There are so many ways that we can fall behind on a given day, most of them involve losing track of exactly what needs to be done. As a response to this, many of us have turned to calenders to outsource the date keeping portions of our brains. Never being one to use anything for what its meant for, I wanted to give you all a tip on how to use your calender to substantially increase your productivity.

Goal Check List

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The first step is to determine your goals for the week. Now, as always, when I say goals I mean actionable items. For example, increasing traffic to your blog is not a goal in this sense. Writing 6 posts, submitting blog entries to blog carnivals and writing an authority post to submit to the major social bookmarking sites are. Goals need to have clear set boundaries, and most importantly be quantifiable.

If you are having trouble coming up with a list of goals, take a look at my 10 Minute Productivity Boost article for some hints.

A major issue faced by many people after coming up with goals is not having the opportunity to complete a task list in any given day. This tends to break the cohesion of a long term project, and add to the amount of time it takes each day coming up with a new goal list. One way to fix this problem is by using your calender.

Create A Goal Calender

This system works best with one of those large desk calenders, but will work just fine with any calendering system with editable boxes. For each of the days of the week, write your goals in the calender boxes. Using this system, my calender for Wednesday might look something like this.

<--Leave Space Here -->
Edit Productivity Post
Write Two Blog Posts
Make Conference Call
Create A List Of Ten Ways To Drive Traffic To Clients Site

Be sure to leave some space in each of the boxes, above the beginning of the list. As you go through the day, cross off each item in the box as it is completed. If, for some reason, you do not finish the list by the end of the day, cross it off anyway and transcribe it to the top of the next days box. Lets assume that I forgot about my conference call — Thursday’s list would look like this:

<--Leave Space Here-->
Make Conference Call
Write Three New Blog Posts
Edit Financial Data For Project
Generate Methodology Document For Clients Web Marketing Plan

If by the end of the week you still have left over items, it’s time to evaluate how you have been using your time. Do you notice that you continue to “put off” certain tasks, or is it that you are not using your time efficiently? Could it be that you are simply over scheduled?

Regardless of the cause, use the end of the week as a time to reflect on what you have been unable to accomplish. If you find that you are consistently falling behind on the same tasks, it might be time to reevaluate your work flow.

Web 2.0 Roundup

For those looking for a slightly more technologically oriented solution, here are a few sites that might help you get organized. By sure to subscribe to the RSS so that you can come back and tell me how it went.

Time Bridge

Time Bridge is a fantastic little app that allows you to schedule events by collecting the availabilities of attendees and determining which meeting team would fit best into everyone’s schedule. It integrates well with Outlook and also creates a collaborative space for documents and comments. It’s currently in BETA.

Planzo

Planzo is a calendering service that allows you to share your events on your blog, on your webpage and over AIM. It has a slick AJAX interface among other things. Some of its other features include:

  • Daily Digest: E-mail your day’s events to you every morning
  • SMS: Text message events and reminders to your cell phone
  • Share Events: Share your events with friends on Planzo
  • Privacy: Complete control over who can see your events

Hopefully these help, what other calendering software do you use?

[Photo Credit]

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