Pairing My Tasks With My Calendar

How to Pair Your Calendar and Your Task Lists?

Calendar Data Needs – Part 5

Everyone has them whether we write them down or not and that’s tasks. We all have this list of tasks, be it written, digital, or memorized. And although we have task lists, getting all the tasks done is still a problem. Well after decades of managing tasks to time, I’ve discovered one problem that most experts and professionals haven’t accounted for and that’s how to pair tasks with the time we have. Why is it we think of our tasks separately than we do our calendars? We place our tasks on one side of the desk and our calendar sits on another side. What I’ve learned is no matter what the task, they all must have a priority in our life and a time to be completed. Let’s break these two concepts down a bit to expose the problem and provide insight into a solution for you, your life, your small business, your church, and/or your organization.

Tasks and Time
Every task no matter how big or how small requires time. And if you don’t make time for it, it doesn’t get done and the even more frustrating problem is when it remains on your task list. Remember what gets scheduled gets accomplished. If you have a task management system/todo app, then you need to integrate these tasks into your calendar. You may want to set aside time for reviewing your tasks and times to tackle your task list or you might use a task list app that has a calendar integration platform that works with your calendar. This can be very beneficial as you can see in your calendar what action items must get done on what day and what time. Regardless of whether you use an app to integrate tasks into your calendar or you review your tasks and add appointments to your calendar yourself, you must get in the habit of scheduling time to get it done. The calendar holds the key to getting more tasks completed than simply looking at all the tasks you have to complete and trying to find the time to do it. It’s hard to find time when all your time has been budgeted.

“There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:” – bible.com/97/ecc.3.1.msg

Prioritizing Tasks
Let’s talk about your task management system briefly, we’ll discuss further in another section. In order to be better at managing tasks to time, you’d need to be committed to the place in which you store your tasks. In other words, if you have a process of keeping up with your tasks you need to go all in with it. Don’t have tasks scattered between places, apps, or systems, put them all in one place. Be committed to make sure this central place houses all the tasks you have. This will make it easy for you to determine what’s all pending and to set a priority for what’s to be done next or when later.

Now that you have your tasks in one place, take a look at your calendar and find all the available time slots you can use to perform the work of these tasks. You see, at the end of every month, I go into my calendar for the next month and identify all my available time slots. These time slots tell me a couple things: 1) How much time I can commit to working on my tasks and 2) when I can work on tasks.

  1. How much time I have.
    Once you set your available time slots, you then know how much time during the month you have to work with. You can’t get more time, but you can decide what gets in these slots and have intentional focus. Don’t forget, we are talking about your calendar and how you budget your time for tasks (your todo items).
  2. When to work.
    I like using my calendar to govern what I do when. It keeps me on track to accomplish what must be done and takes the worries away. I rarely get caught off guard by a fire because I spend quality time making sure my task manager is updated and my calendar remains updated. You should give it a try.
    Plug in the most important and time sensitive tasks into your available time slots.
    Side note: don’t over do it and add slots you know really aren’t available. See “The Big Four When It Comes To Your Calendar.”
    These time slots represent all the time you have to do any work you plan on doing. You can’t get more time and you can’t get your time back. So you see how important it is to pair your calendar with your task management system.

We call this “task calendar integration.” No matter whether you think of it this way or not, it happens everyday, usually by force. I want you to plan for it so that you can, not only be ahead and eliminate future fires but rather, get more done and perform the right tasks.

Question: What have you found to be your biggest problem with your todo-lists?

I know this was helpful, it helped me. Thanks always for visiting kerryAclark.com.

Share this with at least one of your friends and one colleague who could use a tip to become more productive.

Decluttering Your Calendar

How You Can Add Events to Your Calendar and Keep It Clutter Free?

Calendar Data Needs – Part 4

For people who’ve learned to live by and integrate their calendar into their lives, there comes a time you’ll need to segment and have segmented calendars to support your interests and your calendar data needs. I’d like to give you a few add-on calendars that we use in addition to using a primary calendar.

Make a plan for your main/primary calendar.  
Make sure you keep your main calendar clutter free for only the things important to you. Everyone needs their very own main or primary calendar. This calendar represents your daily calendar transactions. Let’s think of the items on your calendar as time transactions used against your time-budget. In this way, you can see how you’re spending your time. Let me reiterate that I not only track set appointments and meetings, I track what I’m doing. So if we watch an unscheduled movie on Saturday night either Pamela or myself will create a calendar appointment and invite each other. In this way, we can also go back and review how we spent our time. Our calendar also acts as a time journal which helps us remember what we had going on, on any particular day.

Create a birthday calendar or special days calendar.
It’s important to have the calendar you really need at your fingertips. It’s nothing more gratifying than to make sure you don’t miss those important birthdays. Have you ever forgotten someone’s birthday to only be put on the spot that you’d forgotten? It’s so embarrassing and pretty unprofessional when we all have smartphones. You might as well have a dumb phone. 

Like most, you never want to forget a person’s birthday. Allow me to make you aware that there are three ways to implement this type of calendar.

    • Include Social Network Events.
      Include social network events to display on your calendar. Apps like Facebook do a great job of displaying birthdays and special events right on your calendar. The only downside, if it still exists, is you’re not able to set a reminder of birthdays that come up. You see Pamela and I use our birthday calendar so that we can plan for sending all the folks we know a birthday card in the mail. Not having a reminder will cause us great delays in this endeavor.
    • Allow Your Contacts App to Display Birthdays.
      Many devices will allow your contacts app to display birthdays and important events on your calendar. This requires discipline in populating your contacts list regularly and accurately. We will discuss contacts later. Your contacts app is the most important data-need and “app information service” you have.
  • Create Your Own Birthday Calendar.
    This solution is our birthday calendar-data-need solution of choice. We populate our own calendar, called the birthday calendar, ourselves. This way we can set reminders a month out if needed. It provides us with the flexibility we need to satisfy our own “app information service” needs centered around birthdays independently of anything else.

Add holidays to your calendar and/or subscribed to choice calendars.
The internet is a powerful tool and offers calendars you can subscribe to. You can choose from a number of holiday calendars. You can also subscribe to your favorite sport’s team calendars. And our favorite is our daughter’s school calendars. We can see what’s coming up at her school without waiting for a notification as well as see what event has changed or been rescheduled. Find a calendar to subscribe to that satisfies a data-need in your life’s interests. 

The above examples should give you some ideas on where to begin adding in other events you don’t want to clutter your primary calendar with, but at the same time have visibility into them.

Have you ever wondered how you can add events to your calendar and keep it separate so that you don’t have an overly cluttered calendar? That was my most major calendar-data-need. I once had way too much on my calendar and then I started pursuing ways to limit it and at the same time have access. This is what led to the ideas we’ve mentioned above. See how you can use these add-on calendars to meet the same or similar calendar-needs you might be experiencing. 

Thanks for visiting Kerry A. Clark & Co.’s “Using Tech Your Way” series. 

Managing Someone Else’s Calendar

How To Manage Another’s Calendar 

Calendar Data Needs – Part 3

If you have someone else managing your calendar you need a more robust calendar. You will need more features than most. Let’s review a couple of calendar options that we recommend for more advanced users.

  • Establish a cloud-based calendar solution.
    Take a look at creating a Google account or Microsoft account. Initially both are free.  Later when you’ve used them for a while and are storing tons of data you’ll outgrow the free versions. That’s not a bad thing. It just means you’re growing.
  • Figure out which calendar solution is your best fit.
    Check out which one you prefer and begin with that one. I suggest you focus on taking a step right away. We started with Google (which we still use) and have migrated to Microsoft because our needs changed and we needed to customize our efforts, which influenced the switch. Don’t be afraid to make a change, switch, or try something different. This is the only way you can find the tool or app that works best with your needs.
  • Work to customize the calendar to meet your needs and get used to using the features it offers.
    These platforms offer quite a few features and customizations. We suggest you go into making this choice by creating a list of your plans and immediate needs. You want to make sure whichever solution you select best meets your calendar data needs. For example, each calendar option offers a public URL available to share your calendar(s) with anyone using a calendar app. This might be important to how you wish to use your calendar, so choose an option that fits your desired needs.

Share/give access to your calendar to a person designated for the job. Create a document with this information to store so that it doesn’t have to be reproduced when the position or person changes. Store this information in your shared cloud storage (more on that in sections to come).  Use it as a living document on how to manage your cloud storage going forward. It’s important and should be treated in a professional manner.

Provide as many parameters as possible for the person who’ll assist in maintaining your calendar. Since someone will manage your calendar you need to provide some guidelines. Don’t skip this step because it’s the foundation upon which you’re calendar will be built.  

No such thing as a personal calendar separate from a professional calendar.
When I was an executive administrator, I managed the CEO’s calendar. He was very particular which worked for us both because so am I. Day one, he gave a few important criteria to follow when adding to his calendar. Many like to refer to this as personalizing the calendar. I’d like to stop here just to say there’s no such thing as a personal calendar and a professional calendar, it’s all just your calendar. You might have personal appointments and work-related/professional appointments, but you’re not two people with double the amount of time. It’s helpful to stop thinking of these as separate when it’s all about your time, mapping one person’s priorities to a set amount of time.

There must be guidelines for managing someone else’s calendar.
So what type of guidelines does one need? Let me introduce you to what Michael Hyatt calls the ideal work week. You need to know what specifics such as the preferred meeting days and times. What are the standing appointments in a given week? What staple appointments must be on the calendar each month, quarter, year, or even several years? What are the times that should be blocked out for non-work related activities? Here are a few other ideas:

  • Add margin.
    For the one managing the calendar, you must consider how much margin you need to include.BTW – margin will find its way into a person’s calendar no matter what. We don’t want it to be at the expense of others, so let’s plan to build it in.
  • Be prepared to go overboard with meetings.
    Schedule everything, down to processing emails if necessary and down-time. I have appoints for sleep so that I can visually see what time I have available and nothing more. I call it budgeting time. This way not only can I see what I have in front of me, I can also evaluate the time I’ve spent. I don’t want to assume I have time for activities when I don’t.

Parameter examples. Let me help you out by giving you a few examples.

  • Anniversaries. For busy people, they need help remembering anniversaries. This isn’t limited to wedding anniversaries, but deaths, children’s special events, any special annual significant dates like work anniversaries of key-staff, etc.
  • Birthdays. If you use a calendar, the best way to remember birthdays is to add it to the calendar and set reminders. You can also add notes for gifts you’d like to send or any action you’d like to take. For someone keeping the calendar, it’s the best place to jot down what your boss may have had in mind or suggestions as to what he/she could do for a person’s birthday. The calendar is more than a date keeper you see, it maintains significant data for all your time related activities.
  • Special Conferences. Are there conferences or seminars that the one your assisting must attend. Begin the project by adding the key information for the conference right into the calendar. In fact, I store all details related to my travel events in my calendar. In this way, I don’t have to look for any information. For example, travel, lodging, and other accommodation check-in times are right there with confirmation numbers and phone numbers.
  • Holidays. Go ahead and add holidays into the calendar. You’d be surprised at how often holidays sneak up on executives. If you want to exceed the expectations of the one you’re serving then use the calendar for all you can, it’s easy, effective and proficient.
  • Staple events. I’m not sure what staple events you might have in your organization, but when I was in full-time ministry, we had four major conferences that had to make its way on the calendar each year. So I had an appointment set on my calendar to add those special events into all the calendars I managed so that these key events wouldn’t be missed.

A calendar is nothing more than a tool. The tool is designed to work for you and make your life easier. Don’t allow the tool used to make things easier for you to make your life hard because you’re not good at using it. Take these tips, examples, and suggestions and apply them at once.  It can’t hurt; it can only make life better.

The Big Four When It Comes To Your Calendar

Getting The Most Out of Using Your Calendar

Calendar Data Needs – Part 2

As you already know, we’ve written content for three groups who use App Information Service (AIS).  Individuals, small businesses (which include small organizations and non-profit organizations), and Churches.   For this installment of the data-need for budgeting time, we will concentrate on individuals. An individual in this case is not limited to a single person, but a life, a home, a marriage, or relationship. 

As an individual, you more than likely manage your own calendar with no help from anyone else.  This is great and means you have sole ownership and can make meeting/appointment decisions quickly.  With this in mind, your calendar decisions and usage falls into one of four categories: appointments, calendar options, tracking time, and planning for the future.  Don’t be discouraged if you don’t use all four categories. Remember, we not only want to cover tips on how to use what you already have, but want to give you ideas of ways to use what you have in ways you’ve not yet considered.  Let’s begin.

Appointments.  The main feature for which we have a calendar is to set appointments.  Most of us, don’t visually think of all the appointments we have because we’ve never taken the time to place them on a calendar that we can see.  To manage how you use your time, seeing a visual depiction is most helpful. Let’s say you wish to have lunch with a friend. Add it to your native mobile device calendar as this works seamlessly with your device.  I don’t suggest using other calendar apps as this creates more work and more accounts to manage, if your new to using a calendar regularly and since you have sole-proprietorship of your calendar. You want to make this as easy and simple to use as possible; don’t complicate it or this will discourage use. Continue reading “The Big Four When It Comes To Your Calendar”

Budgeting Your Time

The Calendar Apps Available to You

Calendar Data Needs – Part 1

Let’s begin with what I believe is the greatest and most important data need any human-being can have, managing time.  The root problem of time management is the myth that one can even manage time. Time is the one thing we can not manage; you have what you have and nothing more.  In fact, you can’t add more time to your day nor can you subtract any. You can’t give someone your hours and you can’t save them in a time-bank. What we manage is how we budget for our time? 

Introduction to Calendar Data
What will we do with the time that’s been given?  Well, that’s where a calendar comes into play and what sets the successful person apart.  It’s what makes a normal person become exceptional. Everyone budgets their time in two ways: a clock and a calendar.  We will focus on the calendar in this section. While you don’t think of a calendar as housing data, it does. It has a lot of important data.  The calendar tells one when everything is to be done. It gives people a common reference point. Not to go into the physics of a calendar and how that works, let’s just jump right into your data needs surrounding your calendar.

“The key is not to prioritize what is on the schedule but to schedule your priorities.” ~ Stephen Covey

The App Known as Your Calendar
So what calendars are available to you? 

You need to first understand what’s available.  There are quite a few options available for calendars.  Please note that I’m not going to discuss analog (paper or physical) calendars, which I think are very helpful and remain very relevant even in our high-tech age.  Since we’re discussing, App Information Services (AIS), I will provide three digital calendars that I highly recommend and are available to you for free.  These three are widely used, supported, and more than likely you’ve already heard of them.

    • Native mobile device calendar.  For those who live and are isolated to nothing more than a smartphone, the native mobile device calendar will work and is very good when you don’t need very many bells and whistles.  It’s perfect for individuals who have very limited team interactions to manage. Also most mobile device calendars provide a web-based version should you need to access it from a computer (i.e. icloud.com for iOS and Google Calendar for Android).
    • Google Calendar. Google Calendar is one of the most popular and widely used.  Consider taking a look at it’s ease of use and features.  We use Google calendar and have used it for many years. However, this next calendar app is my calendar of choice.
  • Outlook 365. Microsoft fell behind Google just a few years ago in the online productivity arena.  Today, Microsoft has stepped up its game and has given its productivity suite a new look and feel.  Microsoft Outlook online or on your mobile device brings back the calendar app you’ve grown to know and love over the years.  They’ve made it available online and it’s simply wonderful.

Regardless of which software application (app) you go with, they’re intended to meet a data need and in this case one that solves problems with managing your priorities using calendars.  Using apps such as these will provide calendar access and visibility using mobile devices, PC’s, and online via the web. You never have to be without your calendars, ever. How important is it to have real-time calendar updates in this fast paced environment?  Very and that’s why we’re offering these AIS solutions. Give these calendar apps a try today.