Is Your Calendar Working?
What do you need from your calendar? and is it doing that for you?
We (as individuals) are comprised of teams and families and co-workers and such. We are not isolated islands. What we choose to do or don’t do often requires a lot of coordinating, and thus, the calendar was born. Go do your own research into the origin of calendars if you want more information on that.
For our purposes let’s just talk about what is, and what it means for you. In our everyday lives, we run into A LOT of calendars. By calendar, I mean any schedule, written, thought about, or vaguely defined date and time situations that run our lives.
I will pay quick homage to the family paper calendar. A physical paper calendar is a great thing and it is part of my own calendar organization system. Yay paper calendar! At the same time our lives are too complex for just one paper calendar.
The little squares are really not enough for us to keep track of everything we need for all of our appointments. The date, time, address, things to bring, knowledge to gather, who is involved. The risk you take when you only have one physical copy of all this information is dangerous and puts you at unnecessary risk of losing everything. Let’s make our lives easier.
We are going to dig into the advantages of using digital calendars. They are not as simple as writing in the appropriate little square, but they are much more powerful and useful. With digital, we have colors we can use for organization and multiple personal calendars we can use to isolate specific types of activities and we have the option to share our calendars or subscribe to other calendars.
Let’s break down what each of these things mean and how they work. Then we will talk about the progression to digital and why you might be ready to make the switch, or not.
Let’s talk about the Appointment
Appointments are the lifeblood of the calendar and the reason for the calendar’s very existence.
Here are the common things we need to know in the average calendar appointment.
- Title: Duh, we need to know what the appointment is.
- Date: Yup, that is where the calendar is helpful.
- Time: Sure, we need to know when to show up.
Dates and times become too easy to forget if we don’t write them down somewhere. The arrangement of a calendar allows us to notice right away if the appointment will work, or if we are too busy. These three are usually all we get with our month view paper calendar.
Once we get to the point where we need to see more information we move to more of a planner style appointment book, where we can enter more information. Enter the weekly or daily calendar entries in our planner. Your paper calendar is still useful at this point.
- Location: You need to know where you are going.
- Notes: I love notes fields! You can enter all the critical information you need for the appointment.
Beyond these basic entries, the paper calendar becomes restricted and a digital calendar starts to become a logistical necessity.
A digital calendar can add so much more to the situation.
Are you ready for this?
The Single Digital Calendar
In every digital calendar situation, you start with a single default calendar, just like a paper calendar or planner.
Beyond the fields found in planners, a digital calendar has the capacity to add a whole lot more.
- Title: By entering the title of your appointment into your digital calendar you create a record of what you have done and what you plan to do. This same title also allows you to use it in a search. Need to know how often you went to the doctor in the last year. Search “Dr. Apt.” find out when that fundraising auction is, type “fundraising auction” into your calendar search and there you have it. No need to flip through pages and scan through tons of appointments.
- Date: Not just a bit of information. Adding the date allows the system to switch from month, to week, to today, instantly as you need it.
- Time: In a digital calendar you set a start and end time allowing you to see not just when you need to begin your appointment but how long it may take, what things it will overlap. One of the greatest benefits of the digital time is the ability to set a reminder based on the date and time of the calendar entry. This is a game changer!
- Repeat: This is an awesome feature of the digital calendar. Set weekly appointments without needing to write or even set each appointment. Set yearly appointments with all the information you need when that appointment shows up again. No need to keep it in your head.
- Location: With many of the calendars that are connected to a smartphone the location field also has an added benefit. Your smartphone can take that location from your calendar and find directions for you, it can even tell you how long the drive will take and when you need to leave so you are not late.
- The Notes Field: This field is super cool in any form. With a digital notes field, you can take advantage of a lot more room for details and you can use the ever exciting cut and paste.
Even these simple features make the digital calendar a wonder to behold.
There is more, much more…
Check out this post on Calendar Sharing
Nicole Lux-Ritchie - Founder of Luxcentric
Nicole's mission is to help feminine professionals gain the technical
skills they need to grow their business and focus on their missions.
The focus of Luxcentric is on training practical strategies in the area of the core technologies.
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For those of you who feel like you are not quite using your digital calendar to its full potential let’s schedule a topic tackle and talk about it.
