Choosing Your Calendar

Is digital calendar or paper calendar your preference? You may be a big fan of planners and love the way they help you focus on direction and achieving your goals. Or you may prefer a calendar to keep the focus on time management throughout your days. Choosing your calendar and setting up your system to stay on track throughout the year is very important. Whatever your preference is, choosing your calendar is the first step in organizing your year. Here are tips from Our Professional Organizers for choosing your calendar.

DECIDE ON A SYSTEM

Take some time to decide on a system. Think through what appointments, tasks, and information you want to keep in your calendar. Will you put every appointment in the same place or keep work and personal separate? If you have a family, then you may need a family calendar where everyone’s schedule is in one place and a separate work calendar for you. Also, think through what information will go into your calendar. Do you want to just put appointments or do you want to include additional items from your week like meal planning or chores? There are so many different options available to you. Choose what makes the most sense to you.

Personal tips from our Professional Organizers for choosing your calendar: 

  • Google Calendar is what I use and I love that I can share my calendar with work and with my husband. 
  • We have the Echo Show in our home! I like that it shows my calendar in the kitchen. It helps everyone to know what is going on.
  • I prefer a digital calendar because I can make edits to my calendar on any device and have it sync up no matter where I make the changes. You can easily make adjustments or reschedule appointments without making your calendar look like a mess.

DIGITAL OR PAPER?

Both digital and paper have their pros and cons. Here are some more pros and cons of both digital and paper calendars. Some may like having the convenience of a calendar that syncs on all devices and can be quickly accessed on your phone. Others may find that they remember appointments better if they physically write them down. 

Personal tips from our Professional Organizers for choosing your calendar: 

  • A digital calendar makes it super easy to add supporting information like location, agenda notes, or zoom links.
  • I do have a paper planner…there is just something about physically writing it down that helps me versus looking at a phone.
  • Having the alarm set to remind me 10 minutes prior to when I have an appointment makes the digital calendar my calendar of choice!

PLANNER VERSUS CALENDAR

The words “planner” and “calendar” mean different things. A planner helps you to focus on direction and achieving your goals.  It helps to keep you on track towards your goals with daily, weekly, or monthly prompts and reminders. Planners are great for people that like to journal and find inspiration from self-reflection and accountability. A calendar is more focused on time and the management of the time. Calendars focus on helping you manage your time by breaking down your day into hours, or your month into days. Check out some great planners and calendars here and here.

Personal tips from our Professional Organizers for choosing your calendar: 

  • I like the Simplified Planner for personal and work use.
  • I use a monthly calendar and a weekly calendar. The weekly calendar goes on my refrigerator with the meal plan – I got my weekly calendar at the Container Store and love it.
  • A combination of digital and paper works best for me. A digital calendar is easy to use and the paper planner’s daily to-dos keep me focused on my goals. 

CHOOSE YOUR VIEW

You can choose to view your schedule by the day, week, month, year, 4 days, and so forth. Both digital and paper calendars have these different viewing options and it can be quite helpful depending on what you need. With digital options, you can toggle between the views. With paper options, your view selections become permanent when you purchase your calendar. Make sure you take some time to think through which view(s) will help you the most and then utilize it to make the most of your day. 

Personal tips from our Professional Organizers for choosing your calendar: 

  • A digital calendar is my preference. I am constantly adding meetings and events to my calendar. It’s very important to me that I can see an accurate and updated calendar on the go whether it is for the week or the month. 
  • We use an acrylic wall calendar for our family. While it has the whole month on display, it also has a weekly menu, to-dos, and kids’ activities. It looks pretty and is functional. 
  • I enjoy writing down and keeping track of various things in my paper planner. The daily view is wonderful for logging and keeping track of my exercise routine.

Let us know how you feel about digital versus paper calendars! Also, don’t forget to join our Abundance Declutter Group on Facebook. Are you ready for our Declutter Challenge starting on February 1st?

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