Your calendar is your #1 productivity tool to keep track of life.
Improving your calendar habits will have ripple effects to other organizational and managerial aspects of your responsibilities. Better calendar routines will trigger further productivity improvements.
1. Only keep actual appointments on the calendar.
Your calendar needs to be trustworthy. Don’t put your hopes or wishes on your calendar. A better calendar is used for appointments only so you can see the hard lines of your day. If you add things you hope to get to in a day, you’ll have to mentally sort and decide every time you look at it, which will make you not want to look at it. Keep your calendar reserved for real appointments.
2. Only keep one calendar.
If you have appointments and birthdays and other commitments spread around on multiple calendars, you’ll need to look at more than one in order to know what’s going on in a day. The more places you have to look, the more likely it is something will fall through the cracks. Keep one calendar so you have only one place to look – one trustworthy place that holds everything you’ve committed your time to.
3. Always take your calendar with you.
In order to keep your calendar up to date, keep it with you and add appointments and commitments to it immediately as you make them. Then you will never wonder whether or not you’re forgetting an appointment.
4. Sync your calendar with your husband.
Staying on the same page with your husband is easier when you are in tune with each other’s calendar. My husband doesn’t want to see everything on my calendar, and I don’t need to see his work calendar, but for appointments and obligations outside his work day, it’s helpful to know what’s on the family schedule. We do this by sharing Google calendars, as explained in my calendar tour below, but a weekly conversation about what’s on the calendar is a good practice, also.
5. Look at your calendar a minimum of twice every day.
A calendar will do you no good if you don’t look at it. Build time into your day, at least in the morning and the evening, to look over your calendar for the day, the week, and the month coming up.
Take some time this week to solidify your better calendar workflow. Make it trustworthy. Make it useful.
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Give every hour a name.
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