You hear a knock knock on your office door and look up to see an expectant face. You realize that you were due in a meeting ten minutes earlier! You had forgotten about it entirely, now you are knee deep in another project and unprepared for your meeting. Have you been there? Maybe you finally decided to file that stack of paper growing on your desk. While sifting through it you find a note reminding you of a deadline just days away! If you have ever been there an organized calendar is overdue. There are a number of online calendars available to get you organized. Here is a FREE option for you to look at, Google calendar.
Set Up Your Calendars
Google calendars can be shared with other people. This is a great feature so keep it in mind when you are setting up your calendar/s. A nice benefit of Google calendars is you are able to set up multiple calendars that you can easily toggle between. This means you can have a personal calendar and a work calendar. Using this to your advantage means you can easily separate out your work from personal appointments and projects. Why would want to do this? Do this so that you can share the appropriate calendar events with the appropriate people.
Who Would I Share With?
Get your whole family on board with a personal calendar! Sharing calendars with your significant other, even your older children, means everyone knows when there are doctor appointments, soccer games, or choir practice. No more arguing that you were never told about something, it is right there for you to see!
Share your work calendar with your team. You can use this to have a joint calendar with those you work closest with. Everyone will be at the meeting, because it is on everyone’s calendar.
You can share your calendar a few ways. You can either give the person you are sharing your calendar with full editing permission or you can limit their ability to edit your calendar.
Use the Quick Add Feature
Quick Add is a great feature to use to get an organized calendar. This does a great job of making it fast and easy to get appointments, meetings, and project work time on your calendar. Google calendar understands everyday language. What does this mean? Drop down to the Quick Add feature, type in “Dinner tomorrow at 7pm with Doug”. Google will add your event to the correct day and time!
Set Reminders in Your Organized Calendar
Google calendar allows you to utilize several different methods of reminders for upcoming events. While viewing your calendar can be easily done from your phone or computer if you have a hard time developing the habit of checking your calendar it won’t do you much good. And even if you do check it often you may become wrapped up in some other project and forget to check in. The reminder notifications are great for this! You can choose to have an email sent, receive a pop up message on your computer, and/or a text message on your phone. You can also specify when you want the reminder set! Need 40 minutes to get to a meeting? Send your self a reminder an hour before it starts, plenty of time to wrap up the task at hand and drive to your meeting. Have a project deadline looming? Schedule yourself time to work on the project AND reminders to let you know the deadline is approaching.
Best Uses for Task List
Want to keep a really organized calendar? Find a place for the tasks that don’t have a specific “due date”. Use your task list for future project ideas, the concept for a book you just had, or a blog topic that popped in your head. Using your task list for this will help you with organizing paperwork. Clean up the post-it notes and scraps of paper lying around your office this gives you a central place for these brainstorms.
Sync it
The best part? Google calendar syncs to your phone. Most of the popular phones including iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries sync to Google calendar.
An organized calendar can be kept on online in an easy and straightforward way. You can keep track of both your personal and work schedule with Google calendar. What can you gain by starting today? Less stress, help organizing paperwork, and you’ll never miss another upcoming deadline again!
How do you achieve an organized calendar?
