The good thing about being a bit behind…
This week I’ve read lots of CPD23 blog posts on Google Calendar (those for, against, those who quite like but have something else already that’s more suitable) trying to get up a bit of enthusiasm for it. The posts overall were fairly variable in their thoughts as to how useful or not it would be for them and why. However I read about a lot of functionality that I hadn’t realised it had (especially through woodsiegirl and bethanr) - and some of that sounded rather intriguing or fun. At least enough that I decided to create myself one for a look and have a play about with it for a week.
My Concerns
Disproportionate time spent / losing focus on what’s important to actually accomplish
I have set myself up a Google Calendar (well, ahem, actually I’ve got 7 separate ones running, and then I found myself starting to fill things in, and colour code, and….). This is when a sharp memory hit me of my teenage self around school exam time when I had a wonderful ability to make up more and more elaborate – colour-coded – study schedules that – you’ve got it – never happened so I then had to make up (groan) the ‘next gen’ version…. It was cyclical.
Too Much Horror
Frankly if I look at everything I’m scheduled to do and what I need to do at the same time you’ll find me in a quivering heap under my chair. Yes I schedule things in. But other than that I deal with surviving the day at hand and the week it’s in. I rarely look further. It’s bad for me. Concentrate on now is fine as long as I know the link is there to overall goals in it. Similarly I rarely do major task lists, because it’s just going to totally depress me and I’d rather spend the time doing something about the most pressing things on it or, if I’m having a bad brain dead no time day, doing small things from it. The back of my head is my To Do list and it tells me what needs done and shunts between mental lists for all kinds of different things. I actually tend to use the notes section on my phone and just jot things down for the day on the bus and then wipe what’s done at the end of the day or carry over.
I already have other things
In work everyone is on an electronic calendar system that can be shared, used to check people’s availability schedule in all meetings, book rooms, alerts, updates… So that’s what I use in work, and I can log into my work desktop from any internet connection anywhere. I also have a paper diary which is convenient for when I’m not online. So how many calendar systems do I need or want?
Fun v Practicality
Don’t get me wrong, as a system I like it. This week I’ve created it, added lots of calendars, sync’ed it to my Android phone so I can update it locally and then sync it at home… I know various folk have said they’ve managed to sync other calendar systems they use to Google Calendar so they’re not separate entities of repeating information, but I can’t think there’s a way to do that through our firewalls. I love the alerts my phone sends me, they’re cute, but they’re not useful really because my phone is in my bag on silent, and I’m not on Google Calendar in work, I’m on my work calendar which has already sent me a reminder that I’ve seen!
Conclusion
I think I’ll keep this going for a bit longer as an experiment, but as an out-of-office calendar only with very key work things added in (e.g. if I happen to be in another geographical office all day). I do like having multiple calendars for all my complicated strands of life through it and being able to view each one separately in pretty colours as well as integrated into one and to set headline tasks against them. I like the link to maps against location information. I like the idea of being able to link tweets into it. Out of the office my phone’s on all the time so I’ll see all the reminders and it’s easy to sync it once I’m home for editing and creating on the bus!
But I need to be very clear with myself on it, basic necessary detail only. Help, not time hindrance to getting things actually done. And if it works the paper diary stops next year, definite limit to how many calendars I want and need, two is quite enough.
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