Prof. Kristin Stephens-Martinez

So, first, I wrote about my general philosophy and mechanics of using my calendar for time management . Then, I introduced the idea of adding a one-hour, daily buffer event to allow some slack in my schedule . In the third post of this series, I discussed the usefulness of color to help visually see what kind of time commitments I have in a given week . For my final post of this series, I will give you my potentially oddest tactic: updating the calendar as time passes to reflect what actually happened. You can actually see it in the screenshot I shared in the last post about color . Updating my calendar as I go helps me mindfully notice where I spend my time so I can proactively alter course as needed while also serving as a quasi-log to better understand how I’m spending my time when I pause for a deeper historical reflection. [ Also posted on medium. ] To show more what I mean, here is a recent week before it actually happened. Note I have my calendars start on Mondays since the wee...

This is the second post of a series on how I use my calendar as a tool to manage my time. My first post focused on the basics where, to me, a calendar event means a time commitment, as opposed to just meetings, and by doing this, it visually shows how much of my time is already committed to things, and I don’t have much time to squeeze other things in. So, if you’ve ever felt like there just aren’t enough hours in the day, stick around. This post focuses on getting your hands on what is actually going on. I find my personal feelings of stress drastically reduce when I can actually see what is going on rather than just a feeling of impeding too much work and not enough time. [Also posted on medium .] This post focuses on a current experiment of a recurring one-hour daily weekday event for built-in buffer/slack in my schedule . As I mentioned in my prior post , I have a habit of seeing a gap in my calendar and filling it whenever possible. My brain assumes my estimates are perfect (they...