Time and Task Management Tools:
Calendar
Choosing the best calendar and setting it up to fit your needs.
ONE Calendar:
The most important aspect to remember when setting up a Calendar to manage your daily tasks and activities is that you must have only ONE calendar. It is very important to take the time to enter all of the separate calendars (from sports, school, church, activities, lessons etc.) into ONE family calendar. It does take time to do this, but it is very important and always pays off in the end. You might be able to remember everything, but why bother?! Make it so all of the tasks and activities are recorded in ONE spot. We are in information overload. We cannot handle a torrential downpour of information. We cannot stop the flood of information in our lives, but we can and should funnel it into a small stream of information so that we can handle it with less stress and less energy spent.
Electronic vs. Paper:
I recommend Electronic for several reasons.
#1. Electronic allows for easy sharing of the calendar, allowing multiple people to add events, see what is happening, and take care of various tasks. This sharing of responsibility, cooperating and delegating, is essential to Good organization and Time and Task Management. For Organization should breed more Independence, Delegation and Responsibility for everyone involved, not just more work for one person.
#2. Kids will know nothing but Electronic Calendars. If you have children you definitely will want to switch to an electronic calendar. You will want them to be able view and share the calendar, in order to teach them good organizational habits. Electronic makes this possible and it is and always will be what they are most acclimated to using.
#3. Electronic Calendars are easy to carry. We carry our phones with us. The electronic calendar is a part of the phone and thus one less thing to remember when we are on the go. (Another way to funnel all the information into one small stream that is more manageable).
#4. Electronic calendars are easily updated at home and on the go. We can easily cancel and reschedule appointments without the mess of scratching out etc.
#5. Electronic calendars make it so our calendar is backed up. We can’t lose our calendar when it is web based. (At least not as easily 🙂
#6. Electronic calendars can be easily color coded, making it even easier to keep track of all of the different activities and tasks. I recommend picking a color for each member of the family and for specified family activities (i.e. Family activities (for the whole family); Church Activities etc.). The colors make it very easy to see at a glance who is busy on a certain day and with what activities or tasks.
#7 Electronic calendars allow one to set audible reminders for various tasks and activities. We may be able to remember everything on our own, but why bother. Use the tools available to us to make it easier to handle the flood of information we are saturated with on a daily basis.
Web Based
The electronic calendar must be web based, not phone based. You want it to be accessible on any phone or computer. If it is a phone/computer based app or calendar it will not be easily shared with phones/computers of a different brand. You want to make sure it can be shared with other family members etc., regardless of what phone they happen to have at a certain time.
Examples of web based calendars are: Google, Yahoo, Cozi