Step 5a: Calendars - Start using a calendar for more than just appointments

Getting your pastoral life organised

Posts in this series

1. Read 'Getting Things Done' by David Allen

2. Daily tasks lists

3. General tasks lists

4. Reference lists

5a. Calendars

5b. Work calendars

5c. Personal calendar

5d. General tasks calendar

5e. Sermon tasks calendar

5f. Mindless tasks calendar

6. Keep email at zero

7a. Setup your office

7b. Computer advice

Once you have your lists up and running, you also need to start using a calendar.

Most people have a diary or calendar because they already recognise that they need reminders of events.  And if you are a pastor, a calendar is essential for this reason too.

But in this post I want to encourage you to use calendars to remind you to do certain tasks on particular days, not just remind you of events.

Now be careful.  You do NOT put your general task items on your calendar if they do not need to be done on a specific day.  Doing that will only depress you when you don't get those items done and you'll have to waste time moving them to the next day.  Tasks from your general tasks list should only be done once all calendar tasks are completed.

So what sort of tasks go on a calendar?
As I said before, things that must be done on a particular day of the calendar.  Not before that day, not after that day. 

For example printing the church bulletin is a calendar specific item for me that is done each Saturday.  I shouldn't print it before Saturday in case an announcement needs to be added that I only find out about on Friday night.  And I can't print it after Saturday as once Sunday rolls around it is too late.  Thus 'Print the bulletin' goes on the Saturdays of my calendar.

How do you keep your calendar?
I use Google Calendar.

Using an electronic calendar is excellent for recurring events.  There are many tasks that a minister needs to do every week and if you need to manually add them to a calendar/diary each week a lot of time is wasted.  But if you use an electronic calendar it is very easy to set up recurring events and so the task is added in subsequent weeks.  And once you've completed the task for that week you just delete that one occurrence, while the task still remains for subsequent weeks.

You should also use multiple calendars which is easy to do if you use Google calendar.  That way you can easily separate different types of calendar tasks from others.  But I'll speak about that in upcoming posts.

For now, learn to use your calendars for much more than just appointments with people.