I believe both kinds of calendars – paper-based and electronic ones – have their strong and weak areas.

Paper based calendars (on-the-wall ones) are great for high-level overview of your days and months ahead. PDAs will not have such a high level, usually showing you only a month worth of your planning time.

Scheduling time works great in a weekly view of my time – so Outlook is perfect for this, especially because I use it for planning all of my work-related activities, not only the research time.

I happen to fully agree with you on all three counts, and find applying these principles to be very useful in my daily work.

For example a professional with a PDA that they keep nearby them can always answer the question: “Are you available next Tuesday evening for a meeting?”

Someone who is paper based is stuck having to take extra time to go back, check, respond, and get verification.

Still, scheduling time in a calendar is far from what most people use their calendar for — appointments with other people, the way that a dentist uses their calendar.

Just thought I would share some work related time wasters:

MEETINGS: people in meetings all day are not getting things done.

Meetings have their place. They are an important way to deal with group issues, create plans and get feedback. What is a problem is when meetings are called on the spur of the moment with little preparation and no plan. When these meetings start each person has a separate agenda. If the purpose is unclear and the participants unprepared are you going to come to a clear decision?

DROP-IN VISITORS: “Do You Have a Minute” will always take longer.
If you cannot finish a task without a colleague dropping in to ask you for a minute of your time you may find your whole day is occupied with ‘one minute’ issues. Often the individual will get comfortable and discuss many more items than the one they initially came to you with.

Disorganised WORK SPACE:
To use your time well it is a MUST that you have an organised workspace. Every moment looking for a pen, a file or a misplaced invoice not only means wasted time but also it can add to your stress level and interfere with your ability to focus on your work.

Andrew

Yes, phone calls are awfully powerful distractions. Luckily enough, cell phones in particular can be configured to have different ringtones for the known and unknown numbers. I don’t use this functionality, because my mobile is personal use only – so I don’t get these many calls. But many people I know benefit a lot: you can hear whether it’s a call from a friend or some unknown number.

Thanks for stopping by!