#calendaring

Why the Name Notebook Witch?

Because I have a zillion notebooks 😊

One reason I chose "Notebook Witch" is because I hand write in notebooks all the time.

Call me a 2018 basic b*tch, but I still avidly bullet journal using a traveler's notebook with 4+ inserts.

I also write Morning Pages every day. And I write every other line on every other page so I go through notebooks quickly.

I keep a notebook for my political organizing endeavors, for organizing the Boston Poetry Marathon, and one as a grimoire.

I also have a small traveler's notebook with three half size inserts that I use for a separate bullet journal for work.

So! When Dollar Tree came out with a bunch of stitch-bound heavy-feeling paper notebooks and a bunch of whimsical folders and composition notebooks, plus cute 2024 calendars, I added quite a bit to my collection 😬🤷🏼‍♀️📓

I have always been enamored with stationery, from my Sanrio Hello Kitty collecting days as an 80s kid 🐱 I know these will all get used, too.

I also keep a calendar in every room and on every work table I have because it helps me remember appointments. I even keep all appointments in a Google calendar but truly, the only chance I have of retaining everything I have to do and keep track of is to write appointments out digitally AND analog.

Time blocking is a comparatively new time management trend that throws away the idea of the infinite to-do list in exchange for scheduling each chunk of your day. The principle is that by scheduling tasks in advance, you are making decisions about what you really want to use your time to do and getting rid of the illusion that you can ultimately get to it all. I have always liked the idea in theory, but there are some inconveniences that mean it has never worked for me in practice. First of all, for it to work, I would have to constantly be looking at my calendar. Then there’s the problem that I inevitably need to reschedule something, and I have to shift things around until I’m erasing holes through my planner. There’s also the problem of other people: I need to leave time on your calendar for work meetings or friend hangs, and that means deviating from my ideal schedule to meet others halfway. Like many time management ideas, the concept is good, but the implementation is tricky.

Reclaim is a new (2020) app that syncs your calendars and helps manage those shifting time blocks for you. I gave it a try since it’s currently free. Reclaim syncs your google calendar (no Outlook as of yet) and then allows you to give it a list of tasks or habits to schedule. For instance, I told it I needed to send birthday cards to my friends. I told them that each card would take 15 minutes, and gave it a time frame of days that it would be reasonable for me to send the cards to get there in time. It then finds 15 minute time slots in my free time and schedules those mail sessions.

Habits are similar but recurring. It suggests three workplace habits to start with--lunch, morning catch up, and afternoon catch up. Since Reclaim can’t sync with my work calendar, work habits are useless to me. Instead, I told it that I want to have a writing session every day of the week, that those sessions should be 30 mins to 2 hours, and that they should end before 8:30 a.m. I also added in a weekly rowing session. Unfortunately, I could not find ways to make more complex sessions that includes potential morning or afternoon time slots. Once you’ve established all of your habits, you can set priorities. For instance, I put laundry at the top because I absolutely have to do laundry once a week, and I put rowing at the bottom because that’s less necessary.

Once you have your schedule set up, Reclaim will keep it up-to-date, shifting sessions around if you aren’t able to perform that task when originally assigned, or if someone else schedules over it. There are settings that let you determine how your calendar events looks to other people and if they are able to schedule over it, but outside of work no one is actually looking at my calendar to see if I am busy, alas. You currently have to use slack to control the tasks in the moment, for instance, if you want to mark something as done or won’t do. Again, slack is fine when I’m sitting at my work desk all day, but not it’s not something I use in my “off” time.

Overall, I think Reclaim has a lot of potential, but in it’s current form, it won’t work for me.

Announcing a Newly Published Book: Keys to Successful Scouting and Youth Leadership

Kevin the Scout Blogger

ANNOUNCING A NEW BOOK: KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL

SCOUTING AND YOUTH LEADERSHIP

By Kevin V. Hunt

Keys to Successful Scouting and Youth Leadership book

It is with great pleasure that I announce another of my Scouting Trails books now available to you on Amazon.com.  Check out “Keys to Successful Scouting and Youth Leadership”.

Amazon Kindle Version:  Kindle Version: Keys to…

As an EA (and some Admin Assistant) you’ll hear this word very often. So what does it mean by calendaring? How much time can it really take to “calendar”?

A regular EA job will take 2-3 hours a day to do calendar(s). For EAs with higher level executive(s) will require 3-5 hours a day of “heavy calendaring”. 

Calendaring involves:

Adding meetings to a calendar

Adding details

Date 

Time

Location

Dial-in info

Adding invitees- required & optional

Looking for a meeting room (for each meeting location)

Search for available meeting rooms in a location (city)

VC or no VC capabilities

Compare size of meeting room & group per location

Consider distance + time to get to meeting room from previous meeting (different floors/ different buildings) for your exec.

Canceling a meeting

One-time or recurring

Moving a meeting

One-time or recurring

Updating meeting details

Forwarding a meeting

Automatically adds invitee(s) as optional

Communicating internally/ externally to set up meetings

~5 emails per meeting needed to set up a meeting

Ask for clarifications if anything is vague (DO NOT ASSUME)- more emails.

Make sure all the correct attendees are added to the meeting before sending.

Setting up recurring meetings (twice as complicated)

Do everything that you normally do for a one-time meeting.

Then make sure rooms are available for ALL RECURRING dates.

Some rooms will be available half the time because bi-weekly meetings for the time slot are already taken and you’re trying to set up weekly meetings.

If not, then find another room that is available for ALL recurring dates

If all suitable rooms are unavailable at the set-time & date then move each individual meeting to a time & date that works for everyone AND where a suitable room (VC + Size) in each location is available.

Repeat this endlessly

 From: Alex Erickson Sent: Sunday, July 1, 2018 9:24 AM To: [email protected] Subject: I am Mean and Fair. AWE629 an American Spy Introduces himself to The United States Marshals

 Dear Sirs,