What are some calendar essentials?

• 🗃️ Have various LABELS / SUB-CALENDARS that help you STAY ORGANIZED… and not too many.

• 💼 Easily PARTITION your WORK CALENDAR from your personal calendar.

• ⏰ Use your work calendar to TRACK TOTAL OFFICE/WORK HOURS, and then add individual work meetings/events on top of that.

• 🚫 Use your calendar for events, RARELY USE IT FOR TASKS… that’s what a task manager (To-Do-List) is for.

• 🥰 Couples should have ONE CALENDAR FOR SHARED EVENTS they need to be at together. But should share full calendars with one another to navigate mutual scheduling.

Labels / Sub-Calendars for Organization 🗃️

Google Calendar calls them “Labels,” colloquially I’ve always thought of them as Sub-Calendars, especially since in other calendar apps you click “Add New Calendar” to create them. When created, these give you the ability to title and color code them.

Why do you use these? Because you schedule MORE than ONE TYPE OF THING, and it helps to quickly see at a glance what is going on in your day. Do you have meetings? An important personal development event? Time dedicated toward a big project? A medical appointment? That really fun dinner that you’ve been looking forward to? A special event with your spouse?

You need QUICK IDENTIFIERS, and to be quick you’ll want to avoid having too many calendars. Let me give you some personal examples!

— Personal Calendar

• Personal/Fun (Anything that I’m doing solo, from an event with friends, to a medical appointment)

• Gym

• Shared (Events I share with my family - We’ll come back to this in our final section)

— Work Calendar

• Meetings (This is a BIG bucket. I have several responsibilities that necessitate meetings [church membership interviews, 1-on-1s, coaching session for others], but I leave this as ONE category)

• Projects (Specific time set aside to work on a major thing)

• Development (Personal Development, Coaching Meetings, Etc.)

• Culture/Fun (Team Lunch, Team Celebration, Team Training)

And then finally some more specific things that relate to what I do for work…

• Doxa Students (Department Specific Work - So if you have particular departments that YOU need to spend mandatory work in, and it’s not really a meeting or a project per say, then you can follow my example and create a calendar/label titled whatever the department is for you)

• Counseling

Create what you need and give them appropriate colors that make sense to you (My “Personal/Fun” is red… my favorite color, “Gym” is dark grey… typical gym equipment color… etc.). The added bonus of using these categories is that you can see categorically how your time is being spent during the week, and some calendar apps help you run analytics on this!

Partition Your Work Calendar 💼

Most of you reading this should already be issued a work email, so this will be easy to implement. Run that work email through a calendar SYSTEM OF ITS OWN and THEN SHARE IT with your main calendar app of choice. So you can still see everything in one place.

For work we use a Google account to host our domain, and so our work emails are Google Suite integrated. I run my work events through Google Calendar, where it has its own labels/sub-calendars, and then that is piped into my master calendar app.

Why do this?

• When you’re at work, you’re able to interact with your calendar without getting distracted by personal items (I open Google calendar INSTEAD of my master calendar).

  • Are there times when you’ll need to reference personal items simultaneously? Yes. In that event, you open your master calendar instead of your work calendar.

• Operating a work calendar in its own space and then piping it into your master calendar allows you to keep it organized/colored on its own WHILE IT LOOKS MONOCHROME in your personal calendar. This aids work-life-balance.

Track Total Office Hours ⏰

With your work calendar, block off all your “work hours” and then add specific events ON TOP as they get scheduled.

This way…

• Your master calendar shows when you’ll be “at work” (also really helpful for couples with shared calendars).

• You’ll be able to easily spot “open office hours” for you to dedicate to specific tasks, projects, meetings or other events.

• For Salaried Employees - This enables you to track how many office hours you should take away if you shift work to a different/odd time.

  • Ex: You add a 2 hour special meeting that you need to take outside of your standard working hours. You should then TAKE AWAY 2 office hours from a different spot in the week. This is a helpful boundary to make sure that you’re not just constantly bleeding personal/family time.

Rarely Use Calendar for Tasks 🚫

Your calendar is for meetings and blocking off time. Your task manager is for tasks. These are different tools and we should leverage them differently. This is why a toolbox has a hammer AND a screwdriver… and you’re not forced to use one as the other… it would be inefficient and frustrating.

There will be times when you block off chunks of time to work on a series of tasks related to particular projects. But for the most part, you’re listing your time obligations, and when you see free time, you’re busting out your task manager!

Couples & Shared Calendars 🥰

Couples ought to share their calendars with one another, so that both can be aware of what’s going on for work or other appointments with each other. Although you’ll share calendars with one another, there should be ONE SHARED CALENDAR that is used for mutual events.

Family dinners, weddings, parties, special events, mutual time set aside for a home project, whatever it is, having it be a specific sub-calendar/label of its own creates clarity. For my calendar, shared events are a bright pink/rose gold, it catches my attention as I look through my calendar (And it works thematically 🩷).

This way instead of asking “are we doing that event together,” clarity is automatically communicated.

🌟 TOP PICKS

Calendar (MacOS / iOS / iPadOS)

I’m a simple man when it comes to my calendar, I love the standard calendar app. Simple and effective, and it has some extra perks with iOS 18 (👀 We’ll do a future T+P on Fall Tech updates that will help your life).

Google Calendar

As mentioned above, this is what I run for my work calendar. And it gives a helpful breakdown for how you’re spending your time throughout the week!

Timepage (Moleskine Studio App)

Moleskine decided to ask and answer the question, “what if we run things differently”… and most of it I don’t like. BUT the iOS WIDGET is good!

• Full list of events

• Any personal To-Do’s that have been input in the Actions App

• Weather forecast… when it’s working

🎬 BEHIND THE SCENES

Ride the Rhythms of Life

While preparing for this issue of T+P I was thinking about how I’ve grown to appreciate the seasons of the year. I’ve grown from having a favorite season (Fall) and having a least favorite (Spring), and thereby disliking certain times of the year... To continuing in having a favorite (still Fall… Represent PSL Crew ✊🏼😎), while finding FAVORITE THINGS to enjoy or do in the other seasons of the year.

The Lord created cycles to the year for us to enjoy, so don’t spend one season bemoaning it when you could be ENJOYING SOMETHING!

Our family recently started a “Seasonal Bucket-list” so that we do particular things as a family in a given season; and I’ve taken a similar approach to how I personally engage with the year. I take a Seasonal Mindset in how I enjoy foods, home projects, work projects, reading, and recreational activities.