A calendar is a clock that controls your life. Once you understand its purpose is to help you properly manage your time, you can dictate how you use it. Using the 24-hour clock on your calendar daily can help you reach your goals and experience success. Here are twelve ways to use your calendar effectively.
12 Ways To Use Your Calendar Effectively
Life Is Dictated By Units Of Time
Units of time dictate life. Once you understand this, a calendar helps you to manage your time better.
A calendar measures daily time units and forces you to set daily deadlines. There are minutes, hours, days, months, and years. You can learn to use the calendar properly to achieve a desired short-term to long-term goal by the final date you set for yourself.
Learning to manage the units of time well each day makes more sense. Each day is time. Instead of focusing on tasks, learn time management to optimize each unit of time daily.
Behavioral Change
A calendar forces you to change your behavior. It represents the tasks you need to get done. Consistently placing reminders on a calendar can subtly change your behavior.
Some examples of how having a calendar can create positive behavioral change:
- Place on your calendar to read for 30 minutes each day
- Spend 1 hour a day going through the digital course you purchased
- Forcing yourself to finish a large project within one week
Tasks
A calendar accounts for your valuable time regarding tasks and reminders. You prioritize the tasks that are most vital to finish within 24 hours. A calendar helps to eliminate the paradox of choice. You know what tasks are scheduled for your calendar to do for each.
By forcing yourself to not focus on many things but on critical daily tasks, calendars also help to increase the level of creating output.
Reminders
You can set reminders on your phone’s calendar to finish tasks or projects by a deadline. The reminders help to incentivize you to finish them.
You can also put reminders for low-value tasks that must get done each month:
- Pay off your credit card
- Pay your bills
- Send a follow-up email
- Schedule an appointment
- Call or text someone on their birthday
Simple
A calendar is simple. You can use a physical, computer, or phone calendar. List the tasks you need to complete on a specific day.
Due to a calendar’s simplicity, it is easier to manage. It is clear what you need to get done. If it is on your calendar, then it is a priority for you to finish.
Easy To Organize
A calendar is more straightforward to organize. You can break down the 24 hours that make up each day. Within each hour, you can break it down to minutes. You can then visually see the allotted time to dedicate to each task.
Additional Pressure
A calendar adds additional pressure. If you do not finish something on your calendar by the due date, you know you have failed to meet your deadline. The pressure encourages you to want to finish your project by the deadline you set for yourself.
Clear Deadlines
You can set clear deadlines. You can set deadlines on your phone or computer calendar. Then, you will know the day and time you must finish the task. You will then successfully or fail to meet your deadlines.
Reach Your Goals
A calendar helps you reach your goals. You can allocate a specific part of a day to finishing a small goal while allocating another part to working on a larger goal. There is a time and date that you must finish a task or project.
For example, a small goal could be filming a YouTube video, while a more significant goal could be writing 1,000 words for the book you want to self-publish.
Invite A Friend Or Accountability Coach To Your Calendar
You can invite a friend or an accountability coach to your phone or computer’s calendar. Accountability adds even more pressure to help you accomplish your goal by your calendar’s deadline. You will know that if you fail to finish the task by your deadline, you will have to tell your friend or accountability coach that you failed.
You can incentivize accountability even more by gamifying the consequence of failing to achieve your goal on time. If you do not reach your deadline, you could:
- Pay your friend $20
- Buy your friend’s groceries
- You could buy their meal or drinks the next time you both go out
Schedule Meetings
A calendar is a great way to schedule meetings. Calendars on computers and phones can sync with various apps. Some everyday apps that are helpful for meetings are Skype and Zoom.
Not only can it help you schedule your appointments, but syncing your calendar with apps like Skype and Zoom can make your meetings more efficient and productive.
Successful People Use Calendar
Successful individuals understand that time is a valuable asset. Therefore, they don’t rely on to-do lists alone. Instead, they assign specific times and dates on their calendars for when they must finish a particular task or goal. This approach not only enhances their overall productivity but also increases the likelihood of achieving their set goals.
Summary
Using a calendar is a superior way to manage your time effectively than relying on a to-do list. Why not scrap the to-do list and start using a calendar today? You will be amazed at how much more productive and in control you will feel.
