Keeping An Organized Calendar

I’m sitting down to write this post after realizing that I forgot to add a meeting to my calendar for today, and missed the chance to have a sit down with someone. Woops.

But on non off days, I live and breath by my calendar and day planner. It took me a while to give the digital calendar a try, but after spending the past few weeks getting really close with Google Calendar, I’m definitely swayed.

I doubt I’ll ever give up a paper planner, but having everything in two places help me manage busy and keeps me slightly more sane. Slightly.

If you’re like me and trying to balance a few different hustles without completely losing your mind or developing a coffee addiction, keeping your calendar organized is the golden key. Having a place to dump out what you need to do, when, where and at what time seriously saves me.

Except for todays, er, mishap.

More importantly, when you have a ton of things going on, placing them on your calendar helps to clearly show you how your time and focus needs to be divided and makes things a bit less overwhelming. Because when all of those thoughts are just floating around in the dark whole my brain, leaving bed seems like the worst option.

So, here’s how I break it down:

Here’s a screenshot of my Sunrise so you can get a glimpse into the madness. I love Sunrise because it’s so easy to connect with all of my other calendars and it’s easy to access on my laptop, phone or iPad.

The Calendars

My first step is to break everything down into it’s own separate calendar –each is color coded for easy viewing.  One calendar, EM Editorial, I use for blog post ideas/posts, upcoming interviews and guest posts or series. Ember + March houses different meetings or events for the blog. For each new project, I make a new calendar so that I can view them all together and see the big picture or opt to view one calendar at a time when I’m focusing in.

The Details

Depending on how much you have going on, getting mixed up is probably really easy. Since I’ve been working on setting up shoots to take more original photos for the blog, I’m always noting who I’m meeting where and what the shoot is supposed to cover.

If it’s applicable, always write in the location of the event, what you’re responsible for bringing and any other notes. When you get the alert, it will all be there.

Alerts & Reminders

Since just putting something on your calendar doesn’t mean it’s going to stick, setting up alerts and reminders saves me every time. For things like a doctor’s appointment or meeting, I usually set up a reminder for an hour and then 15 minutes prior to give me time to get it together.

If you throw birthday’s on your calendar, give yourself a week before and then a day of reminder so there’s time to grab a card or gift and then time to remember to actually give it to them!

Be flexible

Things always going as planned would be way too easy, right? It’s easy to jam pack every minute of every day with meetings or work time, but that’s also a quick way to drive yourself crazy. Try to leave some wiggle room in case you miss a subway (me every time) or a meeting runs long so you aren’t always showing up out of breath.

Extra things I put on my calendar

• Work out time
• Time to write/schedule posts
• Chill days (because if I tell myself I’m busy, I’ll actually dedicate that time to relaxing)

Happy calendar organizing 🙂

first image via nubby twiglet