Calendar Control
How to Use Calendars to Manage Time and Money
CALENDARS ARE HELPFUL time management and organizing tools we all need for maximum efficiency. Depending on your business, you may need several calendars. Here’s how I have always used calendars to help me manage my time, my writing, and my money.
WRITING CALENDAR: To organize my writing work, I make lists of all the various topics and people I might write about, keeping this information in various document files related to each area of my work (website, blog, new books, reports, etc.). In the days when I was writing several columns, working on books, and publishing a print newsletter (always struggling to meet one new deadline after another), my writing calendar was always filled with colorful stickers on days when I had to start a particular writing job, deliver a finished manuscript, or get my newsletter to the printer.
BOOK CALENDAR: As an author, I’ve always kept a Book Calendar on which I note each day how many hours I have spent on the book doing various jobs related to it. Because I always recorded every hour spent on research, telephone interviews, writing, rewriting, editing and proofreading my books, I knew that I could turn out an average of 168 words of finished copy per hour. That may not sound like a lot, but it translates to around 1200 words of finished copy a day, which was about the size of one of my book chapters. Knowing that, I could always closely predict how long it might take me to write a new book or update one already in print. Of course, the real trick here was building in extra time for other work and “life’s little interruptions.” (If there’s anything I’ve learned from nearly four decades of self-employment, it’s that everything takes longer than we expect–sometimes twice as long.)
SPECIAL TIP: When you have a deadline looming, you can get ahead by working backwards. For every task with a deadline attached to it, make a plan that starts at the point where you must be finished and work backwards to the beginning. Estimate the amount of time each step will take and plot it to a calendar. As you work on your project, you can see whether you’re still on schedule or running behind and make adjustments accordingly.
BILL PAYING CALENDAR: I am never late in paying a bill because I’ve always kept a Bill-Paying Calendar that, at a glance, gives me a picture of what bills are due in and when they must be paid. As bills dribble in each month, I note on my calendar the Saturday they must be paid to be received in a timely manner, then I tuck the bill in that month’s Bill-Paying Envelope until it’s time to write the check. On this same calendar, I plot when income is due and how much is expected, which helps me to do cash-flow planning.
I suggest that, at the start of each New Year you set up a bill-paying calendar of your own by jotting down the mileage on your vehicle for tax purposes and making notes about when to file quarterly tax payments, your sales tax report, when to renew licenses or domain names, pay monthly insurance premiums and other bills that may be payable on a semi-monthly or quarterly basis. (Pay particular attention to when your credit card statements are due, because one late payment will not only be expensive, but harmful to your credit rating.)
THANKS FOR SHARING your comments on how you use calendars to manage your time, money or crafts business.
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Comments
Barbara,
Keeping separate calendars seems like a good idea. But, do you have a “physical” calendar for each of these items, or do you have an on-line calendar for each one that you keep? I have been trying to figure out how to have separate calendars on-line, but have not managed to get there, yet. Wouldn’t it be nice to have not only the separate calendars, but one that would keep everything within two days right in front of you?
Really do enjoy the articles. Keep up the good work.
I use a combination of both physical and online calendars. The calendar in Outlook, which I forgot to mention in my article, is used to remind me of business things I need to do on a certain date, as well as a personal calendar of things I need to do or follow up on. I prefer physical calendars, however, because I’m very visually-oriented, and because my life is rather complex, one main calendar anywhere would never work for me. I need to have them at my individual workstations where they relate to work being done in that specific area.
Aaron, thanks for your comment. Your CREDIT CARD WATCH blog has a lot of articles that would be helpful to my readers. I hope they take time to check it out.
Just wanted to say HI. I found your blog a few days ago on Technorati and have been reading it over the past few days.