The humble calendar is the king of the productivity tools. It’s a map of time with a clear, obvious, and universally shared understanding of how the system functions. Calendars are the most important thing to manage when it comes to the most important of your 3 Personal Resources. They’re simple, and Simple is Maintainable.
Calendars are the structure for Periodic Reviews. They can provide Contextual Reminders to do things like reach Inbox Zero or perform periodic Maintenance. They can also surface relevant Checklists and templates. They make Time Blocking possible, allowing you to suggest to your future self how to utilize your time (or even how much time through the use of Timeboxing). They keep your Task Manager bound to reality - you need X done by Y date. When it comes to managing tasks, calendars are better for Deadlines than “do dates”. They crystalize who is doing what, when; which is the absolute key to interpersonal cooperation. The calendar is the lifeblood of working successfully with others1. It says who’s doing what, when. It sets pace and provides the heartbeat of the organization - even if the organization is you and your spouse.
Note: while calendars can be used to hold tasks and Meeting Notes directly, they’re not the best mechanism for those things. Task managers and dedicated notes apps are better.
Source
- Self
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Footnotes
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Except those few companies or endeavors that can truly be done asynchronously. ↩