The Art of Calendaring
The Art of Calendaring
Transcript
Some people call calendaring a practice, but I call it an art. An art because time is a kind of medium that you can do creative things with, and the way that you organize that time, the way that you make it accessible to you, the way that you make it accessible to others, is really unique and really personal. And so just like art, when you look at someone's calendar, you can tell a lot about how they think about their time, and how they're prepared to share it with others. So let's talk a little bit about the art of calendaring, and let me give you some tools to think about how you might use calendars to make more efficient, more artful use of your time. Calendars have been being used by people since basically the beginning of time to help organize the time of the day, what they're going to do, what tasks they're going to prioritize, keeping track of when and where things are happening.
Calendars continue to be really useful to us today. And even though they don't always look the way they used to, they're still an integral part of organizing your time; especially in college, when you're going to have a proliferation of tasks that need to be completed and kept track of. So, let's talk about a couple of different ways of calendaring, so that you can decide which one you want to use to organize your time. I'd like to begin by talking about the idea of a master calendar. Master calendars are something that people have moved away from a little bit in recent years, because we continue to make heavy use of digital tools that don't really think in master terms. But the master calendar is a really, really effective tool for thinking about your term in a macro scale; thinking about the next six months, or even a year. The kind of master calendar that you would most likely use is one that captures the entire semester or the entire academic year.
A master calendar is a paper calendar that captures all of that time, that can be put in a place that's prominent, that you see every day. You're going to put the most important things that you need to do on that calendar. For school, those things might be paper deadlines, project deadlines, or exam dates. But you'll also put things on there that are important going on in your life, things like vacations, weddings, or other things that you need to be doing. You might even have jury duty on a master calendar. The nice thing about a master calendar is this: it's posted prominently on your wall next to your bed, or in your kitchen, so that every day when you look at it you're reminded of the things that you need to do coming up, not just tomorrow, or even a week from now, but months from now. This helps you prepare physiologically to do the things that you need to do and to make the necessary time to do them. That's on a macro scale, on a more micro scale, you might use things like daily or weekly planners. The benefit of this is that you have something tangible that you can write on or scribble in, and it also allows you to think about time in more manageable units, rather than six month units, five or six day units, or even a day at a time. It also allows you to think about the things that you need to do in a more detailed way. So whereas you might not put a coffee date, or a meeting with a professor, or a dentist appointment on a master calendar, you would certainly put those things in your daily planner, and that's going to help you keep track of the things that you need to do day in and day out.
Here's an example of a weekly plan that a student put together for me a couple of years ago, and I think it's a really cool document, because it does two things at once. Yes it's a calendar. It shows how the student has organized his time, but it's also a kind of time audit. It shows us how much time is being spent on particular activities, and where the student is putting their most valuable time. You can see that the student's classes have been inputted into the plan. You can see that there's a section for note review at the end of each day, so that the student has scheduled time to go back over their notes from their lectures. You'll even see a really cool section on Fridays called Jo's Articles. That's time that the student set aside to read his wife's articles for publication each and every week. Because let's face it; life gets busy, and unless we schedule special time to do the things that are important to us, sometimes, we don't get around to doing them.
And so here, you can see the value of the weekly plan in making specific, deliberate time to things that the student thought were important. All of his non-negotiables are there. Now even though we've talked about a master calendar, and we've talked about a daily and weekly planner, digital tools continue to be really powerful, really convenient options for calendaring your time. There are too many available to list here, but I will briefly mention Google Calendar as one of several tools that can be used to help you organize your time in a digital fashion, and carry it with you on your phone. This helps you think about your time in the small scale, by the day; larger scale, by the week, or even zooming out to the month or the year. It allows you to input information in as broad or as granular a way as you like, and critically, it allows you to set digital reminders. The master calendar is helpful, but it's never going to tap you on the back to remind you that something's due, unless you look right at it. Your phone however, or your computer, can remind you that something's due tomorrow, or something's due next week.
And so you can use that technology of reminders to help you manage your time more effectively, and to keep track of all of those tasks that sometimes get lost. Calendars are just one tool to help you organize your time, but remember, using tools like this gives you control of your time. And the more control you have of your time, the more efficient and effective your use of it is going to be.
Calendars continue to be really useful to us today. And even though they don't always look the way they used to, they're still an integral part of organizing your time; especially in college, when you're going to have a proliferation of tasks that need to be completed and kept track of. So, let's talk about a couple of different ways of calendaring, so that you can decide which one you want to use to organize your time. I'd like to begin by talking about the idea of a master calendar. Master calendars are something that people have moved away from a little bit in recent years, because we continue to make heavy use of digital tools that don't really think in master terms. But the master calendar is a really, really effective tool for thinking about your term in a macro scale; thinking about the next six months, or even a year. The kind of master calendar that you would most likely use is one that captures the entire semester or the entire academic year.
A master calendar is a paper calendar that captures all of that time, that can be put in a place that's prominent, that you see every day. You're going to put the most important things that you need to do on that calendar. For school, those things might be paper deadlines, project deadlines, or exam dates. But you'll also put things on there that are important going on in your life, things like vacations, weddings, or other things that you need to be doing. You might even have jury duty on a master calendar. The nice thing about a master calendar is this: it's posted prominently on your wall next to your bed, or in your kitchen, so that every day when you look at it you're reminded of the things that you need to do coming up, not just tomorrow, or even a week from now, but months from now. This helps you prepare physiologically to do the things that you need to do and to make the necessary time to do them. That's on a macro scale, on a more micro scale, you might use things like daily or weekly planners. The benefit of this is that you have something tangible that you can write on or scribble in, and it also allows you to think about time in more manageable units, rather than six month units, five or six day units, or even a day at a time. It also allows you to think about the things that you need to do in a more detailed way. So whereas you might not put a coffee date, or a meeting with a professor, or a dentist appointment on a master calendar, you would certainly put those things in your daily planner, and that's going to help you keep track of the things that you need to do day in and day out.
Here's an example of a weekly plan that a student put together for me a couple of years ago, and I think it's a really cool document, because it does two things at once. Yes it's a calendar. It shows how the student has organized his time, but it's also a kind of time audit. It shows us how much time is being spent on particular activities, and where the student is putting their most valuable time. You can see that the student's classes have been inputted into the plan. You can see that there's a section for note review at the end of each day, so that the student has scheduled time to go back over their notes from their lectures. You'll even see a really cool section on Fridays called Jo's Articles. That's time that the student set aside to read his wife's articles for publication each and every week. Because let's face it; life gets busy, and unless we schedule special time to do the things that are important to us, sometimes, we don't get around to doing them.
And so here, you can see the value of the weekly plan in making specific, deliberate time to things that the student thought were important. All of his non-negotiables are there. Now even though we've talked about a master calendar, and we've talked about a daily and weekly planner, digital tools continue to be really powerful, really convenient options for calendaring your time. There are too many available to list here, but I will briefly mention Google Calendar as one of several tools that can be used to help you organize your time in a digital fashion, and carry it with you on your phone. This helps you think about your time in the small scale, by the day; larger scale, by the week, or even zooming out to the month or the year. It allows you to input information in as broad or as granular a way as you like, and critically, it allows you to set digital reminders. The master calendar is helpful, but it's never going to tap you on the back to remind you that something's due, unless you look right at it. Your phone however, or your computer, can remind you that something's due tomorrow, or something's due next week.
And so you can use that technology of reminders to help you manage your time more effectively, and to keep track of all of those tasks that sometimes get lost. Calendars are just one tool to help you organize your time, but remember, using tools like this gives you control of your time. And the more control you have of your time, the more efficient and effective your use of it is going to be.