The Color Coded Calendar
The magical world of color. Wouldn’t it be great to look at your calendar and know exactly what you need to do based on the color coding of your calendar?
How many of you already color code your calendar?
What made you choose which colors for what?
For those of you who would like some ideas for calendar color coding you’re going to love this.
The idea is to make it so at a glance, you know;
- When an appointment is new, or you need to do something about it before the appointment starts.
- When you have an appointment that requires you to leave the house.
- When you have an appointment where you can stay home.
- What times are open and what times are not.
- What is personal and what is business.
- What things you need to know about but don’t need to act on.
I also use an online scheduler (Calendly.com) to allow my people to book time with me. I program this to be open Monday through Friday from 7:00am to 9:00pm then I block out time on my primary color coded calendar so I can easily control when I am available and when I am not.
Here is how it looks for me.
New Appointments = Red
I have my default calendar color set to red. This way, whenever I create a quick appointment or if an appointment comes in from my scheduling system I know it is new. Once I acknowledge it and create any tasks associated with the event I set the color to the appropriate category. This way new appointments so not catch me off guard.
Personal Time = Light Green
I have created recurring personal time appointments in my calendar. This blocks time from my scheduling program so someone does not accidentally schedule with me during family time. I can adjust these events as I need to without going in and reprogramming my online scheduler.
Personal Appointments = Dark Green
I like to have a visual representation that differentiates my work appointments and my business appointments.
Business Focus Time = Light Blue
This is another time block I set to recurring. I set up a mix of afternoon and morning blocks of focus time during the week and adjust them as I need to so that I can make sure I have time set aside to do things like creating business content and do research for clients. Again, doing this allows me to control from my calendar and not from my online scheduler.
Business Appointments = Dark Blue Blue
For business appointments I like to know how much of my time is dedicated to sessions with clients, connecting and networking with other professionals and things that are time specific and related to my business.
Drive Time = Yellow
I create an appointment around my “away from home” appointments so that I make sure I have enough time to get to the appointment and it is a visual indicator that I need to go somewhere for the appointment. Note: I always put the address in the primary appointment entry and sometimes I also add it to the drive appointment because connected apps like Waze and Google Maps will often calculate drive time for me and give me a notification for when I leave (they just don’t block out the time availability).
FYI Appointments = Grey
Sometimes I need to know about a thing, but I don’t need to do anything about it. Like when my teenagers are getting home or when the housekeeper is coming. I usually need to go in and set these appointments to “free” in my calendar so my scheduler can use the time for appointments.
Take a look at your own calendar and see if any of these ideas would be useful to you.
Get started color coding your calendar by playing the GAME SPACE: Choose your Calendar ColorsGood luck and
Don’t let your technology bully you!
