Life hack how to quickly make an appointment - open access to your calendar

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

In this article, I'll share a curious Google Calendar feature that can dramatically simplify your interactions with partners.

How long does it take you to arrange a meeting with a friend or colleague?

In an ideal world, a couple of phrases are enough: "Thursday at four?" - "Yes!".

In reality, the more active you develop, the more contacts and the more difficult it is to arrange a meeting or even just phoned in Skype. You have business, your partner has business. The endless "mail tennis" of approvals begins.

Or you are the director of a large company. Your schedule should be seen by all employees, some partners, as well as family and friends. And this schedule is also constantly changing.

What to do?

They will come to our aid …

Kaizen and Kanban

So, we are faced with two mutually exclusive tasks:

• manage more and more scheduled contacts;
• spend as little resources on it as possible.

This does not remind you of the classic problem of kaizen philosophy: How can you reduce costs and improve quality at the same time?

Therefore, to solve the problem, let's use one of the kaizen tools - kanban.

Kanban at one time became an advanced method of organizing production, when instead of "pushing" parts along the conveyor (brought the materials, unloaded, and then sort it out yourself), pulling is used (each subsequent section signals to the previous one how much material he needs now).

The same "pull" can be used in your personal time management.

Direct access to your calendar

Why not give it to all partners? There is such a function, for example, in Google Calendar.

1. Organizing an event? You don't need to notify anyone. Those who wish can see everything themselves and can even confirm their participation.
2. Or you can even allow individual (most important) partners to create events on your calendar. And you already confirm it. Extreme? Well, perhaps.:) But there is such a possibility!
3. The event contains information about the time, place and recruitment of participants. This saves time on unnecessary questions.
4. Neither a diary nor special programs are needed. A regular browser or even a smartphone will do.
5. After the meeting, you can draw up a short protocol of it and record it there, in the calendar.
6. And most of all, I like this function of overlaying calendars of different people on top of each other:

See how well all the windows are visible in which you can shove a joint meeting!

And most importantly, all these endless questions "What are you doing in …?", "Can you in …?" will remain in the past.

What about privacy?

To keep it intact, you can close what exactly you are doing.

It was:

Became:

In addition, you can create different calendars for work and personal. And give access, for example, only to the worker.

Total

The effectiveness of even a simple tool like a calendar depends on how you use it.

Sharing your calendar can increase not only your personal productivity, but also the productivity of small teams.

P. S. I wrote this article together with my friend Vlad Epanchintsev. Thanks to him!

Write in the comments

How do you arrange appointments? Are you using Google Calendar?