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Time zones – they seem like such a simple concept and one that’s almost an after-thought, tiny detail when scheduling… and yet, messing them up can have majorly disruptive effects. If you’re someone who also struggles with them, this one’s for you!
Below is a transcript of the episode. Enjoy!
Other links you might enjoy:
✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you’re ready for a full time management system that’s realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It’s helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.
🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.
Full transcript:
Kelly Nolan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bright Method Podcast, where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up the bright method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep, proud of what you got done today, and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in.
Hey, hey. All right. Today’s gonna be a short one and it’s probably gonna feel really random to some people, but if you are like me, this very random niche topic is actually going to be like, yes, that is a pain point for me. Let’s talk about that. So what the topic is, is time zones. Now it like my Achilles heel or one of them.
Scheduling things in different time zones, calculating time zones, even when I’m aware of it and I’m trying to work with it and I’m trying to figure out the math, it is just weirdly [00:01:00] hard. And so I wanna talk about some things today because this can have a big bearing on our life, whether it’s just planning vacations in a different time zone, handling work commitments and meetings and calls with people in different time zones, traveling to different time zones, planning.
Vacation event type things that are happening at a different time zone. It comes up a lot and I feel like it’s not given enough due weight in terms of, I mean, it is such a small detail that can have such a big derailing impact if you get it wrong. So today I wanna go through a couple tips. Some are gonna be really obvious, some may be a little bit of a click that will help you going forward.
That can really just help bring some clarity to this. ’cause at the end of the day. As I said, it’s a small thing that can have a big impact, and it’s also even when you get it right, if you’re feeling uneasy about whether you scheduled things right or things like that, or whether you’re gonna show up at the right time, or maybe it was an hour earlier, all that kind of stuff like that, just.[00:02:00]
Small stressors in the background don’t do us any favors, so we wanna bring as much clarity to this as possible. And so hopefully one of these things stands out to you and maybe grab a couple of ’em, because sometimes doing a little bit more front end work to have the peace of mind that you’ve scheduled it correctly can really, as I said, avoid those little stressors that can weigh you down the rest of the time.
First thing, this is the most obvious is when you are scheduling meetings, always clarify the time zone. And I know that, that you’re like, well, duh. But sometimes I’m amazed how often I get invites from people and they’re like, can you do 11:00 AM And I’m like, I’m pretty sure they live somewhere in a different time zone.
Like what are we talking about here? So I always include my time zone when asking for availability, when giving my availability. Always, always, always. I clarify my time zone, even if it feels. Silly. It’s just one of those things that I find better to be safe than sorry. Once you’re clear on that. I [00:03:00] really recommend booking in their time zone.
So when you schedule it, you can always select what time zone you’re booking in, whether you’re in Google Calendar or Outlook. This is another really nice point for digital calendars because it gives you this functionality. You can book the time that maybe the other person picked in their time zone and put it in, in their time zone in your calendar.
It will show up in your time zone on your calendar, but it gives you that kind of extra step of peace of mind of like you’re not doing the calculation into your time zone and then booking your, putting it at their selected time in their time zone in your calendar so that you’re not risking that mental math, gymnastics issue, which at least that’s where some of my stress comes in.
Another thing you can do, like another kind of safety measure here, and this is all about, this is all under the umbrella of like when you schedule these meetings, I would send an invite and this is just something that I have found over time to really help me avoid mis calendaring things and [00:04:00] being on this different pages from the person I’m working with.
But sometimes we book meetings and we each. Calendar them in our own calendars and we don’t do that shared invite. And over time I’ve really started moving away from that and I really try and send invites, even if it feels kind of silly to the other person, to just make sure that we’re clear on the time.
Sometimes the location, whether that’s a Zoom room or somewhere else, things like that. It’s just is really helpful to send that invite. And it helps with this time zone thing because if you’ve made a mistake calculating time zones for whatever reason, then the other person’s more able to flag that when you schedule versus the day of and they’re like, I’m waiting on the call.
And you, you had it an hour later. I’ll also note that if you schedule a lot of meetings, meeting booking software, whether it’s native to Outlook or you use Calendly or Acuity or any of these things, this is an area where I, I really like them for this reason. As I said, time zones are just, I don’t, my brain just [00:05:00] doesn’t know what to do with them and.
Because I use Acuity, I can set up all my meeting availability. There are other benefits to having it too. Like I don’t have to be involved with that. The back and forth of when times work, they get reminders. They can reschedule without me, all sorts of things. But in addition, when they look at my availability on acuity, and this is the same for other things, they can look at it in their time zone.
So I have made available the windows of time I’m available. And then within those, they see they can select their slot, but they’re viewing it in their time zone. And so that is removing me from the time zone calculation, which is a benefit to everyone when that happens. And so if you’re similar and you’re booking a lot of meetings, especially across a ton of time zones, this is where meeting booking software could really help you out for a lot of reasons.
One of which is that time zone calculation and removing yourself from being the one calculating it. I will also note that some [00:06:00] calendars. Allow you to show, and this is something I’m not familiar with because I don’t do it, and I, I have turned it on before and I find it actually very confusing. But you can, you know, in the like left hand column when you’re looking at your calendar or like the left hand side of your calendar, they’re the hours listed.
I think almost every digital calendar now allows you to also display the hours in another place. So this is particularly helpful if your teams work across different time zones. I would say especially international teams where if you work. Central time. It’s pretty easy to figure out East Coast specific, but if you work with a team in Europe or Asia or somewhere else, then having that listed time zone with their time zone might be very helpful for you if you’re constantly thinking about that.
Again, I have found that very confusing, but I don’t have a team that I’m constantly working with that I need to understand what their time zone is and like what’s. Doable. And so if that’s you, I could [00:07:00] see the benefit there. It might be worth the initial confusion. And my guess is you get used to it and you have enough of a reason to play through it to get used to it.
And so I just wanted to throw that out there that if you’re interested in that, I would look up your platform like I’ll look or Google and have it and you just say secondary calendar, like different time zone and see what pops up. My guess is that something would show up and you can add that to your calendar if you’d like to.
So just to quickly recap where we are in terms of like the first tip, it’s really like when you’re scheduling meetings, one, make sure you’re clear on what time zones are in play. If someone’s asking for a call at a certain time and they’re not clear what time zone it is, I always ask if you are giving availability.
Always include your time zone in that. It just helps everybody get on the same page. When you are calendaring things, when in doubt, calendar it in their time zone at the time they selected, and that way you can just be sure that you got it right. I also, another tip is to send that calendar [00:08:00] invite. Don’t just to have it, you each have your own standalone events in your own calendars.
Have a shared calendar invite so that you’re both on the same page. If you book a lot of meetings, one way to get around this is using meeting, booking software. And finally, if you want to see that kind of second timeline on your calendar of another time zone, that could be really helpful, especially if you are consistently working with people in a very different time zone.
Okay, second kind of mini bucket, this one’s shorter, is when we’re traveling. When you’re planning a vacation, often we’re going to different time zones and. Same types of concepts I’m talking about here. I just wanna note that if you are particularly calendaring, travel time and flights, you can have different time zones for the start time and the end time.
I know that flights tend to go into the calendar. I will say that mine lately have been like all over the map. Like when I book a. Flight. Sometimes they’re showing up at like 1:00 AM right now, so I think there’s some [00:09:00] wackiness going on with an integration somewhere. So I have been manually putting in my flights.
Also, I like it because they update a bit. Sometimes the calendar reflects that and sometimes it doesn’t. So I just like double checking. And when I do that, I really like calendaring. The, you know, takeoff time is in my time zone, landing time is in the time zone mine landing and vice versa on my return.
And I just wanna share that, that you can have different start and stop times. It’s probably only relevant for flights and that kind of thing. But it is useful to know that you can have different start and stop time zones when you’re calendaring things. In terms of events for when you are there. Let’s say I’m planning like an East Coast trip in whenever, a couple months from now and I’m putting in reservations, or let’s say it’s like a wedding weekend, and so the shuttles are gonna pick up at a certain time.
My reception is at a certain time, a brunch is at a certain time, and I’m calendaring all of this from my house in Minnesota in central time, and I’m calendaring it for what will be East Coast [00:10:00] time. As I said, I would calendar the mall in my calendar. I would enter them in East Coast time. And the additional step that I like taking here, just to give that extra clarity, especially when I’m there and I’m like, did I calendar it in the right time zone?
Is I like putting brackets right up front of the title so that it says something like five to 11:00 PM East Coast or like. EST central time in brackets and then I’m like, you know, so and so and so and so’s wedding reception or whatever it might be next morning, let’s say nine to 11:00 AM so and so and so so’s wedding brunch.
And so it’s just really helpful then when I’m there to be like, wait, what time is this? And not only is it hopefully calendared at the right time in my calendar, it’s also very clear that I am like accounted for what time it is. Like I’m just manually putting in the time there. As I said, that kind of helps, like going back to those like mini stressors that kind of like have that friction with our brain that we’re like trying to move forward.
But then we’re like, but is [00:11:00] that the right time that really helps with this? Is that you, not only are you putting it in the right time, but you have that clarity spelled out. I don’t know, I just said that, but I think it’s worth like reiterating that they’re kind of like layers to helping make sure that you’re gonna be able to show up at the right time with the least amount of stress.
Okay. Last little part I wanted to mention here is for people in the states. This has come up recently with a client and I just had never fully appreciated how tricky this might be for people in Arizona. I don’t know, I think it’s all of Arizona. Maybe it’s just even parts of Arizona that don’t follow daylight savings.
So sometimes they’re on mountain time and sometimes they’re on Pacific time, and that just must be a whole different world. For people living there and particularly those working outside of the state or for people who live and work outside of the state, but work within people who are working within Arizona.
And so some tips that I shared really overlap with what we’ve talked about, but I wanted to just specifically [00:12:00] call it out in this context is if I were living in Arizona and scheduling my life, particularly if something was like a national thing I was doing or with. Someone living somewhere else, I would calendar, I think everything in whatever time zone that person is in.
That tethers the meeting to the other person. So like you’re then on the same page with that other person and it tethers it to the more consistent time zone. And actually Arizona’s the most consistent time zone. And I wish we all got rid of daylight savings, buddy. We are, I should say it’s the more common time zone that people.
That is going to shift and you, you might say the same, but you’re tethering it to where the other person is, where they’re gonna show up, like the time zone that they’re calendaring. So that’s what I would do is if I’m, especially like standing meetings or meetings that are happening around a time zone change, which candidly, I always forget when they are.
So I probably do this for all meetings, just tether it to their [00:13:00] time zone so that even when. Your calendar might not reflect these changes on its own because you’ve calendared it to a time zone that does reflect those daylight saving changes. Your calendar will account for that. Similarly, if you wanted, you could put that time zone in the title too.
So you’re using their time zone and you’re saying like eight to 9:00 AM East Coast time, and then the standing meeting or whatever it is. I’m just trying to help. Avoid that, like when the rest of the country goes through daylight savings and you don’t, trying to look at your calendar and be like, is any of this relevant still, like accurate still?
Or did it all shift or does what needs to be rebooked? I think if you approach it this way, most of it will update, and then you might just have to rearrange some of your plans in light of those meetings kinda shifting in your calendar, but then at least you have the clarity of like where you’re supposed to be when all right.
So, as I said, kind of a short, [00:14:00] seemingly silly and random, but pretty critical little time management piece to this big puzzle. And I really hope that by doing some of this, pick and choose what works for you. It just really allows you to trust your calendar. More calm, like anxious thoughts around time zones, especially when you’re traveling and in somewhere unfamiliar, at least you have this part that you can trust, gives you some more clarity and just.
I don’t know, helps you be able to focus on the things you want to focus on instead of worrying about the accuracy of your calendar. All right? So feel free to share this one with a friend. I know it’s random, but hopefully pretty practical and helpful. And thank you for being here, and I’ll catch you in the next episode.
Links you might enjoy:
✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you’re ready for a full time management system that’s realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It’s helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.
🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.
