Proactive in Practice - Week 2: Personalize Your Calendar

Last week, I decided that I really needed to make the effort to write things down and not trust my memory.  I'm getting better at it.  I'm still in the "cross off one thing and add six" phase, but at least I'll remember to get to them, right?

This week, I'm focusing on my calendar.

I can't tell you how many times I've double booked something.  Or had the wrong time in my head. I'm getting better at writing down doctor appointments and school events, and mostly checking the calendar before so I'm at the right place at the right time.

But one thing I need to work on is coordinating calendars.  That's where I'm struggling not to overbook.  Like yesterday...I got an email reminder of Luke's Spanish lesson that started as we had to leave for his weekly therapy appointment.  It's not like Monday-at-5 is a new time for PT - we've been in that slot since September.  But I didn't think of it when Luke said "later in the day please" when I asked his time preference for lessons and scheduled two months' worth of Mondays for 3 pm.  Back to the calendar to re-plan.

After a lot of trial and error (and missed appointments), I settled on a Franklin Covey planner.  I'm on my second binder (my first one just disintegrated after about four years), and since I often am making appointments six or twelve months in advance, keep two years' worth of calendar in the planner. So long-term planning is fairly covered.  What I need to do is figure out how to work in the short-term.

What I need is a paper calendar that coordinates everyone.  I used to have a planner that helped me do this, but we outgrew it.  (It had room for four kids's schedules, but then along came Damien and he blew it all out of the water.)  I've been working on a way to re-create something similar, but the hardest part is trying to fit everything on a single page - and have room to write it in legibly.  I've given up on something small enough to fit in my planner, and just am accepting that a household of seven needs a full-size sheet of paper.  It's a work in progress.  (At the moment, it's nothing more fancy than a color-coded table, but if you think it might work for you, I'm happy to share - you can download the template by clicking here. )  I thought about laminating sheets and using a dry-erase marker, but with my luck, I'd rub up against something, erase it, and then have to figure out how to bilocate.  I'll settle for two-sided printing and recycling when I'm done.

I used to joke and call my planner "The Bible."  It was like that other Good Book - don't do anything without consulting it.  I may rename my blogging binder...maybe since it's been more recently assembled, I'll call it the New Testament.  I have my blogging calendar in it, but am finding it also is also a good spot to keep my lists.  I already have my blog to-do lists, so it made sense to stash my to-do list there.  I am going to add these weekly "kid schedules" in here as well, so it's all in one spot.  Being able to see who needs to be where when (whether it's outside of the house or in front of the computer waiting for a Skype call) ahead of time will save me from having to reschedule things at the last minute.



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