76. 10 Digital Calendar Power Moves for Students and Professionals
Episode 76
Many of us are already using our digital calendars, but MOST of us aren’t tapping into their true power. In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I share 10 strategies for getting the most from your digital calendar so that you work smarter and feel organized.
Part 1: 6 power moves to maximize how your calendar works for you (and not the other way around)
Part 2: 4 strategies to strengthen your calendar habit so you’re using it consistently and with total trust.
What You’ll Learn:
How you may be under-using your digital calendar and leaving time on the table
How to manage the multiple roles in your life (school, work, personal, etc.) in a digital system
What goes on a calendar and what does not (and yes, it matters)
6 calendar strategies and functionalities you have to use
4 ways to make your calendar habit stick (for real this time!)
🎙️Other Episodes + Resources Mentioned:
Episode 5: Secrets of a good task management system
✏️Get my FREE parent training: How to Help Your Student Handle School Like a Pro — Without Study Frustration, Assignment Overwhelm, or All the Drama (If you’re the parent of a high school or college student, this training is for you.)
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them 😉
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[00:00:00] You are probably already using a digital calendar, or at the very least, have one set up that you know you could be getting more out of. Maybe you use it every day, but only for basic things. Or maybe you use it in only one context of your life, like just work or just school. And you're curious about streamlining how to integrate all of the spaces of your life into one calendar.
Or maybe you go through this digital calendar enthusiasm cycle where for a few weeks you are super [00:00:30] motivated to make your digital calendar your daily operating engine, but then for whatever reason, no judgment, you realize that three months have passed and you haven't looked at your calendar once.
Hello and welcome to the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. I am Katie and this is episode 76.
Today's topic is one of my favorites because it combines a little bit of strategy with a little technical how to all in the name of managing our time and getting a little more organized [00:01:00] and what is not to love about that.
Now, as you know by the title of this episode, we are talking about digital calendar skills. Now, for the most part, throughout this episode, I'm going to be talking about Google Calendar. Okay? Like I'm going to use the words Google Calendar outta my mouth, but most of everything that I say about Google Calendar also works for Outlook and iCal and whatever other digital calendar that you are using.
But just for [00:01:30] simplicity's sake, and because I'm speaking from my own experience, I mean, I do use Outlook as well, but I'm kind of framing this around Google Calendar. Okay. But especially when we are talking about strategies and not so much the technical, like how to do something like step-by-step, the strategies apply no matter what kind of digital calendar you are using.
And with that said, I'm also sharing today's strategies, assuming that you've already set up a digital calendar of some kind.[00:02:00]
So first things first: If you have an Outlook account or a Google account at all, like you have Gmail, okay, You have access to a digital calendar. It just sort of comes with your account.
So assuming that I'm gonna walk through 10 tips today that will help you establish a stronger digital calendar habit.
We are obviously gonna talk about why that's important, and then I'm gonna share some best practices for using your calendar in ways that make your days in your life more [00:02:30] manageable.
As with all of the strategies that I share in my episodes, take what works and leave what doesn't. There is no one size fits all approach to managing a digital calendar because you know, a lot of it has to do with what kind of job you have or where you are in school, as well as your personal preferences and all of that matters.
But I encourage you to listen all the way through and be open-minded to even try like one of the things that we talk about today. The strategies [00:03:00] aren't really in any particular order of importance other than I am grouping today's show into part one and part two.
Part one is gonna be strategies and howtos and some calendar tactics.
And then part two is gonna be some advice for establishing a calendar habit so that you're more likely to commit to using it the way that you want to use it, which is consistently and across contexts. Now, that was a long introduction, but I wanted to be sure that [00:03:30] you understood the roadmap of today's episode. So let's get started.
[00:04:00] Alright, we are going to begin with part one, some calendar strategies and best practices in no particular order. There are six tips for this part one.
And number one is to create and use multiple calendars. Now, almost every one of you listening to the show or watching on YouTube today has multiple roles in your life.
And while I don't typically suggest having multiples of anything just for the sake of it, in most cases I do advise having multiple calendars inside your one calendar [00:04:30] account. Now I'm gonna give an exception, or it's more like an alternative in a moment, but most of us do benefit from this strategy.
Inside Google Calendar, you simply click add new calendar or create new calendar. You give it a color and then boom, there you go. Now you can choose to see your multiple calendars at once, like so you have everything up there on the page, or you can toggle them off and on depending what you want to get a focus view of one particular calendar at a time.
[00:05:00] Students, you can create a calendar that shows your classes, your deadlines, your assignment due dates. Okay, so that would be like a school calendar. You could have another one for personal things like appointments and workouts or you know, social events, whatever. And then maybe your part-time job. So there'd be a third one, if you have a part-time job.
Professionals, maybe you have one for work. So that's your meetings. The days that you have to be in the office, maybe times you block off to do focused work if you're time blocking, maybe, um, for [00:05:30] your admin block, right?
You can have a personal calendar for appointments and whatever else you have going on. And then maybe you have a shared family calendar, if that's relevant, where members of your family all have access and can add things as they come up.
Now, there are pros and cons to having multiple calendars, so that's something that you're gonna have to weigh for yourself.
I'm gonna share an alternative to creating multiple calendars in a moment, but there are pros and cons to that approach too.
I know that early on in my career, I only had [00:06:00] one calendar where I just dumped everything, and that worked perfectly fine for years. But as life got more complicated and I needed to start sharing calendars with my husband and my kids, you know, they didn't need to see all of my work stuff.
And sometimes when I was looking at my work stuff for the day, like what was happening during my set work hours, I didn't want to be distracted by the fact that one of my kids had a soccer practice that night that I knew was irrelevant to what I was doing with work that afternoon. I liked to toggle them [00:06:30] off and on.
Now, personally, I have a personal calendar, a family calendar that my husband and kids have access to. I have two teenagers and they're just starting building this calendar habit, and we are doing really well with that. Knock on wood, I have a work calendar, and then I'm subscribed to a few different calendars that have to do with my kids, such as soccer and scouts.
Those organizations have their own calendars for families to subscribe to, and again, I can easily toggle those on and off when needed. Okay.
When I set up a digital calendar system with students, [00:07:00] especially in high school, we're just starting with one calendar. Everything goes on in, because early on it's about establishing the calendar habit.
It's about building trust in your calendar and in yourself that you're going to use it. And it's really important at this stage to reduce any friction or extra steps. So otherwise you're, you not, not gonna end up touching it at all. Right? And that's not what we want.
Most of my college students also use a single calendar, but then once they start getting more serious jobs or summer [00:07:30] jobs or internships or whatever, they may dabble with adding another calendar.
And then of course, if I'm working with a student and there's already an established family calendar that their, you know, parents have set up for them, I'll help that student set up their own personal calendar and get shared onto the family calendar too. Okay. Inside my online course for high school, college, and graduate students, I teach really in-depth calendar management skills. There's an entire module on time management where we get into the weeds about establishing a calendar habit, what goes on it, what goes, what [00:08:00] doesn't go on it, how to optimize it, how to create a system that will scale once the students enter the workforce.
I always leave the link to learn more about SchoolHabits University in the show notes in the description box. All right. And then that alternative to creating multiple calendars that I've hinted at like twice so far, that is to create one single calendar and just assign different colors to each kind of event.
Maybe blue for work things, green for school things, orange for personal, whatever. This can be easier to set up if you're [00:08:30] totally new to digital calendars, like at all. But the downside of this is that you can't toggle off and on particular kinds of events like you could if you put all your work events in your work calendar, for example.
Also, if you ever want to to share your calendar with someone in your circle, they would see everything as opposed to just that one calendar that you shared with them. That's all up to you.
And then just to take that one step further, another quick trick I love for [00:09:00] making your calendar easier to scan at a glance, whether you're using multiple calendars or a single calendar with different colored events, and that's to try adding a short little label at the very beginning of your event title to show what kind of activity it is. I like to put this in all capital letters. So instead of just writing, you know, meeting or whatever, or work session, you could label it like. Admin block, you know, check email and slack.
Deep work: write proposal or personal [00:09:30] grocery shopping. So we've got like admin block, deep work, personal, okay. This little description word at the beginning of the event name helps your brain understand what kind of task is coming up. And this is really helpful if you have a hard time switching back and forth between different kinds of work throughout the day.
Particularly if you have ADHD. It also gives your calendar a cleaner structure without needing to create multiple separate calendars, or rely too heavily on color coding if that is not your thing.
You do [00:10:00] not need to overthink this. Just start with a few labels that make sense to you. See how it feels.
Maybe it's like work, school, personal. Um, you could get more specific than that, but I would probably say not more than five labels. It is a small thing, but it can make your calendar feel a lot more user friendly.
All right. The next calendar strategy I wanna share has to do with different types of things that you can add to your calendar. The tip here is to use events, tasks, and reminders strategically. Now if you're using Google Calendar, [00:10:30] Outlook or you know iCal, whether on your browser or on your phone app, which I highly recommend you having on your phone, you can usually add an event or task.
Now, at the time I'm recording this, Google Calendar also has a birthday option, but I personally just add birthdays as all day events on my personal calendar. That works for me, so I'm sticking, sticking with it. You can do what works for you.
But let's break this down, starting with events. An event can be anything.
It can be a class, it can be a meeting, phone call, [00:11:00] vacation doctor's appointment, anything at all that has a time attached to it. You can also, like I just mentioned a second ago, make an event all day, which removes the start and end time and it places it at the very top of your day. This is what I use for things like birthdays and anniversaries.
Now, when I work with students, we'll often use all day events for due dates or exams, things that don't necessarily happen at a specific hour. And it's a great way to visually see what's due without getting buried [00:11:30] among the, you know, time specific stuff, like a class or a meeting. These, when you add them as a all day event, they stand out at the very top of the page and they're really easy to toggle on and off if you have set up separate calendars.
And this is a really important reminder, if you've zoned out, I want you to zone back in for a second. Your calendar is not in your task management system. It is really tempting to dump all your homework assignments and your to-dos and your projects into your calendar, but that is not the place for them.
I'm speaking to both [00:12:00] professionals and students here. Now, we add the due dates. If you're a student, you can add the due dates for major assignments. Sure. But the actual details of the work should live in your task management system. I have talked a lot about building task management systems in other episodes. You might wanna start with episode five, and then of course, if you're a student, we cover all of this in detail inside SchoolHabits University.
Professionals, same thing. If you're working on big projects, those smaller tasks, the micro [00:12:30] steps of the big projects are better tracked in a project management system.
Something like Asana, notion Monday, or even a good old fashioned notebook, but not in the calendar. Now that said, there are situations where adding a task to your calendar makes sense, and this is where I love Google Calendar and Gmail integration. Now, outlook has a similar feature, but again, just for the sake of speaking clearly and simply, I'm gonna say Google Calendar and Gmail.
Here's how it works. When [00:13:00] you get an email that requires an action, maybe school is asking you to register for something, A camp form opens up for maybe your kids or whatever it is, you can click add to tasks right from inside the email itself. That email is instantly turned into a task. And when you click on it later from your task list or from inside your calendar, it takes you straight back to that original email that contains all of the [00:13:30] details and if there were any attachments or anything like that.
Just this morning, for example, I got an email saying that one of my kids' health forms need to be com completed for like a summer camp. They have like a thousand summer camps this summer. Oh my gosh, I'm not doing that today, but I don't wanna forget it.
So I clicked add to task. Uh, uh, tasks. I renamed it Jack Health Form, and now when I'm ready, I can click that task and go straight back into the info, which is inside the email that I'm gonna need at the time. Now it's also going in my like, [00:14:00] like do kids camp Forms is in my task management system as well, but now it's connected directly to the email with all the information in it.
This is one of my favorite strategies for email management 'cause it reduces, you know, the mental clutter, it saves time hunting for old messages. If you're using Outlook, you can do something similar, but they don't call it tasks. Outlook calls it todos. There's like a, um, outlook, uh, uh, calendar todo.
Integration. Okay. So, or a, uh, an email [00:14:30] to do calendar integration. Okay, whatever. So what does this have to do with your digital calendar? Well, Google Calendar automatically creates a separate tasks calendar. If you want, you can configure it so that your tasks, whether they're added from an email or you add them manually, appear right inside your calendar view.
It is all connected inside the Google ecosystem, so that way you can see a visual of your time-based events and your [00:15:00] tasks. Though again, this should still be used sparingly and strategically because you're still gonna have a task management system. But the bottom line is digital calendars give you multiple ways to capture and organize information.
Use events for time-based commitments. Use tasks for action items. Use reminders when you need a nudge. We're gonna talk about reminders in a bit and avoid turning your calendar into a giant chaotic to-do list. That's overwhelming because that's not what it's built for. Okay, number three.
The third digital calendar strategy I want to [00:15:30] share is about the description section. Use it. This is a really underutilized feature for digital calendars, but it can be really good for staying organized. Whenever you add an event to your calendar, you're gonna see a section called description. You scroll down a little bit.
This is a blank text field that can be used for any purpose whatsoever. You can be really creative here. Some of my professional clients get really creative with what they like... They've given me ideas for what to put in there. You can add details about the [00:16:00] event, like what you need to bring, maybe who the primary contact person is, anything you don't wanna forget about the event.
Like let's say it's a department meeting, right? But you also got word that someone at the meeting, it's their birthday. Well then write that in the description box so when you walk in to the meeting, you can say happy birthday to that person, right? If you're a student and you have added all of your classes for the semester as events there, and there's maybe there's something notable about a particular class on a certain [00:16:30] day that you need to remember or that would be good to know, add that to the description section.
Maybe it's something that you know you need to bring to class or maybe a question that you wanna ask the professor. Add it to the description section.
Number four, use reminders strategically. You may already know that you can set a reminder for important events inside your digital calendar. You probably already know that.
My advice is not to only add reminders for events that you have a likelihood of forgetting about, but to add multiple reminders if needed. [00:17:00] When you are creating your event, you can actually add as many reminders as you want. Depending on the event, you may only need to be reminded like 10 minutes beforehand, right?
If you don't have to travel, you know, and get there, maybe it's an hour. If you wanna be reminded to leave your house an hour before the event. Maybe it's a full day reminder, a full day before the event, because you need sufficient time to, I don't know, plan for the event, whatever it is. If you have a DHD, you may wanna set a reminder for [00:17:30] one hour, half an hour, 15 minutes and five minutes.
Because even if you send a set a reminder for 15 minutes before an event, you are likely to ignore the reminder, um, and have 15 minutes go by before you even know it. Okay. And now, is that excessive? Absolutely not. If you have a DHD, right. And you tend to ignore alarms after a while, they all blend in.
All right, number five, the fifth tip.
Yes. Email yourself your daily agenda. Well, you're not really emailing it yourself. You're sort of [00:18:00] configuring the system so that your digital calendar will automatically send out an email with your agenda for the day. Now, if you're just getting started on an digital calendar and you're like, I don't really have an agenda or whatever, maybe you don't need to do this.
So I'm kind of combining these tips to be basic entry level plus some advanced ninja level skills. So take, like I said, the beginning, Take what fits and leave the rest. But you can configure your email management system to send out a reminder or a, an email to [00:18:30] you with your agenda for the day. It's kind of like having your own little personal assistant. Now, the instructions for how to do this absolutely vary with ever with vary in what? Wait. They vary with they vary. They vary with, yeah, they vary with whatever digital calendar system that you are using.
And they often change, like things are always moving from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen. So I'm not gonna give you like a walkthrough of it, but you can almost always find it under settings um, and then [00:19:00] notifications in whatever platform you're using.
And then the last practical strategy for part one, so this is tip number six, is to use buffer blocks to protect your time.
We know to put actual appointments or meetings on our calendar, right? The things that involve someone else or that have a hard start or stop time. We've talked about that, and that's like calendars at the most basic level.
But one of the more advanced digital calendar strategies is to start scheduling buffer blocks [00:19:30] around those fixed events.
Buffer blocks are just short windows of time, maybe 10, 15, 30 minutes, 30 at the most, probably that you intentionally leave open before or after an event to handle things like travel, mental reset, prep, the inevitable overrun of a meeting, right? Time to process your notes.
For example, if you have a zoom call that typically ends at two o'clock, we don't book our next appointment to start right at two o'clock.
If you have any control [00:20:00] over it.
Give yourself a buffer block until two 15. So you can wrap up your zoom meeting, you can process your notes, you can run to the bathroom. You can send a quick follow up email, things like that. Add any action items that you, um, talked about at the meeting and put them in your task management system.
That's sort of like the processing the notes piece. These aren't just, you know, productivity hacks their boundaries, and they're essential to staying organized with our time and to not feeling overworked.
All right, let's move on to part two, which is some [00:20:30] strategies for either starting or strengthening your Google Calendar habit.
after all, you can learn all of the bells and whistles and you know, productivity hacks for using a digital calendar system, But if you don't actually use it, it doesn't matter how many hacks you learn. All right, so the first tip for this part two more of like the overall strategy and mindset and habit building part is to front load everything you possibly can into your digital calendar in one sitting.
So plan a [00:21:00] chunk of time, maybe 30 minutes to just sit at the computer with your digital calendar open in the browser. I really recommend doing this on the browser and not on the phone app. Okay. And just crank it out. For students, this may be all of your courses for a whole semester at a time, because you know, that's really all you know in one at one time.
if you're in high school, this would just mean creating an event right from one event, from seven 30 to two and having that re or whatever your school hours are, and having that repeat [00:21:30] Monday through Friday from September to June.
Okay, you already know this, but you don't need to create separate events for repeating events. If you thought that, then I would, it would make sense why you wouldn't want to use a Google Calendar if you're like, oh my gosh, I have to like load all of my classes. Not, that's not how it works.
So we do this inside the settings for the event that you're creating. So you create one event. Let's say it's a class that you know runs on Tuesdays from three to five. You [00:22:00] create that one event just once, and you use the settings to make that event repeat weekly, every Tuesdays from three to five, for the semester, so I don't know, sometime in December.
Alright, if it's like the first semester, whatever, working professionals, if you have a status meeting every Tuesday from three to five, good lord, that would be a long status meeting. Maybe it's from three to three 30, You create one event and set that to repeat weekly. If you have access to any other schedules like sports [00:22:30] schedules, gym schedules, class schedules, vacations, meetings, work schedules, whatever, add all of those at this one, sort of like front loading calendar session. Alright, so when you load these all up in the beginning, it reduces the friction that you might feel to be like, oh, every single day I have to add the events for the day. No, you put it all in in the beginning.
Now number two, look at your calendar every single day.
Some of you listening to this might be thinking, obviously I look at it every single [00:23:00] day. That's how I know what I'm doing. But others might be hearing that advice and thinking, why on earth would I ever do that? I know off the top of my head what I'm doing every day, or I don't have a reason to look at my calendar every day.
Mm-hmm. You actually do have a reason. The reason is to establish the habit. The more frequently we do something intentionally, the more frequently we'll do that thing automatically. And that's literally the nature and the definition of habit building the automaticity of [00:23:30] it.
Okay, so the science behind habit formation is that we're more likely to build a new habit if we stack it against an existing habit. So to build a calendar habit, try to open your calendar immediately before, during, or even immediately after an already established habit. So if you wake up every morning and you have a cup of coffee at your kitchen counter, that's when you can open up your calendar.
Okay? Because you already have that routine of waking up, sitting at the counter, having your cup of coffee, and when you stack your new calendar [00:24:00] habit with that, it has something concrete to land on. Let's say you have a routine where you show up to work each day, maybe checking email is the first thing that you do.
Well, maybe you do a quick calendar check first, and then dive into your email, right? The, the email habits the established one, and you're stacking the calendar habit with that. But this is essential. This opening your calendar every day without fail is essential because we have to train our brains to trust our calendar.
If we don't ever open it, [00:24:30] even on the days when we don't need to, especially on the days we don't need to, then we're never gonna allow the digital calendar to become the organizational power tool that it is.
Tip number three, set a recurring weekly calendar audit.
So once a week, I like to say Sundays, you know, during your Sunday reset or Friday afternoon before you mentally check out, Block off five to 10 minutes to do a quick audit of your calendar. Open it up to sort of scan the week ahead, cancel or schedule, reschedule [00:25:00] anything that no longer fits. Double check for conflicts.
You know, maybe you need to connect with your family and say, okay, who has something coming up this week? Maybe you need to check if your student checked the portal to see if any classes have been moved. Right.
But you're not necessarily adding anything here. Maybe you are, but this isn't planning. It's more like calibrating. Think of it like straightening your calendar's spine, so it's more likely to carry you through the week without tipping over. That is a really weird analogy. Maybe it's more like, you know, [00:25:30] wiping down your kitchen counters versus like a full, deep clean of your entire kitchen.
We're not deep cleaning here, okay? We are wiping down the figurative counters so the mess doesn't accumulate. This practice keeps our calendar clean, it keeps it usable, it keeps it accurate, Which builds trust and reduces friction- two essential components of habit formation.
Okay, number four, turn calendar. Checking into a visual queue. Sometimes we [00:26:00] forget to open our digital calendar simply because there is no prompt. There's no reason to do so. That's super common, especially in the early days of building the habit, or maybe even during times where we're using our calendar less frequently, like during the summer, actually, you know, just this morning I was recording my May Q and a video inside School Habits University students submit their questions every month. I personally answer them and I put the video inside the course and a student literally asked a question that for this month that I just [00:26:30] answered like an hour ago about how to keep their newly established... well, this was task management habit going over the summer when they don't actually have much to track.
And in that answer I obviously, you know, shared strategies for, for the task management. But I brought out, also brought up calendar habits because digital calendars are obviously on my mind. 'cause I knew that I'd be recording this episode right after that. But also because the strategies are similar. My advice for maintaining a task management habit and a calendar habit was to make them both [00:27:00] visual. Add a visual cue to your workspace. So for example, you can make your digital calendar your browser homepage. So it opens every time you launch, um, Chrome or Safari or whatever you're using. You could set a widget on your phone's home screen that displays your agenda. You could also, like I mentioned earlier, have your, calendar system, whichever one you are using, email you your agenda for the day. So it's just kind of a reminder of like, Hey, you have things today. Even if your agenda's empty, you'll still get an email that's like nothing on the schedule [00:27:30] today. And that's just sort of planting the seed that reminds you you have a calendar here that wants to be used.
These little visual nudges placed exactly where your eyes naturally go all day long, Your phone reduce the effort it takes to build the habit, and that is honestly the name of the game here.
All right. Before we close out, I wanna give you a quick recap of the 10 strategies that we cover today.
Part one, calendar strategies and best practices was create and use multiple calendars [00:28:00] or, or color code, you know, or use labels within one calendar.
Use events, tasks, and reminders strategically, but don't turn your calendar into a to-do list.
Number three was use the description section to keep track of important details about the event.
Number four, set multiple reminders if needed, especially if you tend to ignore them.
Number five, email yourself your daily agenda.
And number six, use buffer blocks to protect your time and prevent overloading your schedule.[00:28:30]
Part two was about building your calendar habit.
So that was front load recurring events in one big batch, maybe, um, every six months or so, depending on, you know, who you are and what your life looks like.
Number two, look at your calendar every single day. Habit stacking was a strategy there.
Number three, set a recurring weekly calendar audit. Wipe down the metaphorical counters, right, so to speak. Uh, number was it? I forget. Five. Four. Four. 'cause it's 10 total.
And number four, you turn your calendar checking into [00:29:00] a visual queue with widgets or maybe even a browser homepage.
Now, I hope you found at least one or two strategies to either improve your current digital calendar system or maybe to give you the nudge to finally start using one. Remember, these tools are only powerful when we actually use them, and more importantly, when we trust them. If you want help putting these systems into place, or you're looking for more support with time management, calendar skills, task organization, definitely check out School Habits University.
There's an entire module dedicated [00:29:30] to exactly this, where we go step by step, so you're never guessing. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I appreciate you and remember, never stop learning.
