Calendars Are a Communication Tool
Similar to vehicle turn signals, digital calendars in small businesses are often an underutilized and poorly understood communication tool. đ
In the physical world, our personal calendars are just thatâpersonal. But in the digital, enshitified, world of the future we now live in, our personal calendars are data utilized by all sorts of applications and people.
Applications
On the application side, youâll find other digital calendars and scheduling apps like Calendly and Acuity Scheduling utilizing your calendar data to check your availability for appointments. This is wonderful for saving you and the person whoâs scheduling with you time. But if you forget to put something on your digital calendar, you can find yourself double-booked, and in the very scenario the scheduler is meant to prevent.
People
On the people side, your colleagues and even family members may have access to your calendar (and vice versa) so that they can stay in sync with your whereabouts. This saves everyone involved time, and it also prevents the friction that can come from not knowing where someone is when youâre trying to get in touch with them.
Additionally, letâs talk about one more way that people use our calendar dataâto plan for their event. Someone is using your âYesâ as data to plan for how many agendas theyâre going to print, how much food theyâre going to order, how many chairs to place in the room, which room to use, and maybe even to decide if theyâll have the event at all.
If youâve marked yourself as âYesâ and you plan to attend, fantastic! But letâs talk about aspirational scheduling for a moment.
You know that monthly recurring community meeting you realllllllly want to attend, but usually canât attend? đŤŁđŹ When you RSVP âYesâ because you want to attend, but you donât show up, that has a ripple effect for the organizer.
Do yourself and others a favor by owning up to a âNoâ on those aspirational calendar invites, and see what good karma comes your way!
A Few More Tips
Iâd love to also use this space to share a few more tips for managing the data you communicate through your calendar:
Put every single meeting, event, etc⌠that will keep you busy on your digital calendar with a status of âBusyâ
Put events that wonât keep you busy, but are there as placeholdersâlike timeblocks, reminders, and birthdaysâon the calendar with a status of âFreeâ so that it doesnât block up your availability with schedulers
Color-code the different types of events you create to make it easy for someone else to see at a glance what you have going on (example: all of my in-person meetings/events are yellow, and all of my digital meetings/events are orange)
Update your calendar regularly (at a minimum once per week) to make sure your RSVPs are in order, and all of the meetings/events you have planned are on the calendar
If youâre using a scheduler, periodically open up your scheduling links as though youâre the person scheduling with you and make sure your availability looks the way itâs supposed to; adjust your calendar or the schedulerâs availability settings if necessary
If youâre feeling inspired, I encourage you to take a little time tomorrow to review and update your calendar(s) for next week. And then consider scheduling a 5-minute recurring weekly event to make sure you do this same review every week.
If you need coaching and accountability to wrangle your calendar, check out our Operations Sprint!