9 Calendar Management Skills to Skyrocket Productivity

Have you always wondered how you can make the most out of your time? Developing your calendar management skills can significantly impact your productivity, efficiency, and well-being. Honing in on these skills allows you to take control of your schedule while learning to effectively manage your responsibilities. Interested in learning more? Keep reading! 

• What is calendar management?
• How calendar management skills can help you
• 9 calendar management skills to master

What is calendar management? 

Calendar management refers to the practice of managing and organizing schedules, appointments, meetings, and events with a calendar system. There are a variety of methods that can be used to foster effective calendar management, including traditional paper-based calendars, desktop applications, online calendar platforms, and mobile apps. An effective calendar management system will ensure deadlines are met, conflicts are minimized, and pressing priorities are top of mind, leading to increased productivity and improved time and calendar management skills. Popular choices for calendar management tools include Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, and Apple Calendar. 

How calendar management skills can help you 

• An organized calendar can help you achieve goals
• A comprehensive calendar reduces decision fatigue
• A well-kept calendar helps document your time

1An organized calendar can help you achieve goals 

An organized calendar app will help you structure your time and maintain productivity while developing your calendar management skills and working on your goals. As you develop your calendar management skills, you’ll be able to optimize your time and hold yourself accountable to your goals. Maintaining a comprehensive calendar will also help create a clear roadmap that you can leverage as you work towards achieving your goals. Overall, possessing impressive calendar management skills will help you manage your time, prioritize tasks, track progress, and remain disciplined as you work towards meeting your goals. 

2A comprehensive calendar reduces decision fatigue 

Decision fatigue refers to the mental exhaustion that occurs as a result of being faced with numerous decisions. As a working professional, you are constantly being bombarded by choices. Every decision you make requires cognitive effort, and having to constantly make decisions may result in decision fatigue. Calendar management skills can greatly reduce the impact of decision fatigue by providing you with the structure and organizational skills you need to mitigate the impact. By sharpening your calendar management skills, you can streamline the decision-making process and reduce the number of daily decisions for which you’re responsible. Collectively, these practices will help alleviate the impact of decision fatigue by allowing you to focus only on critical decisions. 

3A well-kept calendar helps document your time

A well-kept calendar will account for all day-to-day activities, meaning you’ll have a paper trail of everything from appointments and events to deep work sessions and meetings. This ensures that you have a clear record of when and where activities will take place, making it possible to track your time commitments and find the information you need at the drop of a dime. This visual representation of your time will also help you understand how you plan to spend your time, holding you accountable to your planned responsibilities and activities. 

9 calendar management skills to master

• Use a calendar management tool
• Try time blocking
• Regularly review your calendar
• Avoid back-to-back meetings
• Say no to unnecessary meetings
• Prioritize your time
• Schedule reminders
• Protect your focus time
• Remain flexible

1Use a calendar management tool

Calendar management tools bring structure, organization, and efficiency to your schedule; however, finding the right one can be difficult. Fellow is a top-rated meeting productivity and team management software that integrates with popular calendar tools like Google Calendar to seamlessly link your meeting notes with your calendar events. Fellow makes it possible for teams to host meaningful one-on-one meetings while keeping each other accountable through collaborative meeting agendas, real-time note-taking, and time-saving templates.

2Try time blocking

Time blocking is a time management technique that involves dedicating specific blocks of time to a set of tasks or categories of work. For example, you may block an hour at the end of your work day to clear your inbox or set aside a couple of hours in the morning for deep work. By leveraging the time-blocking method, you create a dedicated space in your schedule to focus on uninterrupted work. Fortunately, many calendar apps support time blocking with features that allow you to allocate specific time blocks to different activities within your calendar. This makes it possible for you to organize your time while educating your colleagues on when you will be available and when you will be focusing on deep work. 

3Regularly review your calendar

Regularly reviewing your calendar ensures you’re able to proactively manage your commitments, reduce stress, and make more informed decisions about how to best use your time. If you don’t prioritize reviewing your calendar regularly, you may find yourself missing meetings or forgetting deadlines. Calendar apps provide a visual representation of your schedule, making it easy to visualize and understand your events, commitments, and deadlines. This functionality allows you to gain a clear understanding of how and where you’re spending your time, making it possible to plan and allocate your resources accordingly. 

4Avoid back-to-back meetings

Back-to-back meetings can create a packed schedule, leaving little to no room for deep work, creative thinking, or strategic planning. This can make it difficult to follow up on action items and can lead to mental fatigue or even burnout. Without breaks between meetings, your brain doesn’t have enough time to reset, recharge, or prepare for the next one. This can result in poor focus and limited engagement during meetings. Being cognizant of your calendar and your commitments will help you create a schedule that allows time for reflection and deep work. If you want some advice on how to scale back on your meetings, check out this blog!

5Say no to unnecessary meetings

Unlike other hacks on this list, saying no to unnecessary meetings requires a great deal of practice. It can feel wrong to say no to meetings, largely because we are conditioned to attend even if the meeting may not be necessary. When determining if a meeting is necessary, it’s important to do the leg work. Does the meeting have an agenda? Can it be recapped in an email or Slack message? Is the guest list appropriate or are there too many attendees? Answering these questions will help you decide if you should attend or if your time can be better spent elsewhere. 

6Prioritize your time 

It can be difficult to prioritize your time, especially if you don’t have a clear understanding of where your time is being spent. Prioritizing your time helps you focus on what really matters, ensuring you’re allocating your resources appropriately and helping to identify where your time is being spent. By leveraging a calendar management tool, you’ll have a structured framework and tools that enable you to allocate your time in alignment with your goals, responsibilities, and personal preferences. 

7Schedule reminders 

If you’re uber-busy and constantly find yourself balancing competing priorities, scheduling reminders is a calendar management skill that will take your productivity to new heights. There’s nothing worse than wrapping up for the day only to realize you missed a deadline or didn’t show up to an important meeting. Scheduling reminders helps mitigate this risk by keeping you informed about upcoming events, deadlines, or tasks related to your goals. In addition to serving as helpful prompts that ensure you don’t miss important notices, reminders allow you to free up space in your mind. If you take the time to schedule your events and subsequent reminders, you won’t have to constantly ruminate over upcoming deadlines or meetings. 

⭐️ Pro tip: With Fellow, you can set up pre-meeting reminders to automatically remind meeting attendees to contribute to the agenda before the meeting begins. This will help build a collaborative agenda and remind attendees of their upcoming meeting!

8Protect your focus time

Focus time refers to uninterrupted time where you can concentrate fully and focus on deep work. It is a time block that is dedicated specifically to focus and productivity, allowing you to work on the task at hand without any disruptions. To protect your focus time, you must create a distraction-free environment and set clear boundaries. This can include muting your notifications, closing unnecessary tabs or applications on your computer, putting your phone away, and blocking off time in your calendar to let your colleagues know that you intend to work without distractions. Blocking specific time blocks of time in your calendar that is dedicated to focusing time will help you establish clear boundaries with your coworkers while ensuring you’ve set aside enough time for deep work.  

9Remain flexible 

To effectively manage your calendar, you must remain flexible and adaptable. Leveraging a calendar app will make it possible to make iterations to your schedule as needed. For example, if a conflict arises and you can no longer make your 4 o’clock meeting, you can use your calendar management skills to reschedule and propose another time. If circumstances change or a new opportunity presents itself, you can easily reschedule or rearrange events in your calendar, ensuring your goals remain within reach. Doing so will allow you to stay organized and on track, regardless of any potential distractions or roadblocks. 

Ready to take your calendar management skills to the next level? 

It’s time to put everything you’ve learned into practice! Following the tips, tricks, and best practices outlined in this article will ensure you have the knowledge and tools necessary to take your productivity to new heights through calendar management.