I’ve really struggled with whether or not to use an electronic calendar during my time in business; I run my own firm, so the pressure to do so from peers and colleagues for free/busy lookups is non-existent. One of the key differences for me as individual between a paper diary and an electronic one is the sense of completion that I get when I tick off a scheduled item … either a meeting, or a blocked out period of time for focused work. You can do that in a paper diary and feel good; it’s more difficult in an electronic calendar. And building on that idea, when I look at my week-at-a-glance paper calendar, I can see where I’m up to — earlier/completed things are ticked off, future things are not. So it’s a very helpful anchoring tool.

However, I’ve found a way to get the same level of inner satisfaction with an electronic calendar: as soon as the scheduled meeting or event is completed, I change the calendar to which that item is associated. For example, I currently have 5 color-coded calendars in Apple iCal (but it would work in any calendar that supports color-coded calendars, eg, Outlook 2003/2007, Google Calendar, etc.) for planning my weeks and months … a business one, a PhD one, an exercise one, a personal one, and a travel one. When I lay out an upcoming week with a tentative plan of how I’m going to use the time I’ve been gifted toward important projects, each item is assigned to one of those five. As soon as the item is completed during the week, I re-assign it to a sixth “Completed” calendar that is green in color.

Hence the image below shows at a glance that it is time to work on my Daily Report (Tuesday at 4pm), and that I’ve got a number of meetings and commitments coming up during the next couple of days. It also shows that I’ve completed the earlier things that I had scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.

So … coming back to the two human factors that worked for me with a paper calendar but didn’t with an electronic one … (1) I have a way of “ticking” off things that I’ve done (I feel good), and (2) I have a way of glancing at my electronic calendar and the ability to see quickly where I’m up to. I love it.

Have you got an electronic calendaring tip or trick that’s made it work for you for migrating away from a paper calendar?