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Entry tags:
Calendars
This morning I was reading my neighborhood newsletter and reading about various events and thinking that I really need to get a good calendar system.
I have a good one at work. I use the same Outlook system as everyone else, so we can all see each other's calendars. And it reminds me when something's coming up in case I get sucked into what I'm doing, which I always do. I finally added an activity for 5:00 every weekday called "go home" so I don't get sucked in too far at quitting time either.
Then I also have a paper calendar for work which I can carry with me, add optional things to, and look at first thing in the morning before the computer is ready.
And I've been thinking about how many interesting resources I've been finding on Google lately. (I finally made a personalized homepage and am using it for the first time to take advantage of RSS feeds. And they have an online spreadsheet of all things.) And so I decided to see if Google has an online calendar.
And they do. So I'm trying it out. So far I like it except for activities that don't start or end right on the half hour. You can change the time to show the appropriate time, but then the little descriptor box jumps off the calendar and into the header. That's no good for me. So I use the nearest times and then detail the real times in the description of the event.
However, I do like this feature for items that don't have a particular time, like I just want to get something done on a certain day or start thinking about something on a certain day. I don't like having to make up a time. So for this system, I just call it an all-day event and then it pops to the top.
It also lets you schedule weekly and monthly things, which is great except for the meeting that's offered the last Wednesday of every month. Again, I just settled for the fourth Wednesday of every month and added a note to the title. (There's room for a description and comments, but they don't appear unless you click on things.) You can tell this feature was made with students in mind because it's very easy to click on an Monday-Wednesday-Friday option or a Tuesday-Thursday option instead of having to put check marks in all the relevant boxes yourself (which is also an option).
And if you've gone off into the deep future to plan things, there's a little "today" button you can click that will snap you back to the present.
And best of all, I can access this system from work and from home.
Of course, now that I'm writing this, I'm remembering that in the olden days I just carried around a calendar in my purse. My old bank used to give one out, but then stopped. Then I used to get the tiny ones from Hallmark, but they're really a bit too small. The bank ones were checkbook size, and these were half as big. So then I started just making my own. I don't remember now why or even when I stopped.
A paper calendar would be even better than the electronic one (except for the magically repeating appointments), so I probably should just do that.
Well, there's one other good feature to the Google calendar that I noticed and that's that you can invite people or "add guests" to your meetings. I haven't tried this, but if it's like outlook, then this would be a way of letting other people add the same events to their Google calendars by just clicking "yes" in their e-mail notification or whatever.
Oh, and you can get little reminders, but for my personal life, I don't generally want a fifteen-minute reminder like I do for my work life. I added a two-day reminder for some things. But it doesn't seem like this feature will be that useful for me.
Oh, but I can let other people look at it. I'm not sure how they look at it, but I've added my gym buddies as people allowed to look at anything so they can see if I'm still planning to make it to the gym.
If interested, you might want to start at Google's calendar overview page, which I just now looked at. Informative.
How do you handle your need to remember what you've scheduled for yourself? Does it all just fit into your brain, or what?
I have a good one at work. I use the same Outlook system as everyone else, so we can all see each other's calendars. And it reminds me when something's coming up in case I get sucked into what I'm doing, which I always do. I finally added an activity for 5:00 every weekday called "go home" so I don't get sucked in too far at quitting time either.
Then I also have a paper calendar for work which I can carry with me, add optional things to, and look at first thing in the morning before the computer is ready.
And I've been thinking about how many interesting resources I've been finding on Google lately. (I finally made a personalized homepage and am using it for the first time to take advantage of RSS feeds. And they have an online spreadsheet of all things.) And so I decided to see if Google has an online calendar.
And they do. So I'm trying it out. So far I like it except for activities that don't start or end right on the half hour. You can change the time to show the appropriate time, but then the little descriptor box jumps off the calendar and into the header. That's no good for me. So I use the nearest times and then detail the real times in the description of the event.
However, I do like this feature for items that don't have a particular time, like I just want to get something done on a certain day or start thinking about something on a certain day. I don't like having to make up a time. So for this system, I just call it an all-day event and then it pops to the top.
It also lets you schedule weekly and monthly things, which is great except for the meeting that's offered the last Wednesday of every month. Again, I just settled for the fourth Wednesday of every month and added a note to the title. (There's room for a description and comments, but they don't appear unless you click on things.) You can tell this feature was made with students in mind because it's very easy to click on an Monday-Wednesday-Friday option or a Tuesday-Thursday option instead of having to put check marks in all the relevant boxes yourself (which is also an option).
And if you've gone off into the deep future to plan things, there's a little "today" button you can click that will snap you back to the present.
And best of all, I can access this system from work and from home.
Of course, now that I'm writing this, I'm remembering that in the olden days I just carried around a calendar in my purse. My old bank used to give one out, but then stopped. Then I used to get the tiny ones from Hallmark, but they're really a bit too small. The bank ones were checkbook size, and these were half as big. So then I started just making my own. I don't remember now why or even when I stopped.
A paper calendar would be even better than the electronic one (except for the magically repeating appointments), so I probably should just do that.
Well, there's one other good feature to the Google calendar that I noticed and that's that you can invite people or "add guests" to your meetings. I haven't tried this, but if it's like outlook, then this would be a way of letting other people add the same events to their Google calendars by just clicking "yes" in their e-mail notification or whatever.
Oh, and you can get little reminders, but for my personal life, I don't generally want a fifteen-minute reminder like I do for my work life. I added a two-day reminder for some things. But it doesn't seem like this feature will be that useful for me.
Oh, but I can let other people look at it. I'm not sure how they look at it, but I've added my gym buddies as people allowed to look at anything so they can see if I'm still planning to make it to the gym.
If interested, you might want to start at Google's calendar overview page, which I just now looked at. Informative.
How do you handle your need to remember what you've scheduled for yourself? Does it all just fit into your brain, or what?