Gettin’ Organized: The Calendar & Scheduling

I was going to do the dining room this week…but when I realized that I wasn’t even organized enough to get this post scheduled early, my calendar should probably take priority. A Sunday holiday for me means moving many pieces of my normal weekend schedule around, or else falling way behind and finishing up far later on Sunday night than I usually do. I bet you can guess which format won this weekend…

But first, the mail center report from last week. I procrastinated, cleaning off and reorganizing the entire counter that the mail center shares with the kitchen rather than doing the drawers as I had planned. Now you know how scare I am of those drawers. They will go back on the list next week, since payday is the last day of the month, and I’ll be more motivated to have them organized before I need to pay bills. Bill paying will be going back on a “schedule” as well, so that ties in nicely with this week’s organizing theme.

The photo above is of the Pimlical calendar software I use to sync with my PDA. It uses the built-in Palm databases, so it needs the Palm desktop to run, but it’s much richer in terms of what it can do. I use Datebk6 calendar software on my PDA, which is made by the same company. These two pieces of software literally run my life far better than any paper planner ever did (and in far less space). I rarely use our wall calendar there, which is mostly for decoration, though occasionally a doctor’s appt. or community event we might attend gets written there. Even hubby knows that if he wants to remember something, the best way to do that is with an appointment in my PDA, with a reminder alarm. I sync my PDA with my netbook every evening before bed, after I check the schedule for the next day.

Those are the tools I use, but the process of carving out a daily schedule is all about experimentation. It’s all trial and error – I’ll schedule a chore or event, wait a few days and see if I’m getting it done or having problems, and reschedule to try again if need be. It’s not an exact science, and sometimes it takes awhile to find the best time to get something done.
I also have routines – one for morning, and one for evening. Many of my evening routines are scheduled into my PDA with alarms to remind me to get off my butt and do something. My morning routine is much simpler, so I only “schedule” things that I forget often (like setting up my cup and kettle for tea before I hit the shower).This week everything changes though. My husband starts a new job (at my workplace, actually), which requires us to be at work half an hour earlier than we were before. Since neither of us are “morning people”, getting up earlier means that some things I was able to do in the morning need to be moved to the evening routine, and the morning routine “maximized” for efficiency.

Why go to all this trouble? It’s because my husband is not a planner. He’s a spontaneous person who often will decide to do something at the drop of a hat, and his family is the same way. Having a well laid out schedule allows me the freedom to be spontaneous when need be, because I know exactly what my priorities are, and what can be moved from day to day, and where to reschedule them to. It allows me peace of mind knowing that everything will eventually get taken care of, even if we decide to drop everything for a day and run off to play.

So that’s my organizing assignment for this week. Redo my morning/evening routines, and I also need to get my writing schedule set (it’s mostly done, but needs some tweaking).

How do you organize your daily schedule (or do you)?