Step 5b: Calendars - Create a work calendar

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

Now that I've hopefully convinced you to have an electronic calendar, I want to encourage you to have separate electronic calendars for different events and tasks.

Why should you have different calendars?
Different calendars means you can turn off data that you don't need to see at different times. 

This is particularly helpful if you're using calendars to keep track of tasks.  You don't want to see all your tasks on your calendar when you're trying to make an appointment with someone.  So if your tasks are on a separate calendar they can easily be turned off.

Or when you're at the office, you don't want tasks that you'll do at home on your calendar cluttering it up.  So you separate the tasks onto separate calendars and then turn them on or off depending on your location.

How many calendars do you have?
All up, I have eight different calendars that I overlay on my Google calendar:
(i) Work appointments;
(ii) Personal appointments;
(iii) Drummoyne Baptist church calendar;
(iv) Sermon preparation tasks;
(v) General tasks;
(vi) TV tasks;
(vii) Australian Public Holidays (this is a public calendar published by Google);
(viii) Australian NSW School Holidays (this is another public calendar published by Google).

So this is how the sidebar of my Google calendar looks



(Note: The extra slot titled 'Tasks' is a link to turn on/off the 'Google Tasks' product, which I don't actually use)

Over the next few posts I'll speak more about these calendars but in this post I want to talk about the Work Calendar.

What goes on your Work Calendar?
Pretty much appointments only are on your Work Calendar. 

Do NOT put tasks on here.  They go on your task calendars.  The Work Calendar is for you to quickly see what appointments you have.  So if you have a bunch of tasks on there it will defeat the purpose and you will find it difficult to make appointments.

The only other things I put on here are notes relevant to church work.  For example when someone from church is away I put their leaving and return dates on the calendar - this is particularly helpful to note if the person is another church leader.