Last week, I posted the first part of a 3-part series on time management and I had received some questions about what my schedule looks like and how I sync them. Hopefully, this helps.
First things first. My phone is my primary calendar source for events or appointments that require me to be at a certain place at a certain time. Even if I receive the meeting request via email, I physically type it into my phone. That is the common sense step we can all figure out on our own. Now, here is how I coordinate personal events or other from my phone to my outlook.
I create a calendar event on my iPhone (sorry not sure how it works on other platforms) and add an invitee. I type in my work email address and then finish adding the event to my phone.
After a while an email will come to your outlook inbox and all you have to do is accept the invite. It will then pop up on your outlook calendar and you can have that dual-redundancy if it helps you. Also, worth noting is that if you change or delete the event on your phone, it will send you the edits in your outlook too. This is how I handle all appointments. Whatever calendar works best for you, make it your primary source. My phone is the primary because it is always with me and it just makes sense.
The other thing I like to do in outlook is to create events to keep me on top of what is going on around my unit. To do this I take an email from my inbox (here is my junk folder for example) and drag it onto the calendar icon:
This event creator will pop up:
In there you can edit the times and dates and any other options you like. I personally love to utilize the category colors for a quick visual reference. For example, I use green for things I need to follow-up on, red for suspenses, yellow for things I can be proactive on, blue for appointments, etc.
Afterwards, it will pop up on your calendar and you will be able to stay on top of all of the things you care about with very little effort. (The “non-DoD Source” invitations are those sent from my phone.) You can view them anyway that works best for you. I prefer having the next half-dozen or so showing up on my sidebar; however, you can also do week and month views to see what is coming up in the future that you can work on when you get a spare moment.
There are so many tools we have at our disposal to keep us on path to where we need to be and to help us stay organized. Play with the different options you have and share any others you may use.
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