CHAPTER 7 | ORGANIZING: SETTING UP THE RIGHT BUCKETS
Using the Calendar for Future Options
Your calendar can be a very handy place to park reminders of
things you might want to consider doing in the future. Most of the
people I've coached were not nearly as comfortable with their cal-
endars as they could have been; otherwise they probably would
have found many more things to put in there.
One of the three uses of a calendar is for day-specific informa-
tion. This category can include a number of things, but one of the
most creative ways to utilize this function is to enter things that
you want to take off your mind and reassess at some later date.
Here are a few of the myriad things you should consider inserting:
- Triggers for activating projects
- Events you might want to participate in
- Decision catalysts
Triggers for Activating Projects If you have a project that you
don't really need to think about now but that deserves a flag at
some point in the future, you can pick an appropriate date and put
a reminder about the project in your calendar for that day. It
should go in some day-specific (versus time-specific) calendar slot
for the things you want to be reminded of on that day; then when
the day arrives, you see the reminder and insert the item as an
active project on your "Projects" list. Typical candidates for this
treatment are:
- Special events with a certain lead time for handling (product
launches, fund-raising drives, etc.) - Regular events that you need to prepare for, such as budget
reviews, annual conferences, planning events, or meetings (e.g.,
when should you add next year's "annual sales conference" to
your "Projects" list?) - Key dates for significant people that you might want to do some-
thing about (birthdays, anniversaries, holiday gift-giving, etc.)