As librari*s one thing we know, and usually know well, is how to do more with less, or at least without any increase. With this mindset, even the most mundane tools can take on multiple roles. For example, our Calendars
I had a boss near the beginning of my professional career who leveraged their calendar in ways I’d never thought to: as a log for tracking projects, personal ticketing system, and the usual meeting/appointment scheduling. It stuck with me; a handful of years later and I still use that same process.
When I interviewed for my now current job, I was asked how I prioritize and manage what I have to do. My response: with my calendar. I don’t have meetings every hour of every day but I do have a lot of tasks to do and things I’m working on, and having a running log of this is useful, as well as scheduling out blocks of time to actually get my work done.
Using a tool that was designed to organize days and then developed for individual use or network use (sharing of information). Personal calendars kept separate from work calendars, and all used for documenting appointments on our schedules. Why not use them for more than that? Calendar software is designed to intake a reasonable amount of information, customize it as you will.
Things that a Calendar offers that makes this easy
- Free text Subject/Location fields
- Start & End times
- Category options (you decide!) — if you wear multiple hats or are working for multiple teams, this can be incredibly useful
- Free text Notes field
- Privacy options
Using a Calendar this way allows you to link together in one point an array of information — people associated with a project, a URL to a google doc, organize based on the hat you’re wearing, document time spent on projects — really helpful for annual reviews. My personal favorite use is noting what you did with a specific project (or problem), this works well when you need a ticketing system setup but just for your personal projects/problems/etc. Things break, it’s my current job to fix them and keep them from breaking (as often) in the future — when I spend 4 hours fixing something, I note it on my calendar and use the notes portion to log running issues, how they were solved, etc.
Using my calendar this way accomplished a handful of things, aside from traditional use:
- Gave me a decent log for time spent on projects
- Made my annual review 100% easier
- Forced me to become more aware of what I was spending my time on
- Helped me set aside the necessary time needed to work on certain tasks
- Ward off unnecessary meetings (because Calendar was busy)
If you’re concerned about privacy — check here {link to setting Outlook Calendar privacy} and here {link to setting Google Calendar privacy} for how to manage the privacy settings on Outlook and/or Google.
I challenge you for a week to use your calendar in this fashion, as your own personal work log.
Many thanks to @archivalistic @griffey @timtomch @slmcdanold @collingsruth @metageeky @sharon_bailey @infosecsherpa @gmcharlt @amyrbrown @redgirl13 for sharing their responses.