As a business owner, managing your schedule is important. Ensuring your tending list is accounted for and being taken care while you also keep track of things like meetings, events and personal responsibilities is essential to the efficiency of your workflow.

Leaving a major meeting date to memory or scribbling an event booking on a napkin is not a reliable (or efficient) way of logging activities or managing a schedule.

Are you a paper planner, digital planner or do you prefer a combo of both?

Paper planners are fabulous for handwriting fans (like me) who like doodling page borders with flowers, leaves and inspiring words, but Google Calendar 🗓 is a very handy tool when it comes to making edits and syncing your schedule with other apps.

One big advantage of mapping your schedule with a digital calendar over using a paper planner is the reminder factor.

Planners are helpful for documenting your day, but they can’t remind you of appointments. Unless your vigilant about checking your paper planner daily (and frequently, on days with multiple events), it’s easy to forget something that might be important to tend to on a particular day at a set time.

So let’s get to the pluses of using a digital calendar as a freelancer, whether working from home or on-the-go.

It’s helpful to assign specific days for certain tasks.

Here are two screenshots of my mostly-work schedule: each showing one week of activities in two different months (July and August this year.)

Tuesdays and Wednesdays are usually my days for coaching clients, but in the pic above, I had a lot of daily rehearsals for an event that coincided with a break in my workshop schedule.

You might want to log household duties and work tasks in the same calendar or keep them separate; it’s up to you.

In google calendar, you can:

• Categorize and colour code the activities on your to-do list

• Make any customized notes for each event

• Invite others to your calendar event, have simultaneous reminders sent via g-mail, and get a notification when they confirm. Tip: For events with multiple invitees, some prefer not to be visible to everyone on the virtual guest list, so you can make the guest list hidden (private.) If you’re not sure, just ask.

• Keep track of appointments and assignments digitally (Tip: You can sync Google Calendar with Trello app when planning/working on projects)
• Access your schedule easily, without logging into an account or needing WiFi
• Easily shift / edit activities digitally without an eraser or having to scrawl out pen-written words in a planner
• View (edit or add to) your schedule on your phone, laptop, tablet or desktop. For clarity, if you edit something on your phone and then check it again right after, on your desktop, the change is instantly reflected
• Document your workflow. Your digital calendar can make a handy reference in gauging how much time it takes to tend to a particular task, for yourself and anyone you might be recruiting into the business

Planners and calendars are handy for logging activities and mapping schedules, but it’s up to the person to follow-through and tend to the tasks of the day.

We aren’t meant to be bound to our business or a hostage to time. There are likely gonna be more than a few days when what’s written or typed isn’t taken care of or completed…and that’s alright. Don’t panic.

We’re works in progress, but planning is a proactive continuous step that’s essential to the life and workflow of an entrepreneur.

Handwriting something helps call it to memory so if you’re into paper planning and it’s working well for you, no need to give it up. But if you’d like to take your business planning up a notch, Google Calendar (and/or i-Cal) is a click away.

‘Maximizing Google Calendar To Manage Your Schedule’ was first published on ‘Joy within’ blog