How To Keep Track Of Your Schedule
When it comes to keeping track of your schedule, it is very important to find one that fits your needs and personality. If you try to adapt to someone else’s scheduling techniques, you may find yourself avoiding the schedule.
Some people prefer paper planners and others like electronic ones, whether in the form of a PDA or through their email program, such as Outlook or Google Calendar. A third option would be large dry-erase boards or bulletin boards that you can hang up in your home.
Paper planners come in a variety of sizes and can be found in “one page per day” formats as well as “weekly” formats, where the entire week is spread out between two sheets of the planner. When you open the planner, you are able to see your whole week, spread across the two pages.
When deciding what type of paper planner to choose from, make sure the size will fit your lifestyle. If you are going to carry the planner with you a lot, find one that will fit inside your purse or bag comfortably. If it doesn’t fit well, or is very heavy, it is going to be more of a hassle to tote it around.
On the other hand, if you are going to keep the planner on your desk, you may want to opt for a large 8 ½” by 11” size. That way, you’ll have lots of room to write down any notes. Plus, this size is often divided into 15 minute increments, which can also be a very helpful tool.
An advantage of using a paper planner is that you can use highlighters to help you get a visual image of where your time is going. For instance, you can assign the color blue to all of your personal and family obligations, such as doctor’s appointments, gymnastics meets, soccer games, family reunions, and so forth.
Keep choosing colors for the various “parts” of your life. You can decide the categories to best suit your needs. If you have a day job or a home business that you work to earn money, such as a virtual assistant, while you are working on developing your more personal business, you may want to assign both of those different colors. For instance, the money-earning job can be green and the personal business can be pink or orange.
Once you have decided on what your colors will be, start highlighting activities in your planner that match each colors’ category. If you notice one color is dominating your week, you may want to step back and evaluate how you are spending your time.
As technology improves, more and more digital planners can perform similar highlighting functions. You can even find “smart phones”, that combine a cell phone, planner, and even an Mp3 player all in one little package.
If you like the idea of keeping track of your schedule electronically, but don’t want to spend a lot of money on a PDA or smart phone, you can use a program such as Outlook or Google Calendar. One of the features of Google Calendar is that you can share your calendar with other users.
This can be helpful if you plan a lot of events (such as pot-luck dinners, game nights, etc) and want to let all of your family and friends know about them easily. You may want to keep that calendar separate from your personal calendar, though. Not everyone needs to know when your next dentist appointment is.
The white board / bulletin board option is great for those that like to have a lot of room to write or who are very visual. One board can be hung in the kitchen to divvy up household chores among family members or to keep track of everyone’s appointments, games, and so forth.
Another board can be kept in your home office to keep track of your work, household bills, and other things. If you work on multiple projects, you may want to have several boards, so you can easily see what needs to be done for each project.
Filed under Time Management
