In this solo episode of the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast, host Angela Mondor (the Geeky Girl) shares a neurodivergent‑focused approach to calendar‑based time management. She explains how the same clock hour can feel very different depending on one’s mental energy, urging listeners to schedule creative or high‑focus work in the morning when her brain operates best, and to keep afternoons free of demanding tasks if a later appointment causes anxiety. Angela discusses coping mechanisms for hyperfocus—such as alarms, routine reminders, and even her dog’s nudges—to ensure basic needs like hydration and movement are met. The core of her system is Acuity Scheduling, which she uses to automate client bookings, limit weekly slots, and maintain a lightweight CRM of client interactions. She integrates Acuity with Google Calendar (her primary calendar), Make (to push appointments into ClickUp), and mentions compatibility with iCal and Outlook. Customization options include setting a maximum number of discovery calls per week and automatically hiding excess slots. Throughout, she emphasizes designing a calendar that protects personal energy, enabling better service to clients. The episode concludes with resources: an affiliate link to Acuity (geekygirl.ca/acuity), show notes (overgiversanonymous.ca), and an invitation to join the Overgivers Anonymous Facebook group.
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Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we're going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving. Hi and welcome to this episode of the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. Let me just tell you that I'm not doing well today. I'm, I'm not feeling well. I've kind of got stuffy nose thing going on. I don't know if it's my allergies. Life is fun, but here I am. I'm, I am here. I'm present. So if I sound a little different, That's what it's all about. Today, I want to talk to you about something that you might get a little triggered by. I'm not gonna lie, there's some triggers here because I do want to talk about time management, but I don't want you to think, oh God, this is yet another time management thing and it's bullshit and all the rest of that stuff. I promise, walk with me through this because I really believe that if we— if I can help you through some of these things, it can help you to actually take hold of your time. Now, I'm not talking about the regular time management garbage, but I am talking about Working with when it's right for you, choosing how you want things to show up on your calendar, having an easier way for people to engage with your calendar and give you the ability to breathe a little bit more. Which is funny coming from me today because I'm having a hard time breathing. Let's be honest. Okay. So in terms of time management, I don't want us to think about time management in terms of how much time do you have to do this and what are your things and it's new items and da da da da. I'm talking about calendar management, time management. Okay, so one of the most important things that I have learned along the way is that the same time doesn't mean the same thing throughout the day. So let me just make this super clear. If I was to write a book or blog post, if I was to do something creative with words, I'm going to be able to do it much quicker, much more effective, much more efficient, and it's going to actually sound better if I do that in the morning. My brain just works better in the morning. So, something that takes me 20 minutes in the morning might take me an hour in the afternoon. And that's a piece that's really important when we talk about this time management piece. Managing your calendar so you can put things on your calendar that work the best way for you. So, some of the things that happen in my brain, and they may or may not happen in your brain, but it's— if I give you some of the things that are happening in my brain, then at least maybe you can start thinking about your brain this way and learn A little bit more about yourself through this journey. But let me tell you what, what works for me and what happens to me, and then you can make some decisions on your own. So one of the things that's really important for me to understand, and it took a while for me to get this, but when I have an appointment later in the day— so let's say, for example, I have an appointment at like 4 PM in the afternoon— I'm gonna have a really hard time focusing on the other things that are happening during my day. And that's because I'm so worried about the 4 o'clock appointment. I'm so worried that I'm going to miss it or that I'm going to be late, or there's so many different reasons why I'm frustrated and crazy about those kinds of things. But for sure, it is really important for me to know that about myself. So if I want to be productive, then I want to make sure I'm not scheduling things that are going to keep me from being productive on those days. So part of that means that if I do have appointments that are late in the day, I need to fill that time with stuff that doesn't require a whole lot of hyperfocus or energy, energized focus, right? So I'm not going to start building scenarios and writing coding and stuff like that during that time of the day because there's no way that I can give it my all and focus on it if I'm worried about later in the day. So that leads into this whole calendar management piece. One of the things about having appointments later in the day is that the rest of my day is kind of screwed. So I always make sure to have my appointments with my clients in the morning. I want to make sure that I have their appointments Up front and in person in the morning so that I'm not worried about missing their calls during the day. So, I put them first. They get to be first part in the morning. And then, my afternoons are free for me to do work that I could then be focused on. Now, there's some fun bits to this neurodiverse brain that I own. Part of it is that I can get involved in a task and really go down a rabbit hole where I'm actually in that hyperfocus mode where I'm literally working so hard I don't realize that it's getting dark out or I haven't eaten properly or I haven't— had enough water, or I don't even realize I have to go to the bathroom sometimes until my husband will be like, are you ever going to stop working? And I stand up and go, oh, I have to go to the bathroom. Now, if you're with me on these things, if these things happen to you, fear not. One of the things that I'm grateful for is I have a beautiful dog who definitely keeps me moving during the day. So it's nice that, you know, she feels that I've been sitting too long. She actually will try to get me up to pretend she needs to go outside, but she doesn't. She just needs me to get up and it's fine. Or if I'm, doing something else, she— and she knows I should be at work, she kind of drags— not drags me, but she kind of says, hey, let's go to work. So she is very, very supportive and helpful in that way for me, and that works for us, which is great. But if you're having things like this in your life, find some things that work for you. Alarms are great. I used to have a Google Home that would sit right over here and it would yell at me. It would— I had a routine going, so every hour it would say, hey, it's time to get up, it's time to have a drink, or times a day, it would say time to get up and go to the bathroom. Seems silly, but these are important things that we need to do for our human being, our body, what's good for us. So all that said, let's get over and talk about how we can actually do this with our calendars now. Okay, so Acuity is how I manage my calendar appointments for my clients. It is freaking brilliant because the thing I hate most is saying, hey, What time are you available? Do you want this time or that time? How about this time or that time? We waste so much time, so much energy going through this concept of which time works for you. So instead, I've set it up so all my appointments are set up so that when I give my link to my clients, whether I give them a 30-minute or 60-minute link, there's all kinds of different links I can create for my clients. Then they can go and click on it and it'll show them exactly what's available in my calendar. The odd time a client will say, hey, none of those work for me, but not very often because I've set it up in such a way so that there is enough room in my calendar for the clients that I have right now. It's brilliant. It's amazing. And it saves me so much energy. Not only that, but it clears off space in my brain so I don't have to think about what's going on in terms of the calendar system. I send the links. It's their responsibility to book the call. If they don't book the call, we send them another message and go, hey, you haven't booked your call yet, those kinds of things. So when we talk about time management, the calendar management is really important in that time management. Knowing what you're willing to give up in terms of your calendar and how you want that to look. Each of my days is specific in terms of how I deal with things. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are very heavy on client call days. Other days I have other things that are important, like looking after my rock stars in the Rockstar Mastermind, or I have other times that I'm looking after the Rockstar Success Circle people. So there's all kinds of different pieces in my calendar that are blocked out, that are there, that are placeholders for the other important things that happen in my day. Now Google is my boss. Google comes with me everywhere. I never have to worry because I'm putting things in the calendar. I never have to worry that I'm double booked because I'll put— if I have to go to a dentist appointment or something, I put it into my Google Calendar. It blocks it already on the Acuity calendar, so I never have to worry. It's not like, oh, I booked an appointment for the dentist, but I'm also supposed to be talking to a client right now. Those things don't happen in my world because they're both set up correctly and they work really, really well together. So setting up Acuity can be— it can be confusing if you're not used to those kinds of systems. But once it's set up and once it's running, it's like beautiful, beautiful butter. It just keeps going and going and going. It works really, really well for us. I go one step further. I connect it to Make, which allows me then to be able to take that appointments that are created in Acuity and pops them into ClickUp for me. Acuity already puts them on my Google Calendar. So that's settled. That's an automatic built-in. And it also works with iCal if you're working on Apple products, or it works with Outlook as well, I believe. But I'm a Google human, so that's where I go. So then the Make stuff will bring it into ClickUp for me, so it puts it in my ClickUp calendar as well. Of course, then it allows me to be able to connect it to my clients and all the work I'm doing with them. So it's a beautiful, beautiful system that works really well because it's so customizable. It can work with your brain because you can choose specific things. You can even say, I want— let's say you want to have a 30-minute call with, with discovery call with brand new clients, but you only want 2 of them a week, but you want to give them the offer of maybe 6 different times during the week. You can say, here's the 6 times I'll allow them to get on my calendar, but I only want 2 of them a week. So the first 2 people that apply get them and the other 4 slots disappear because they can't have them anymore. There's lots of different ways that you can set up Acuity to work for your brain and the way you need it to work. You just need to kind of dig in and figure out what those little pieces are. The other nice thing is, is that it actually keeps track of who signed up for things. So I can look at my client list in Acuity and say, here's this human being, they've had this many calls with me, maybe they've canceled a few, those kinds of— all that information is there sitting with their account. So it's a cute little CRM piece. It's not the whole CRM piece, but it is a nice little piece for the calendar piece. Whether you're neurodiverse or whether you're neurotypical, Acuity has a lot of great things to offer that'll work for you and your calendar. So remember, when you're thinking about putting these things together, it's important to think, how do I want my calendar to function? What is it that I need for my calendar to do so that I'm going to be able to serve my clients better, work with myself better? I'm going to be able to look after myself, which then of course when we fill our own cup, we get to look after other people even better, right? So we're looking after everybody by looking after ourselves. And of course all those automations, there's direct integrations with Google Calendars and the other calendars I mentioned. And plus, of course, I told you you could use Make to integrate with these things as well to bring them into different places. The stars are the limit when it comes to how amazing Acuity is for you and your business. If you have any questions, you can always email us at clientcare@geekygirl.ca. Happy to help you out. There will be more information in the show notes here as well so that you can click through and go look at all that information. And if you're just interested in checking out now, you can go to geekygirl.ca/acuity. Of course, that is an affiliate link if you choose to walk through that part of the process, that'd be awesome. Help us to support this channel, support the podcast, and all those wonderful things. I hope you have a fantastic day, and I look forward to talking to you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. Your support means the world to me. You can find show notes for this episode and other goodies at overgiversanonymous.ca. And if you enjoyed this episode or you enjoy the podcast in general, why don't Why not join us in the Overgivers Anonymous Facebook group, where you can connect with overgivers from all over the world? Head on over to geekygirl.ca/group.
