Stay Ahead of Deadlines: 3 Tips to Manage Your To-Do Calendar

Your time is precious and your schedule tight: Wouldn’t it be nice to make your workday more streamlined and productive?

Heck, yeah! But how?

Well, if you don’t already, one way to make better use of your time is to create a to-do calendar. A well-strategized and organized to-do calendar can mean the difference between absolute chaos and smooth sailing and focused weekdays.

And that’s where this guide comes in. To help you achieve all you wish during the workday, let’s first get into what a to-do calendar is, why it is important, and how you can achieve more in less time with 3 to-do calendar management tips.

What is a To-do Calendar?

A to-do calendar is a hybrid of a to-do list, a calendar, and a daily planner. And the cool thing is a to-do calendar is superior to using just one of any of these.

As good as a to-do list is, tasks can literally sit comfortably for a week or more without there being any sense of urgency to complete them or time constraints to keep you accountable.

Whereas a calendar is often clumsy and hard to organize and as motivating as time constraints can be, tasks that get lost in a disorganized or nonfunctional calendar are just as pointless.

At the same time, a daily-planner can become cluttered and hard to keep track of without having a catch-all system for tasks. A to-do calendar takes all the best bits of each of these systems while leaving the disorganized parts out.

What are the benefits of a To-do Calendar?

There are a number of science-backed reasons why keeping some form of to-do calendar, daily planner, or to-do list will benefit you:

• Your time management will improve: Studies have shown the use of a daily planner increases productivity and workplace efficiency. ¹

• Your productivity will get a serious boost: Keeping a to-do calendar allows you to break down large jobs into smaller, more manageable tasks, facilitating breaks in between. It has been shown that incrementally based tasks, such as those facilitated by a to-do calendar, help break up the workday. This allows for frequent but short breaks which help boost productivity. ²

• Giving yourself deadlines boosts productivity: Another study has shown that setting deadlines helps reduce procrastination and will maximize productivity. ³

• Low levels of productiveness are linked to lowered happiness levels: Yep you read it correctly, the less productive you are the less happy. To turn this around, reducing stress by keeping a to-do calendar can increase happiness and boost productivity. ⁴

3 Helpful Tips for Keeping a Better To-Do Calendar

Keeping a to-do calendar to help keep yourself motivated and productive can sometimes be harder than it needs to be. To help keep things simple, here are 3 tips that will make managing your schedule super easy.

Create a Killer Routine

No matter what it is you are working on, make sure to cement your work habits in a well-thought-out and productive routine. In doing so, your responsibilities become well-practiced and super-efficient. This helps build momentum, avoid procrastination, while also focusing your attention on the task at hand.

There are many ways you can do this:

• Set Precedence When You Roll Out Of Bed: Instead of checking your phone first thing and wasting precious brainpower, why not instead make the morning your own. Go for a walk, jump on your bike and go for a ride, or layout a yoga mat and engage in a little mindfulness.

• Treat Yourself to Healthy Brainpower Foods: To get over lingering morning grogginess, it can be super tempting to reach straight for the coffee pot or for a glass of sugary juice. Why not instead make up a breakfast that will help your mind and body perform at it’s best. Grab some berries, a couple of slices of wholegrain bread, or a green smoothie. Good foods such as these will not only keep your energy levels up but will also improve concentration and memory.

• Write Down Your Thoughts: Sleep helps to compartmentalize and work through those little problems we just can’t quite figure out during waking hours. Why not harness this? Put pen to paper and write out whatever it is that’s on your mind. You’ll be surprised at how insightful your thoughts are at this hour of the morning.

Work in Incremental Task Blocks

Working incrementally is not only a great way to stay productive but it’s also awesome at keeping your motivation levels sky-high.

This is particularly handy for large tasks that seem, at first glance, rather overwhelming. To help lessen the stress that these larger tasks can bring, break them down into small increments.

A task that only takes around 50 minutes often works best. ⁵

By doing so, not only are you allowing yourself to take a little microbreak but you are also keeping yourself from feeling overwhelmed.

Get a Mobile Calendar App

Paper-based daily planners and calendars are great while at home, but they can become rather cumbersome when you are out and about. To solve this, why not download yourself a well-designed and easy to use all in one to do calendar and notes app