Q: I keep finding myself forgetting to do important tasks and have missed the occasional meeting at work. What would you recommend for forgetful youth workers like me?!
A: Personally, I ‘d recommend using Google Calendar. It’s a great tool to keep track of your schedule, no matter where you are.
I find it to be far more useful and effective than using a paper-format weekly planner; here are 7 reasons why:
1. Unlimited Space
In a regular planner, you have a finite amount of space to enter tasks, meetings, etc. With Google Calendar, you can add as many entries as you need.
2. Time-based
You can add entries throughout each day and specify times for each task or meeting. This makes it far easier when scheduling everything you need to do, as you can see any available spaces in your schedule at a quick glance and ensure nothing overlaps.
3. Reminders
This is the feature that I find most useful. Google Calendar allows you to set up reminders by email or to pop-up for whenever you need them. These can be specified for x amount of minutes, hours, days or weeks before the event or task is due. If you have a smartphone, you’ll also get scheduled pop-ups on your phone if your Google account is connected.
You can set up as many reminders as you like, so for things like birthdays, I set a reminder for two weeks before and then another for two days before just in case.
4. Recurring Tasks & Meetings
With a regular weekly planner, you have to handwrite each entry, even if it’s the same entry each week. With Google Calendar, all you need to do is add an entry once and select “Repeat”. You can then specify when and for how often this task should be repeated.
For example, if your organization has a team meeting at 9:30 every Monday morning, just set this up once and select repeat. This will give you many options to tailor the recurrence, although in this particular scenario there shouldn’t be any change needed.
5. Intelligent Entry
If you add an entry that says “Meeting at work at 9:30am”, Google will automatically set the time of the meeting to 9:30am and the location as “Work” without you needing to adjust those fields.
(n.b. For further useful – but slightly creepy – intelligence by Google, try sending an email from your Gmail account that includes the phrase “I’ve attached”)
6. Invite Others
Google Calendar has an option to invite others to the meeting or task. If they have a Gmail account as well, this will automatically add it to their Calendar if they accept the meeting/task.
7. Accessible Anywhere
Google Calendar is available anywhere that you have an internet connection, meaning you don’t have to carry around a weekly planner. This makes it far easier to check your diary when you’re on the go and to add entries no matter where you are, particularly if you have a smartphone.
Question: What tools do you use as a youth worker to stop yourself from forgetting tasks or meetings? Let us know in the comments below.
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