dependencies clear first. Pre-decide what slides if a fire shows up Tuesday. End with the Friday-evening check: how I'll know the week landed.
See where time actually goes vs where I think it does.
Conduct a 7-day time audit on this log: [PASTE]. Bucket every hour into Maker / Manager / Reactive / Recovery / Lost. Surface: the 3 categories I'm over-investing in, the one I'm starving, and the 2-hour block that doesn't match any goal. End with the single re-allocation that would change my output the most.
Cut zombie meetings, batch the rest.
Audit my recurring calendar: [PASTE LIST]. For each: keep, shorten, batch, async, or kill. Justify each in one line. End with: 1) the meeting series I should renegotiate, 2) the new no-meeting block I should claim, 3) the politely-worded message to send.
Move from to-do list to scheduled commitments.
Convert my to-do list into a time-blocked day. List + today's commitments: [PASTE]. Each block must have: estimated time, energy required, single deliverable, and a "compressed version" if the block gets eaten. End with the buffer block and the 1 thing that gets cut first if I overrun.
Stop pretending the week has 40 productive hours.
Help me build a buffer budget for next week. Planned commitments: [PASTE]. My historical interruption rate: [PASTE]. Estimate: realistic productive hours, buffer needed for context-switching, recovery hours after intense days. End with the weekly capacity number I should plan against and the rule for what to do when I'm offered above it.
Find the pattern, set the new rule.
I keep overcommitting. Recent examples: [PASTE]. Diagnose: 1) the type of ask I can't say no to, 2) the underlying belief, 3) the cost I keep paying, 4) the rule that would prevent the next 5 instances. End with the script I'll use the next time someone asks.
Decide where the quarter's hours go.
Build a 90-day time budget. Quarter theme: [PASTE]. Categories competing for time: [LIST]. Allocate weekly hours by category, with a minimum floor and ceiling each. End with: the 2 categories most likely to overdraw, and the rule for borrowing between categories.
Choose the three things that, if done, make today a win.
Help me pick my 3 must-do tasks for today. Candidates: [PASTE]. Rules: at most one cognitively heavy, the rest must be doable today (no multi-day items disguised as tasks), each must be a closed deliverable. End with the order, the rough time each, and the one I should not start if it's past 2pm.
End the workday so it actually ends.
Design a 7-minute workday shutdown ritual that produces a clean handoff to tomorrow-me. My workstack: [PASTE]. The ritual must: 1) close open loops on paper, 2) capture three first-thing items for tomorrow, 3) clear desk/inbox to a defined state, 4) end with a leaving cue. End with the 90-second emergency version.
Is this a meeting, or could it be a doc?
Help me decide whether [TOPIC] needs a meeting. People involved: [LIST]. Decision needed: [PASTE]. Run the test: 1) is a decision actually being made, 2) is real-time disagreement likely, 3) is async too slow, 4) is the cost (people × time) worth it. End with: meeting (with agenda) or async (with doc structure), and the message to send.
Tasks I think take 1 hour reliably take 3.
I consistently underestimate task duration. Recent examples: [PASTE]. Diagnose the pattern (which task types? optimistic by what factor?). Then propose: 1) the personal multiplier I should apply, 2) the 3-step estimation routine before committing, 3) the buffer to bake into deadlines I quote.
Stop treating the real deadline as the only deadline.
My real deadline: [PASTE]. Help me set internal deadlines that beat Parkinson's law. Output: 1) the V0 deadline (rough draft), 2) the V1 deadline (shippable), 3) the V2 deadline (polished). Calendar them. End with the announcement I should make to whom that locks the early milestones in.
Leave clean, return without dread.
I'm off [DATES]. My open responsibilities: [PASTE]. Build the handoff: 1) what I need to close before leaving, 2) what each delegate needs (one paragraph each), 3) the out-of-office message that holds the line, 4) the re-entry plan for day 1 back. End with what I will NOT touch on vacation no matter what.
Batch the small stuff into one block.
My day fragments badly. Recurring small tasks: [PASTE]. Help me batch them. For each task type: ideal batch frequency, time-cap per batch, the trigger to do the batch. End with the 2 task types worth doing daily and the 2 I should compress into weekly batches.