Like a handsaw or spade, a schedule is a critical tool for the arborist. A schedule helps guide us through the canopy of work orders, leads and client meetings; and timing seasonal treatments. It can be as dull as a legal pad or booklet planner, or as sharp as a modern app. Some schedules are flexible, and some are rigid, depending on the day or the environment, or the job perhaps. They will inevitably grow through the year, and will require a bit of pruning or grafting at some point as well. Our schedules take on a bit of our own personality and characterize the type of business we run. They can help us recount the past, manage the present and capture the future.

Annie Dillard wrote that, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time…it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself decades later, still living.”

This is true: our schedule keeps us afloat, and it keeps us laboring. I have built my scheduling ‘system’ over the past few years in a specific manner, and it works extremely well for my scale of arboriculture business, which is a very petite outfit. One part of my system is a little old-school in nature, and consists of a two-part-pen-and-paper-method. One paper is a rolling legal pad of names, numbers, emails and notes/sketches. The other paper is a daily booklet planner. Together, they work in a hierarchy: legal pad to planner. I keep each part of the two-part system in a metal clipboard bin with a very specific ball-point pen: the Pilot G2 07.

First, the legal pad. As a lead comes in, I write down a name, phone number and address. Recurring throughout the legal pad, I have two columns (not necessarily next to one another), one is titled ‘bids’ and one is titled ‘jobs’. If a bid is excepted, it moves into the job column. When the job is completed, it gets marked with a checkmark and crossed off with a long dash. I also take detailed notes on my legal pad on job specifications when I go to look at the site and meet with the client. The legal pad is somewhat messy to the untrained eye, but as Dillard suggests, it’s actually defending against chaos. It is the meristematic region of my schedule, each new page like a new cell layer added day after day. And just like a cross section of trunk, I can find everything I need in it. It’s my brainstorming platform. It’s how I start and end each day. Sometimes I draw boxes around jobs that will fit well together on a particular day, or week, or I’ll sketch out rough site maps of crane-assisted removal jobs or tree installation projects or pruning sketches. I’ll write questions that I may have about certain projects, or about certain clients. I’ll make notes on details about a job that excites me, like a technical challenge or a unique tree quality or disorder. Mostly though, it is a jumbled to-do list. A rough draft, if you will, of a completed schedule.

Now, for the booklet planner. I get a new one every year for Christmas. Utilizing my ‘jobs’ column from my legal pad, I move those projects into my daily planner week by week, so that my clients can have an expectation of when we will be getting around to their project. And so I can have somewhat of a deadline for deliverables. Accompanying each day in my booklet planner is a few simple notes on starting times, ending times and what I did. I also note payments received or unpaid receipts in my planner as well. At the top of each week in the planner, I’ll list the jobs that I want to accomplish that week, and then assign each job to a specific day or block of days. This, of course, is a flexible process and is constantly being edited because sometimes jobs are canceled by a client, poor weather rolls in, or other factors ensue. But I try to be very strict on accomplishing tasks once they make it into the booklet planner. I find that our clients appreciate, sometimes more than anything else, upholding our promise of executing the work when we say we will and adhering to the timeline that we put them on. The booklet planner is a system of checks and balances on keeping our word. And that is a big part of my company’s value proposition. I know this paper approach is risky business in a world of technological interface, because I risk losing it all to spilled coffee or fire or a chance hurricane, so maybe my multi-part schedule is a small offering of defiance in a technologically organized world.

Don’t worry though, I couple my pen-and-paper approach with the Quikbooks App. As clients and jobs are confirmed, I can quickly interface that information into the app, I can email estimates and invoices, send receipts when needed, document my expenses and profits, and everything remains digitally documented for the dreaded tax-season every year. This system allows me the best of both worlds. Each little unit in my system tells a slightly different story. My pen and paper approach maintains the physicality to sketch, cross out and brainstorm in a way that is enjoyable to me. It’s an analog site map guiding me towards a final presentation in the more shareable, digitized app. The accumulation of handwritten notes is also nostalgic at the end of the year, when I sit by the wood stove and reminisce about the best and the worst of jobs, the ones I wish I got, and the ones I wish I never did. If I feel the need, I can crumble up a page and throw it into the fire. I can also open my app, and swipe to delete that memory as well.

A schedule can guide us through proper seasonal timing of arboriculture prescriptions too. For instance, we prune live growth from oaks in dormancy. And the same goes for birches. We avoid transplanting in the middle of summer heat, and installing trees during a drought. We don’t prune trees while they are flowering, or when they’re new leaves are developing. These examples and hundreds of other seasonal restrictions can also affect our working schedule in big ways, helping us to sort jobs according to special seasonal requirements. We can put a rush on a certain project, or move it to the dormancy period, or even to the following growing season in some cases. Seasonal timing may require the character of a job to change, perhaps a tree needs further inspection, or foliar or soil sample lab testing in order to determine the best direction for a project to follow. This timing can gain our clients trust and respect, because it shows that we’re not just focused on economical gains, we are also focused on the economy of trees as well.

My scheduling system also helps me to answer two very important questions: ‘Who am I working for?’ and ‘What am I doing?’ Who you work for and what you do define the character of your company. A schedule, when we look closely at it, can allow us to focus on what we do really well and what we do not do really well. This examination can be like turning the knob of a microscope in order to bring into the view the thing we are studying: the arboriculture services we provide and the prescriptions we recommend. When things are not going well, or the process is frustrating, I can usually look to my scheduling system in order to find the bug. Example 1: People are growing impatient; perhaps they have been waiting in the job column or bid column too long without the proper expectations delivered through timely communication ie, ‘we can’t get there for several weeks’, ‘this isn’t the right timing for that prescription’, etc. Maybe I am giving preference to a job that came in sometime after someone who has been previously waiting. Therefore, my schedule becomes a communicative vessel on which I can sail with waiting clients. It can also highlight that we simply can’t take on a specific project for someone, because we don’t have the time or labor power, justifying the need for a referral to another firm. This method can be very satisfying for customers, as they feel that we respect their time budget and their desire to get things done, helping them without actually doing the work ourselves. People remember that in the future, and perhaps they will end up back on our schedule for a more suitable offering of our services. Example 2: We are physically tired and drained, feeling like there’s not enough hours in the day for work and life; the schedule is top-loaded with physically demanding work like big crown climbing and rigging intensive projects that demand longer hours and lots of material management. The eyes-are-bigger-than-the-tummy dilemma. My schedule will tell me this before my body does, even though I may not want to hear it. We can pump the brakes a bit and sprinkle in some ornamental work, some more days to get out and look and work, some consultation and conversation with potential clients, or even a day off. Emerson wrote, “It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone.” That’s why I rely on my schedule for a clear picture of my business.

Essentially, a well balanced schedule can help meet client demands and expectations. Our schedule helps with timing, and timing is everything. It can also add balance to our lives, which can add quality to our lives. And quality in our lives can add quality to our business. A schedule is a good reminder that there is always something needing done: a large project or a quick phone call, and many times both can pay huge dividends. Like Dillard tells us, it is the scaffolding that we stand on in order to labor away at each day, like riding the elephant while we nibble away at it at the same time.