30 Days to a More Organized Life, Day 10: Use a Digital Calendar
If you’re still using a paper calendar in the second decade of the new millennium, you really need to reconsider.
Normally, I’m not a tool Nazi. I think people should use whatever works best for them, but calendars are the exception. Digital calendars accomplish what paper never can.
Take, for example, recurring events: lets say that at your office there’s an all-hands meeting at the end and the middle of each financial year, a division meeting the first Monday of every month and a team meeting every Wednesday. Using a paper calendar to keep track of these events is impractical, time consuming and error prone.
Consider what happens when the team leader changes those meetings from Wednesdays to Tuesdays. Are you going to go through the whole year and change the day each week? Don’t make any mistakes, and hope that the team leader doesn’t change it again.
Computers were built for systematic, repeating work: take advantage of them. Instead of writing team meeting 52 times, get the computer calendar to do it for you.
Once you start using recurring events on a digital calendar, you’ll love them. Their uses include, but are not limited to: reminders of holidays, health checkups, anniversaries and birthdays. It’s not that you can’t remember your own wedding anniversary or your siblings’ birthdays, it’s that you shouldn’t have to.
Keep your calendar as clean as possible and limit it to the following things:
- Appointments
- Meetings
- Deadlines
- Actions that must occur on a given day
- Personal time
- Recurring events
- Notes to your future self
Deadlines are best kept track of in the spot for all-day events, as are notes to your future self.
Which calendar to use? If you have an Apple, try iCal (what I use). If you’re on Microsoft Windows, you can download the free Sunbird calendar. If you need to switch computers frequently, try Google Calendar.
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Header photograph by: G. Rivas Valderrama
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This is the first year I haven’t bought myself a pocket calendar, after I realized I never even touched the one I bought in January 2009.
My suggestion for those who don’t want a big complicated calendar app: Rainlendar. It’s a great mini app with a lot of functionality that you “pin” on your wallpaper where you want it and never have to think about it again… boot up the computer and the first thing you see are the events and tasks for the day.