Use Your Calendar to Record What Actually Happened
I spent four years as an assistant manager and one of my responsibilities was to make sure my boss’s calendar was 100 percent accurate. This meant making sure new appointments, deadlines, and tasks were added to the calendar as planned. It also meant that any appointments or activities that weren’t there were either rescheduled or removed from the calendar.
By not only adding calendar items, but also editing and deleting them, that is, keeping an accurate record of everything that actually happened, I was able to create a trustworthy document that could be used as a reference in the future.
If you use your calendar the way most of us use our calendars, you probably add a bunch of appointments and to-do’s (or let your email client add them for you) and then just leave them there.
This means your calendar is littered with events you didn’t attend, tasks you didn’t complete, meetings that appear multiple times on your calendar even if there was actually only one meeting, and so on.
It also means that meetings, events and tasks that you attended / completed may not be on your calendar. For example, if a friend invites you to dinner a week in advance, you can add the event to your calendar; if you’re invited to dinner 10 minutes in advance, you probably won’t.
This means that the next time you ask yourself “when was the last time I had dinner with such and such” (or “when was our last performance check,” or “when I turned in this report”), you will not have an accurate information.
Yes, most of us have several apps or tools to help us find out the truth about when something really happened. You can check your text messages to see when you last met a friend, or search your email to see when the report was sent.
But it’s much easier to open your trustworthy calendar and confirm what actually happened last month, last year, or five years ago.
Incidentally, I quickly adopted the boss’s habit as my own, and it turned out to be extremely useful. Knowing everything from when I last suggested to a client to when I last dyed my hair has helped me make smarter scheduling decisions and plan my workflow more efficiently. For example, keeping track of how long it takes me to complete each written assignment lets me know how many assignments I can accept and still meet deadlines.
And when something changes (as always), I make sure my calendar changes too.
Thus, I will always know what will happen next and what really happened.