I was inspired to share this with you after I got a little bit lost in “work-at-home” blog posts on a site called Today’s Innovative Woman. In one post, author Joshua Zerkel, a “productivity strategist,” gives five helpful suggestions about planning your calendar so that you are not constantly spinning your wheels. And since I have a never-satisfied need to control things, I drink this type of Kool-Aid like a dehydrated castaway on a desert island.
While I wouldn’t go so far as to dump my calendar and start a whole new one, I do like his suggestion for building blocks of time into your schedule. I have a mental reservation in each of my weekdays for actual work: 8:30 AM to 1:30 PM is when I am most free to sit at my desk and crank out blog posts for my “day job,” CBS Los Angeles. It doesn’t always happen that way, though, and I wonder if it will help if I actually enter that stretch of time into my calendar as such. I’m going to give it a try.
My tip for you is this:
Do you ever find yourself rushing to pick up your kids from school or other activities because you left your house or whatever you were doing too late? In my case I often linger at the computer, putting finishes touches on a post or just checking out “this one last email…” and then I glance up at my computer’s clock to see OH CRAP I was supposed to leave 10 minutes ago.
Once I factored in pick up and drop off times into my Google calendar, however, those instances dropped off significantly. Now I get an alert on my phone when it’s time to just step away from the computer and go pick up the kid already. I may still have to sit in the pick up line, but at least I’m not freaking out the whole way there.
I tend to enter the event/activity in my outlook calendar for the time I need to leave my office, and then enter the ACTUAL time in the note: [10:00 Entry] “10:30 Jackson Dentist” Sometimes it helps.
Fortunately, working in an office I have colleagues that know I get caught up on phone calls, in a project, etc., so if it is something mid-day unusual, I will ask them to remind me, too. Then I get the “weren’t you supposed to go get Jackson for XXX?”
To which I usually reply, “Yah, yah, yah….I’m going. Thanks though.”
Great tip! Just yesterday I was lingering at the computer and got to school late to pick up the kid. So thank you!
I really need some more of that Kool aid. I swear wheel spinning is all that I do.
I do make note of the time I need to leave to get places. Sometimes I make long timeline lists of my day like, shower, eat breakfast, drive, etc etc to get to a place on time. It’s pretty ocd but when there are a lot of things that need to happen in order, it really helps.
Schedule for me is so import since I work from home (and time can get away from me when I am writing)and my boys are 9 and 15 so they have so many activities and social life after school. I schedule everything through my Blackberry & huge office calendar and always give myself extra 10 minutes.At the end of the day when I end up with extra time – it’s mommy’s time.
Great tips! I love Google calender.