The blog

Do you use your cal­en­dar as a to-do-list?

Are you suc­cess­ful in esti­mat­ing what you will have time for in a day or do you spend time trans­fer­ring things from one day in the cal­en­dar to another?

Have you ever missed com­plet­ing a task since you for­got to move it to the next week when you were not able to fin­ish it this week? 

Be care­ful and mod­er­ate with what you sched­ule in your calendar.

Less fix­a­tion – more freedom

In almost everyone’s lives things appear out of nowhere on a dai­ly basis. E‑mails drop into the inbox, some­one calls, a col­league drops by, or some­thing else occurs which demands your atten­tion. In moments like these, we need to be able to re-prioritize. 

If you have few fixed items in the cal­en­dar, you are as free as you can get to in every point in time do what is the right thing to do right now. In a world and life which is in con­stant flux, you can­not pre­dict what is to hap­pen in each giv­en moment in the future. 

Do this

1. Go through your cal­en­dar, start­ing with this week. Remove all notes which do not cor­re­spond with one of the fol­low­ing four cat­e­gories:
   • Meet­ings togeth­er with someone.
   • Things you real­ly need to get done at this par­tic­u­lar time and there­fore reserve the time you have set aside.
   • A cou­ple of hours where you have sched­uled a meet­ing ​“with your­self”, as to be sure to have free time at your dis­pos­al when you can pick out assign­ments from your to-do-list.
   • Time set aside to final­ly get that impor­tant, but not urgent, assign­ment done, which you have been post­pon­ing for all too long.
2. Put the notes that were actu­al­ly to-do-assign­ments on your to-do-list instead.
3. Enjoy hav­ing some ​“breath­ing space in your cal­en­dar”. Though it is not free time, it is time that you can use for what, under your cir­cum­stances, have the high­est pri­or­i­ty at the time.

Few­er replace­ments and quick­er bookings

If you only book meet­ings and time you ded­i­cat­ed for your own impor­tant work, then you will need to spend less time mov­ing notes on what you have to do for­ward and fur­ther ahead in the calendar.

It will be eas­i­er and quick­er for you to book meet­ings since you will find it eas­i­er to deter­mine what is actu­al­ly impor­tant, and more quick­ly deter­mine when you actu­al­ly have time for a new meet­ing and when you do not.

Final­ly, pro­vid­ed that you have a to-do-list, you will work more con­sis­tent­ly as you have your to-do-assign­ments in one place (on your to-do-list) instead of in two (on the to-do-list and in the cal­en­dar), which will give you an eas­i­er overview on what you have to do. It will thor­ough­ly help your prioritizing.

How do you do it?

What is your best trick to opti­mize the usage of your cal­en­dar? Do tell! Leave a comment!