.KEYWORD datebook
.FLYINGHEAD GET MORE OUT OF YOUR ORGANIZER
.TITLE Maximizing your time with Date Book
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY Jeff Carlson, author of the Palm III & PalmPilot Visual QuickStart Guide, clocks in with another very helpful article. In this immediately useful article, Jeff helps you get the most out of the built-in Date Book application. There are some little-known, top-secret tips in here that you’ll be able to use right away to save time and help make you much more productive.
.AUTHOR Jeff Carlson
The holiday season, for me, is heralded not by autumn leaves or winter gift catalogs, but by the impending crush of my schedule. As I look ahead to the rest of December and January — the family get-togethers, shopping excursions, special events, plus my regular workload — the importance of managing my time becomes painfully clear. If your schedule looks like mine (or if you just want more control over it), here are some techniques and tips that will help you maximize your time management using the Palm organizer’s built-in Date Book application.
.H1 Time is on my side
There are several good utilities available for managing your time, including project planners, hour-tracking applications, and reminder programs. However, I want to focus solely on the built-in Date Book. Many Palm organizer users use it every day without realizing that they’re only scratching the surface of its capabilities. You can save time just by using Date Book more effectively.
.CALLOUT Pressing the plastic Date Book button repeatedly switches between the Day, Week, and Month views.
For example, you know that the plastic Date Book button on the case (the one on the far left) will bring up the Date Book application. But I run into folks all the time who don’t know that pressing the button repeatedly switches between the Day, Week, and Month views. Similarly, if you’ve navigated to a different date (using the Go To button at the bottom of the screen), you can press the plastic Date Book button to quickly take you back to the current date’s Day view.
Another method of enhancing your Date Book use is by speeding up your input. Although the standard method of entering appointments isn’t difficult — tap the New button, tap the time bars that appear, tap OK, then write the name of your event — isn’t there a better way? You bet there is! Simply begin writing the time of the appointment in the numbers area of the Graffiti silk screen area. Alternatively, you can also start writing the name of the event, which will appear at the top of the screen as an untimed entry, as shown in Figure A. When you’re finished writing, tap the black diamond located to the left of the name and set the Start and End times in the Set Time screen.
.FIG A Enter events quickly by writing them in the Graffiti area.
Even reducing the amount of visual clutter on the screen can be helpful. Cunning Palm organizer users have discovered that if you set the Start Time and the End Time in the Preferences screen to the same time, you’ll see only scheduled events in the Day view, not the blank lines representing each hour, as shown in Figure B.
.FIG B Never liked the lines on notebook paper in school? You can get rid of them in Date Book by setting identical Start and End times.
.H1 Where does the time go? Find out!
The techniques I’ve mentioned so far are great for streamlining your Date Book use, shaving off a few seconds here and there without repeating many of the same routines. But what about the bigger picture? How can you use the Date Book to significantly improve your overall time management system?
Fortunately, it doesn’t involve shelling out big bucks for the latest Ultra Executive Deluxe Embossed Leather Notebook Organizer (notebook paper, calendar paper, plastic separators, and set of 12 audio tapes not included). You’re holding the solution in the palm of your hand.
The first step to managing your time is to find out where it’s going. Some of us can sit down and begin working immediately, pausing only for coffee and lunch. There are also a good many of us who are easily distracted by any stimuli even remotely interesting ("My day really can’t begin until I go check out those new Hubble Space Telescope images ooh, and animations too! Maybe it’s time I brushed up on my astrophysics"). [Hey, no picking on PalmPower’s editors! How did you know we do that kind of stuff? –DG]
Designate a week during which you’ll track every hour of the day, so you can analyze that time later.
You can do this easily in Date Book. In addition to scheduling your upcoming appointments, write down activities as you start and end them. To keep them separate from your regular events, I suggest prefacing each entry with a special symbol, as shown in Figure C.
.FIG C To make it easier to differentiate between appointments and tracked items, use a special character (such as ~) to indicate your time tracking.
If you don’t currently use the Palm organizer’s security features, you can mark the events as Private and then select Hide Private Records in the built-in Security application, which will make your time-tracking entries invisible and separate from your important meetings.
Entering your activities each hour can also be a good opportunity to attach notes to the event for reference later. Tap the Note button in the Event Details screen, or select Attach Note (Command-A) from the Record menu.
[I’ve often used this technique as a manager. If I’m not sure how one of my reports (a "report" in manager lingo is one who reports to me) is using her time (or I’m trying to see if I can increase her workload), I’ll often ask her to keep track of all her time for a week. It’s amazing what discoveries I find. I once discovered an assistant still doing a task every day that had, in reality, become irrelevant more than six months earlier. But I’d completely forgotten to remove the task from her list of assignments, and she’d never thought to tell me she was still doing it. We’ve recovered almost an hour of her time per day! — DG]
After the week is over, take the opportunity to go back and review your tracks. Depending on your level of organization, discovering where your time went can be a painful realization. Luckily, the process of analyzing your week doesn’t have to be painful: you can just print it out. Perform a HotSync to update your Palm Desktop records, make sure the Date Book module is selected, and select Print from the File menu (or press Ctrl/Command-P). Under Print Options, choose Dates (List Format). Only the days with events on them will print in a convenient list format.
Now look over your data carefully. Where is your time going? Meetings? Commuting? Do you regularly get interrupted by phone calls in the early afternoon? Are you most productive in the morning? Be as objective as possible, looking for patterns that can point to areas requiring improvement as well as examples of when you best take advantage of your time.
From here you can begin to restructure your schedule. I tend to get tired and unproductive around 3 p.m., so that’s when I try to do something else: go out for a walk, take a short nap, pay bills, etc. By focusing on something else for a short period of time, I’ve discovered that I can get back to what I was working on in a shorter amount of time, usually feeling refreshed in the process. It definitely beats turning into a vegetable in front of my computer monitor, re-reading the day’s headlines on the Web. I’ve set up a 15-minute repeating event in Date Book that triggers an alarm at 3 p.m. each weekday. To set up one for yourself, create an event, then tap the Details button. Tap the Repeat field, then the Week (not Day) button at the top of the screen. Highlight the days of the week next to Repeat On, then tap OK to exit the dialog box.
.H1 Prepare ahead
Despite my general state of holiday-scheduling preparedness, the weeks usually end up feeling as hectic as ever unless I perform one last vital activity: prepare for tomorrow today. Before you leave work or go to bed at night, take some time to go over the next day’s appointments and tasks. Anticipating tomorrow’s planned elements does wonders when you’re in the thick of it and unexpected pressures and tasks threaten to disrupt the whole endeavor. For many people, knowing how tomorrow is going to work out helps them sleep more easily the night before.
.BIO
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