In this video, Dr. Melissa Gratias reads an excerpt from her book, Love Your Calendar…and be monogamous.
Do you maintain multiple calendars to manage your time? Listen to Dr. Gratias as she encourages you to be one person.
Excerpt from Love Your Calendar…and be monogamous.
Quantum physics aside, human beings experience time sequentially; one thing follows another. Logically, we know that we cannot be in two places at once, but we really wish we could. Our responsibilities can feel so overwhelming at times that we start to believe in parallel universes, that somehow, we will be able to “split” ourselves into two (or more) people who operate independently – and accomplish twice as much!
One way this faulty belief in parallel universes manifests itself is if you use two or more calendars to manage your time. For example, you may have your work calendar for your business obligations and your personal calendar for everything else. Having multiple calendars introduces a level of complexity into your time management practices that is usually unnecessary and can cause problems.
You do not hang up your humanity when you walk into your office.
Are you ready to feel balanced and effective at work and in life?
Read my eBook Love Your Calendar…and be monogamous.
Melissa Gratias (pronounced “Gracious”) used to think that productivity was a result of working long hours. And, she worked a lot of hours. Then, she learned that productivity is a skill set, not a personality trait. Now, Melissa is a productivity expert who coaches and trains other businesspeople to be more focused, balanced, and effective. She is a prolific writer and speaker who travels the world helping people change how they work and improve how they live. Contact her at getproductive@melissagratias.com or 912-417-2505. Sign up to receive her productivity tips via email.
Thanks, Dr. Gratias. Great blog as always. Can you comment on privacy with regards to merging personal and professional calendars, in light of others having access to the work calendar? Thanks.
Thanks, Cheryl. In Outlook, the best way to handle the “none of anybody’s business” appointments is to mark the appointment private by clicking the button that looks like a padlock. All that others will see is “Private Appointment” and the time blocked off on your calendar. Even folks to whom you have given access to calendar details will not see these appointments. If the appointment is truly “top secret” then you may want to use a cryptic title as well as mark it private. After all, the IT people can likely delve into the private appointments if they have a spare hour or two to play on the Exchange server.
For Google Calendar users, my best recommendation is to create a personal calendar and change the privacy setting on it. Although this may seem contradictory, Google Calendar features allow users to easily manage all appointments together on one master calendar, even if appointments exist in separate calendar/folder/thingies.