I’m disappointed that I’ve got so far behind with CPD23, but I guess life/work has just been too busy to give it any attention. I would dearly like to finish all the Things, so to try and make up some lost time, I’m going to clatter through the next few as quickly as I can.
I have looked at Google Calendar before, but never been one to use it much. For my work life, I use Outlook to keep tabs on what I’m doing and when, as well as to diarise reminders to myself to follow things up, prepare for a meeting, or get in touch with someone. I really like the ability to have it throw up reminders – if it didn’t do that, I’m sure I would forget lots of things. However, having my calendar on Outlook does mean that I can’t take it with me to meetings as easily as if I had a paper diary (which I religiously order each year but rarely use). I guess, like a lot of things, there is no one system that covers all the bases and so I muddle along reasonably well in the meantime. I think, on balance, it’s more important to have a system that will issue reminders than one that is portable. Plus, we have to fill appointments in the shared work calendar in Outlook anyway, so while I’m there, it’s easy enough to copy them to my own calendar.
In my personal life, however, I am much more old-school and use a paper diary. I find this much more convenient – both for adding new engagements and for checking what I’m doing on a particular day, than having to start up my computer or find my glasses so that I could read my smartphone screen!
It hasn’t really struck me before how differently I treat these two areas of my life, but I think it seems to work well for me at the moment.
