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5 Productivity Hacks for Your Calendar

August 18th, 2008 @ 12:23 pm

7 Comments

Categories: Productivity

Tags: Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Groupware, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Enterprise Software, CC Holland

Last week I wrote about the dangers of using your calendar as a to-do list. You, my intrepid readers, chimed in with your own perspectives, and your feedback gave rise to this follow-up post on five ways to hack your calendar to increase your productivity.

  1. Reserve 2 hours per day and 1 day per week to manage the unexpected. - eric.vanderhors
  2. Every morning, create a daily agenda that considers tasks, interruptions, and other needs such as exercise and lunch. - manume
  3. Block it out on “my time” on your calendar to get tasks completed, regardless of whether they’re listed on your calendar, on a piece of paper, or elsewhere. - mandyrichards
  4. Color-code the non-negotiables on your fixed schedule with one color and “action items” with another, so you can see at a glance what needs to be handled first. - JBSTEVE
  5. Use the Tasks function of Outlook to organize and prioritize your tasks. - glorialindsay

Thanks for the great ideas!

CC Holland is an award-winning writer and editor whose work appears in several national publications and Web sites.

 
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    Andre Kibbe

    08/18/08 | Report as spam

    RE: 5 Productivity Hacks for Your Calendar

    Good tips. If you use an offline calendar like Outlook to manage your committed tasks and appointments, you might want to use an online calendar like GCal to track options upcoming events, like movie openings, conferences and so forth.

  •  
    2

    CC Holland

    08/19/08 | Report as spam

    RE: 5 Productivity Hacks for Your Calendar

    @ Andre: Thanks! That's an excellent suggestion.

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    3

    jerang@...

    08/19/08 | Report as spam

    RE: 5 Productivity Hacks for Your Calendar

    There's also a webapp called remember the milk that I use in conjunction with the google calendar. You can check it out at http://rememberthemilk.com and make sure you download their gmail plugin.

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    4

    saxmansi

    08/20/08 | Report as spam

    RE: 5 Productivity Hacks for Your Calendar

    An old time trick says look at your role - if you are in a role that requires lots of interaction, block book 40% of your day say and leave the rest free, if you have little interaction then 60% maybe good (figures are arbitary by the way, just to make the point)
    I personally think you should put tasks that are to achieve your objectives (i.e. not reactive tasks) in as appointments; that means that IF you don't do them, you then need to move them. Its the rock, pebble sand analogy in effect.

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    5

    toddx

    08/20/08 | Report as spam

    RE: 5 Productivity Hacks for Your Calendar

    It's very tempting to blend blocking time and adding task to your calendar. The subtle difference is that tasks and priorities may change and turn your planned day into chaos. A best practice I've seen is blocking desk time and working your task list from there. Lists are the key. The only task related thing you need to add to your calendar is time to work the lists.

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    6

    rawhite1969

    08/26/08 | Report as spam

    RE: 5 Productivity Hacks for Your Calendar

    3 Things. Pick the top 3 things you need to accomplish each day and write them on a piece of paper, post-it, etc so that you are more focused and less overwhelmed with the volume of tasks to be completed in a given day. Be realistic about those 3 items. You gain a sense of accomplishment and can better digest the unexpected each day brings.

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    7

    bobjenkin

    08/30/08 | Report as spam

    RE: 5 Productivity Hacks for Your Calendar

    One that I find useful is from Time management guru David Allen in what he calls 'one a week thinking'. In a nutshell, block off a couple of hours on Friday afternoons and go through all the things that you actually have booked in as appointments for the next week. Each meeting or piece of work should be treated as a project - review each and make a note of what you have to do or achieve - that way if your schedule gets mucked about you are already prepared. Bob

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