In a previous post, I touched upon time – how we compound it, how we save it, how we spend it – I did not get into how you transform it. That’s for another post perhaps.
This post is all about how I currently manage mine.
I was recently on the phone with a friend and colleague/client, and he made a claim that made me a bit uncomfortable. He thought I had always had my time in order, to do’s organized, and generally my professional house in order. He also said some incredibly flattering things beyond that, and it got me thinking that I might have something worthy of sharing here. Ironically, we were on the phone after attempting to meet a couple of times ‘on the fly’ – which failed fantastically. However, once we scheduled it up – we ended up getting together.
Once there is a time budget associated with something – magic can take place!
Before diving in, I must give a shout out to the Asian Efficiency crew – they wrote this article that began my journey of transforming my approach to calendaring my life. Now that is out of the way, let’s dig in.
Analog World
So I have three, yes three, physical calendars that I am using today.
Family – I have an incredible ‘month / date’ calendar that is chock full of family pictures for each day of the month. I have them all over the house, and I give these out to my immediate family for Christmas gifts. 356 pictures and a slew more for the monthly header pages. I have mine hanging in my bedroom, and in a few other spots throughout the house. This calendar is all about perspective, and I do not write on it at all. It is not used to manage anything other than my perspective if I get too focused on the day to day.
Wall Calendar – I have a NeuYear Asian Efficiency wall calendar. This is primarily where I track my habitual KPIs of which I am committed to four on a daily basis for this year. I set these as my primary four habits when I did my annual plan late last year. This calendar is on the wall in my master bathroom, and it is sorely out of date in terms of getting my KPI’s plotted. I use this calendar to help manage my ‘don’t break the chains’ view. I will expound on the ‘chains’ topic down the line – very powerful stuff made famous by Seinfeld.
Journal – I use the Self Journal on a daily basis. I’ll expand in a future post how I actually use this on the daily with huge stress reduction benefits. There is also anticipatory and flow benefits, much like what a firefighter experiences before entering a burning room. I manage my daily and weekly calendars in this. From this tool, I then join up with the online technology.
Digital World
Outlook – Ubiquitous in the corporate world, I use Microsoft’s flagship calendaring and productivity client. All of my employer-related calendars and events are managed here, and this is the system of record for my corporate calendars.
Google Calendar – This is where my overall calendaring system is housed. Landing upon this solution has truly unified my time management as housed in my calendaring system. A couple of tips regarding my usage of Google calendar.
I have multiple calendars within my Google Calendar. This means that I can effectively ‘tag’ appointments to a specific calendar type. I’ve equated calendars in my Google account to various roles, dimensions of my life, and planning horizons to the various calendars.
I can shift appointments across various types of calendars as well.
Each type of calendar is color coded, and this allows me to see in a glance, what is coming up by context. During the week, my corporate placeholders are blocked off and dominate large chunks of the days. At night however, the colors vary substantially depending upon the various needs within my life for that week.
So what type of calendars can be housed in Google? Any really. Here’s a list of the ones I’m currently operating with as of now:
- Corp Calendar – This is where I house placeholders that block off big chunks of the day for my corporate life. The details are housed in my corporate Outlook account. Conversely, many of my non-work related calendar entries are no longer housed in my Outlook at work – the separation of my calendars is a question of personal privacy and highly individualized.
- Birthdays – Family and friends are sometimes captured here. I need to get these all ported over as these are spread across my iPhone calendar, work calendar, and now my Google calendar.
- Editorial Calendar – So the publishing schedule from October to April was twice per week, however the writing calendar was arguably more frequent for a big chunk of that timeframe. Now this calendar houses the topics that I intend to write up on a given day. I typically plug about a week’s worth of topics in advance, and if I switch a topic out for another due to inspiration – I’ll just reschedule the topic of the day.
- Family / Personal Calendar – This is where my family and personal commitments come into focus. If I have a social commitment or a hot date – these typically get blocked out here. The stuff involving my sons, school, and athletics – all housed in this calendar too. This is a chock full calendar at the moment.
- Personal Business Calendar – This is where I house the events associated with a project or two that I’m building out at the moment. Industry, client, and training events that I am doing for myself are all housed here.
- Planning Calendar – This is where I have major events being anticipated and housed for execution. My quarterly ‘life reviews’ are housed here, and I’m late on my Q2 retrospective… Big things like family vacations and multi day sabbaticals – housed here. This is where my strategic events are housed. As things get closer or as things require more detail, I tend to take the event and break it apart into smaller tasks/events in my other types of calendars.
There are a myriad of other apps out there that can help with this notion of a multi-layered calendar. I have not really invested much research time into them, as I have found this Google backbone works really well, because it is so simple.
So what are the benefits of this Google-based approach?
- Pervasive – I have my calendar with me on my phone and iPad at all times. I no longer need to worry about my work and personal lives being housed on a home and work PC. I can pull my calendar up on any device, even a friend’s – if need be. Zero friction here.
- Search – Google search across all calendar types is inherent. This is a free and very powerful feature that ‘just comes with.’
- Synchronization – I have this calendar synchronized across all personal devices including my old school PC that has Outlook also running on it. This means I no longer have a single point of failure when it comes to my calendar.
- Visually Configurable – I love the fact that I can color code each type of calendar – this is very helpful when I’m scanning my week or day view. I can also segment how many days are displayed on the page – I am tending towards a three day view at the moment.
One final note on how I employ this Google calendar stack, when I’m working from home – I always have this calendar up with a 3 day view on the TV hanging on the wall in my home office. It is incredibly helpful to have this up during my working hours either for my employer or for my own work outside of my employer relationship. When that calendar is on the screen – I am open for business. This is a subtle thing, but very powerful for those looking to create an ‘in office’ mode when you are working from home.
When I’m not working from home, I have my calendar view on the laptop split with my corporate / Outlook calendar on the left half of the screen, and my ‘everything else’ Google calendar to the right. Not exactly the same as when I’m home, but I do get the duality of both calendars readily available.
My daily journal coupled with my online calendaring via Google has transformed my time management approach in every area of my life. Let me know if you want to catch up on how you can incorporate some of this stuff into your life.