I have this magical master calendar that helps me get things done. Without it, I would be completely lost and alone… curled up in a corner with my hair all over my head staring blankly at my computer from a distance wondering what on earth I should be doing. It’s an excel spreadsheet with a weekly planner on one page and the business strategy on another, funnels if you’re fancy. It has literally changed my life. It’s very easy to make in just a few simple steps.

1. Observe yourself.

For a week, keep a running list of things you do. In one column write what you did, and in another write the frequency with which you did it. For my ecommerce business, I observed that I edited photos for my site, added the photos to poshmark, ebay, and my site, and shared listings on poshmark to gain followers.

You can totally do this in one sitting. Just walk through everything you do in a week.

2. Be aspirational.

Fill in the holes of things you know will push your business along. If you know your audience lives on twitter and you didn’t tweet at all in your observation week, add tweeting to your schedule. I knew I wanted to speak directly to my ebay buyers, so I added maintaining my email list and weekly mailchimp campaigns to my list.

Add strategy. If in step one, you observed that hopped on pinterest once a week and gained followers, you should probably be on there every day. So up that 1 to 5. Poshmark was my biggest audience, so I upped my sporadic sharing to every day. I got strategic about it by adding markdowns. I know that Poshmark sends emails and sometimes give free shipping when you mark an item down. So I started pricing higher to make room for markdowns. Once my items hit a particular threshold, I will mark them down to seduce buyers who have shown interest, but may have forgotten because of the SEA of other pieces on posh.

3. Divide and conquer.

Frequency. On your first page, write the days of the week across the top. Then divide all the tasks from step 2. In step 2, I wrote that I wanted share on Poshmark everyday. So share on poshmark appears for every day of the week.

Incorporate your strategy. People get paid at the end of the week, but tend to be on social channels a little less over the weekend. So I do my markdowns on Thursdays. I push my moderately “liked” items mid week to try to get them to the “popular” threshold so I can mark them down and draw attention. I also know that Poshmark is an insomniac’s dream, so I make sure to share things late at night and to parties. So this is not JUST sharing everyday, it’s sharing with purpose.

The most important thing here is to be reasonable. If you know you only have 4 hours to get business stuff done around your day job, don’t put 6 hours of work on that day. I work out on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I put lighter tasks on those days. By Thursday I’m exhausted, so I front load my week. I like happy hour so I leave Fridays just for social. NOTHING important is scheduled for a Friday.

Knowing where you’re supposed to be and when you’re supposed to be there is more than half the battle. Follow these three simple steps get a calendar that will up your productivity and keep you together.