Does It Matter If Your Calendar’s Online?

For at least 3 or four years now, I’ve kept my calendar online.* And while I haven’t surveyed our writers, you can probably take it as read that this is hardly a minority view.  But ProfHacker isn’t about purveying the latest technological solution; it’s about finding the solution that’s right for you, regardless of whether it’s online.

(I’m actually not convinced most people use an online calendar.  Our IT staff often break out in giggles–though I think they’re partly giggles of frustration–at the widespread refusal of faculty to use the calendaring functions in Outlook/Exchange.)

In this post, I’m going to look at the calendar/to-do list of one of my colleagues–code-named “Aimee”–in order to show how a simple, paper-based calendar can help improve your life.  I can’t take a picture of her calendar without giving away too much information, but it’s easily described:

Every year, she buys a weekly planner, usually one of the spiral-bound ones with art of some sort on it.  Then, *everything* goes in it, from phone calls to meetings to deadlines.  To each week’s picture, she fastidiously tapes one post-it note, on which she writes every task that’s due that week (or, at least everything beyond small-bore stuff like “respond to student e-mail”).  Inside the front and back cover, she’ll sketch out research plans for the academic year, projects for her house, and whatever else she wants to accomplish that takes longer than about a week.

How many things are awesome about this?  Let’s count:

1. She likes writing in the calendar.  She only buys calendars with art she likes, or at least from museums she likes to visit, and so working with it gives her positive associations–not, for example, dread.
2. Everything goes in the calendar.  She doesn’t have to think, “wait, did I put this in my calendar, or Evernote, or Things“?  She always knows.
3. Although everything goes in the calendar, nothing goes automatically. (How could it?) She consciously decides what fills up her days.
4. The format of calendar + post-it note requires her to review her calendar.  Late Sunday or early Monday, she sweeps through her calendar and e-mail for upcoming deadlines, and generates that new post-it for the week.
5. The format also constrains her schedule.  “In one week, I can do this much, but no more.”  (Ok, I have known her to occasionally use a second post-it note, but those are *really* infrequent.)
6. The format lets her see how her schedule evolves over time–what projects turned out to be full of surprises? (She can tell because there are lots of entries crammed into the side of a note or a week.)  How did a project move from “inside the back cover” to formally scheduled to completed?  It’s legible at a glance, and lets her predict her upcoming schedule with astonishing accuracy.  This pays practical dividends when applying for grants or reassigned time or sabbaticals: When she describes what work she’ll accomplish, she’s making projections based on actual data, instead of the time-honored “pull it out of your butt” methodology.

There’s probably more, but that’s a good list of key productivity principles: find small pleasures in even rote practices; practice universal capture; be reflective about your schedule; recognize that you have limits; review the relationship between one’s daily schedule and one’s big-picture plans.

And, yes, it’s true that she doesn’t get automatic reminders.  Nor is the calendar backed up anywhere. Nor is it shareable, or accessible when she doesn’t have it with her. But as far as I can tell, not one of those things has ever made her miss a deadline or blow off a meeting.

Do you use a paper calendar?  Why? How do you make it work for you?

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*Why 30Boxes and not Google Calendar?  I’m waiting for the big ProfHacker tour of Google services, forthcoming soon, to reveal my reasons.

Image by flickr user wka / CC licensed