Managing your calendar can be stressful sometimes, especially if you’re juggling multiple calendars – personal, family and business! Finding ways to effectively manage your calendar can be time-consuming and frustrating. As technology evolves and multiple online calendar providers continue to develop apps and new functions, it allows us to specifically set up and automate our calendars to meet our specific needs.
Below are some suggestions for you so that you can make the most of your calendar and ensure that you remain productive and stress free as possible:
1. Let people know your working hours - Having access to our emails and work calendars on our phones often means we feel obliged to respond in the evenings and weekends when we should be enjoying our time away from work.
- Google Calendar has a feature that allows you to set your working hours so that it will alert people when they send you an invitation that falls outside of your working hours. It’s good practice to set up an ‘out of office’ response whenever you’re planning a day out or any time when you’ll have limited access to your emails.
Make sure your out of office response clearly states your hours of work and when to expect a response. This is a good way to manage people’s expectations.
2. Block time for your work – It’s important to block out time for your own work. If you only have meetings from other people booking in your calendar, you will be working on their priorities all day. It’s a good idea to create appointments and block out time for your projects and priority tasks.
3. Click ‘Decline’ – Nothing is achieved in a meeting without an agenda or purpose – Keep your calendar free of time-wasting obligations by declining meeting requests with no detail, no agenda, no purpose, and sometimes not even a topic. If someone cannot tell you what they need to meet about, it is probably not going to be a useful investment of your time.
4. Automate things – I’m a fan of using automation to manage my calendar - a couple of really useful add-ons are:
- Calendly.com - a great way to schedule meetings without lots of emails back and forth. It’s simple to set up and simple to use.
- Doodle.com - useful for scheduling meetings with multiple people by suggesting times to meet and allowing participants to select their preferred times and picking a final option based on this.
5. Control when you send your emails - Boomerang Email lets you take control of when you send and receive email messages. With Boomerang, you can write an email now and schedule it to be sent automatically at the perfect time. It’s simple to use and probably a good idea for those who often work at 2am in the morning writing emails in your pyjamas!
Boomerang will also archive your message. At the time you choose, they will bring it back to your Inbox, marked unread, starred or even at the top of your message list.
I’d love to hear how you make the most of your calendar and if you have any suggestions?!
Maybe you need a Virtual Assistant (VA) to manage your calendar and emails for you, or some help setting up some time-saving processes/apps? Ask us about our Traditional VA Packages today by calling 01296 910191 or you can email us here.
Below are some suggestions for you so that you can make the most of your calendar and ensure that you remain productive and stress free as possible:
1. Let people know your working hours - Having access to our emails and work calendars on our phones often means we feel obliged to respond in the evenings and weekends when we should be enjoying our time away from work.
- Google Calendar has a feature that allows you to set your working hours so that it will alert people when they send you an invitation that falls outside of your working hours. It’s good practice to set up an ‘out of office’ response whenever you’re planning a day out or any time when you’ll have limited access to your emails.
Make sure your out of office response clearly states your hours of work and when to expect a response. This is a good way to manage people’s expectations.
2. Block time for your work – It’s important to block out time for your own work. If you only have meetings from other people booking in your calendar, you will be working on their priorities all day. It’s a good idea to create appointments and block out time for your projects and priority tasks.
3. Click ‘Decline’ – Nothing is achieved in a meeting without an agenda or purpose – Keep your calendar free of time-wasting obligations by declining meeting requests with no detail, no agenda, no purpose, and sometimes not even a topic. If someone cannot tell you what they need to meet about, it is probably not going to be a useful investment of your time.
4. Automate things – I’m a fan of using automation to manage my calendar - a couple of really useful add-ons are:
- Calendly.com - a great way to schedule meetings without lots of emails back and forth. It’s simple to set up and simple to use.
- Doodle.com - useful for scheduling meetings with multiple people by suggesting times to meet and allowing participants to select their preferred times and picking a final option based on this.
5. Control when you send your emails - Boomerang Email lets you take control of when you send and receive email messages. With Boomerang, you can write an email now and schedule it to be sent automatically at the perfect time. It’s simple to use and probably a good idea for those who often work at 2am in the morning writing emails in your pyjamas!
Boomerang will also archive your message. At the time you choose, they will bring it back to your Inbox, marked unread, starred or even at the top of your message list.
I’d love to hear how you make the most of your calendar and if you have any suggestions?!
Maybe you need a Virtual Assistant (VA) to manage your calendar and emails for you, or some help setting up some time-saving processes/apps? Ask us about our Traditional VA Packages today by calling 01296 910191 or you can email us here.
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