How to Use 6 Calendar Views to Be More Productive

How to Use half dozen Calendar Views to Be More Productive

Project View

In my terminal article here at Stepcase Lifehack,one of the comments I received suggested that at that place is a fine style to get effectually the question of having a "sacred' calendar.

Popular books like Getting Things Washed and others advocate the use of calendars for appointments, trips and other activities that "must" be performed on a item date. Unfortunately, the word "must" is imprecise, and likely to be interpreted differently by each person.

The principle that they are attempting to reinforce is more clear: don't populate your calendar with commitments that aren't firm. Instead, treat the agenda equally "sacred" – a place to put commitments that y'all dare non break.

Fortunately for us, the technology is fast budgeted in which y'all can, at the same fourth dimension, maintain a "sacred" calendar, a "profane" schedule and every-calendar-in-between!

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In Outlook, for example, it'due south easy to create, with a few clicks, any number of calendars that cover the same dates. However, because these calendars seem to be different files, it's easy to believe that they correspond different entities.

Not then. Instead, 3 different calendars of September 2022 are really three views of the very aforementioned prepare of 30 days.

With that possible snag out of the manner, it's not also hard to run across how Outlook and other programs like Google calendar or Yahoo calendar tin help united states of america "see" our schedule in ways that can help us to prevent overlaps and miscues, and requite us a deeper understanding of the time demands we must confront each twenty-four hour period. For example, I have been experimenting with the following 5 views of my schedule. (I didn't attempt using them all at one time!)

5 Views of One Calendar

View 1: A "Default" week'south view – before any appointments, deadlines or one-off activities take been created, there is an underlying schedule that I use as the ground for every single week. It includes the basic activities that I demand to live my life, and I only motion them or delete them in emergencies. These activities include time spent sleeping, eating, exercising and relating to shut family members. These are items that I exercise regardless of the work I exercise, where I happen to live, or the time of year. For example, going to bed early is important for me due to the triathlon preparation I do. Before it became a habit, I scheduled the time to go to bed and too set up an warning on my watch to beep at ten:twenty pm.

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View 2: The "Hard appointments" view – this view consists of scheduled activities planned with other people. The criteria for placing an detail in this view is that "there are sharp consequences for myself and others if the appointment is missed." Dental appointments and coaching calls are examples.

View three: The "Deadline" view – when there are deadlines I have that produce negative consequences if they are forgotten, they are placed inside this view (due east.chiliad. due-dates for my company's taxation deposits)

View 4: The "Blank-fourth dimension" view – this is the fourth dimension that I schedule each day for the unexpected. These slots of dead time act as buffer against all the things that tin can become wrong, and their length and frequency depends on the environment I'm in, and the kind of work I'g doing. For instance, I have constitute it difficult to schedule piece of work on travel days, then I would set up huge chunks of expressionless time in the expectation that something is likely to get wrong. If cypher goes incorrect, so information technology's like shooting fish in a barrel to reach into future days for time demands that I can get-go working on now. Using this view helps to prevent (but might non cure) the popular fault of over-scheduling, which most ambitious people commit.

View 5: The "Activeness" view – in my concluding article,I focused on the switch that needs to be made by people who have a keen number of time demands i.e. from learning to place tasks rather than lists. The Activity view is the one in which the most action takes place as time demands that come into my life are placed directly in my agenda. Virtually of the schedule juggling that happens each twenty-four hour period takes place in this view.

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Paper'south Shortcomings

Viewing a single schedule in five different ways can be quite confusing to those of usa who call up of calendars in the traditional, paper-based way. Throw in the ability to access your scheduled fourth dimension demands on your laptop, smartphone and tablet and y'all may realize that there'southward a need to encounter calendars and schedules quite differently…. perhaps as a gear up of tasks that are organized by date and fourth dimension, that reside in the cloud. At whatsoever signal in fourth dimension, the calendar-view you are looking at is filtering tasks, and helping you to focus on the few at a time that you lot really need to run across.

This filtering is important… it might never make sense to combine all the views in one, whatsoever more than than information technology makes sense to picket more than one television channel at a fourth dimension… even with the latest PiP technology. Each view serves a unlike purpose, providing a layer of information that'southward important to maintain separately from the others, or to combine selectively. For example, I combine the "Default" view with the "Activities" view on a day to day basis, while I use the "Blank-time" view as a planning tool that'south filtered out in one case my mean solar day starts.

Of form, there could exist other views. For example, Dezhi Wu's groundbreaking research suggests another possible view for Projects. In her book, "Temporal Structures in Individual Time Management" she explains that a project manager should be able to craft a schedule of activities for each squad fellow member that can be downloaded right into a planning device. To me, this suggests an boosted view is coming.

View 6: The "Project view" – when you have a grouping of inter-connected tasks that are designed to produce a detail result. Information technology would exist nice to take a expect at each project equally a split up thread of activity. Yous could meet, for case, what happens in your life when there's a modify in last due dates. This is a far cry from the mental, unreliable estimates that ofttimes fly effectually.

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Technology Limitations

Unfortunately, the core technology of managing multiple views isn't maintained on all calendars. My Blackberry's calendar doesn't permit for multiple views from one plan. Hopefully apps are on the manner that will right this, and let me to synchronize dissimilar views with the deject.

However, with tools that are already available, it's possible to keep a "sacred" calendar if it'due south seen every bit only i possible view to manage. With improved tools, we could do much more scheduling and less list, even as nosotros stick to the GTD principle of maintaining and managing firm commitments. Doing so would aid relieve us of the job of juggling our calendars in our minds, and delegate the chore to tools tapped into the deject.

P.S. I used Yahoo!.Agenda to generate these views, and the instructions for doing tin can be establish here.

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-use-6-calendar-views-to-be-more-productive.html

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