Organize your calendar to achieve your ideal week

As a financial advisor, I’ve learned how important flexibility and balance are. We could easily work every single day, accommodate every single client and never be home for our family. Eventually, that will end up being difficult on both you and your family.

I decided when I started having a family to create boundaries for myself and around my time. The only way for me to create boundaries was to organize my calendar far in advance. And when I talk about far in advance, I’m talking about a full year to 18 months in advance. How I did that is to build my ideal week.

Build the week you want to have

My ideal week is as follows: I see clients on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Mondays are prep days where I get ready for the week and take a look at what’s going to happen.

Monday afternoons I meet with my staff as well as have additional meetings with other partners and consultants. We also meet with other advisors if we need to. If I truly need to schedule a meeting on a Monday for our clients, I’ll do that toward the end of the day.

All day Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are client meetings. Fridays are catch-up days with my team to go over any necessary planning for the following week. I don’t work Saturdays and Sundays.

Remain flexible

Before clients make appointments, we block out the days we’re not working 12 weeks in advance so they can pick what’s best for them from our available dates.

I make exceptions to the schedule, of course. Things happen. Clients get sick. Some of my clients have babies, and they don’t want to travel or go out or the spouse is at home. Keep in mind that these aren’t hard-and-fast rules. When you’re trying to make decisions on how to manage a calendar, however, having built-in parameters is exceptionally helpful.

Barjes R. Angulo, LUTCF, RICP, of New York, New York, USA, is a Top of the Table qualifier and has been an MDRT member since 2008. Learn more about how he organizes his time in his 2021 MDRT Annual Meeting Virtual Event session.

Don’t miss out on the 2021 MDRT Annual Meeting Virtual Event from June 7 to 9, and register now to hear more from Barjes Angulo as well as dozens of other speakers.