Staying organized is one of the very best approaches to keeping a schedule. Finding what you wish and staying on course of upcoming meetings, events, or appointments is less complicated. Nonetheless, for those who’re latest to keeping a schedule or have difficulty developing organizational techniques, you may consider color-coding.
Color-coding is a fairly straightforward technique for maintaining an organized calendar. It involves categorizing your events and assigning a selected color to every category. This makes glancing at your schedule more pleasing, for one, while also keeping a structure.
You would possibly not be sold on the concept of color-coding yet. In spite of everything, how will you determine you need to switch once you don’t have all of the facts? Keep reading for the professionals and cons of color-coding your calendars.
Pros
To kick this list off in an optimistic light, listed below are the various pros of keeping a color-coordinated calendar system.
It’s an Easy System
Organizing might make you think that of the perfectionist in your life who goes to lengths to schedule, structure, and categorize every thing. Nonetheless, you don’t have to commit to the identical extremes simply to turn out to be more organized. That’s one of the explanations color-coding is so popular and a go-to categorization method for a lot of — it’s super easy!
This system doesn’t take much effort or time to do, yet it might probably effectively put your schedule so as. All you have got to do is create categories for the kinds of events you’ll be putting in your calendar then select corresponding colours. For instance, yellow may very well be doctor appointments, and green may very well be work meetings.
It’s not very difficult to perform this on a web-based calendar, either. On Google Calendar, press the three dots to the fitting of your calendar, and the colour options will appear. On Outlook, click “categorize,” “all categories,” then “color categories,” and you’ve got it. For the Calendar app, hit the little “i” button on the fitting of your calendar to access color decisions. Have a unique operating system? Checking out the right way to color-coordinate is an easy web search away!
It Makes Finding Events Easier
Sometimes, you’re in a rush and must quickly check your calendar for what event is coming up soon. Or perhaps you possibly can’t remember a project deadline and don’t know where to look in your schedule. Each of these problems could be easily solved through color-coding.
Glancing at your calendar and understanding what your week or month involves is straightforward with color-coordination. Even without checking the main points of all of your tasks, you possibly can see what kind of events you have got coming up just based on the colours.
You’ll be able to quickly scan through the category colours when in search of a selected event in your calendar. For instance, if you have got a deadline and can’t remember precisely when — glance through events with the corresponding color. Looking something up in your calendar has never been easier.
It Can Help You Prioritize Tasks
Do you struggle with effectively prioritizing tasks in your life? Perhaps you’ve been attempting to improve at priorities, however the concept has been difficult to follow or remember. Well, you guessed it — color-coding may also help.
When selecting colours in your schedule’s categories, attempt to base these selections on color association. This implies you’ll pick a category’s color based on what feelings or associations those colours bring to you. For instance, red might make you think that of urgency, so you could possibly color-coordinate your projects due soon.
Now once you check your calendar, you possibly can easily find what must be done first. And, now, you’re less prone to forget what tasks you desired to prioritize.
Color Improves Memory
Paper calendars could be pretty colourful on their very own, depending on what patterns or designs you select. An attention grabbing picture can grasp your attention obviously. Nonetheless, most of the time, the actual calendar part itself is a neutral color, like black or gray. Even for those who use a web-based calendar system, the colours are frequently standard black and white.
Adding tasks in brilliant colours may also help your events stand out. Not only does this catch the attention higher, but it might probably also help with remembering what you might want to do. A 2013 study found that colours, except for neutrals, can actually improve your memory. This implies your brain holds onto information more easily when it is available in a brilliant color as a substitute of black.
Due to this fact, color-coding your calendar can assist you remember your schedule. You’re less prone to need to repeatedly pull up your calendar when adding latest appointments or remembering a due date. Although, double-checking yourself is all the time a great idea!
It Makes Shared Calendars Simpler
If you happen to share calendars with coworkers in your job, you’ll know all of them can feel like one big mess sometimes. Luckily, you possibly can assign a unique color for every person’s calendar to raised differentiate between all of them.
For instance, Google Calendar allows every user in a workgroup to customize their very own calendar color. This manner, every user can more easily discover each others’ schedules based on these specific calendar colours.
Your workspace won’t appear like a complete mess anymore, and you’ll give you the option to view another person’s calendar more easily. And similar to that — you’ve simplified one aspect of your job.
Cons
After all, no system is ideal. There are all the time cons, which could differ from individual to individual based on personal preferences. Listed here are a pair of examples to think about before switching to color-coordination.
It Might Take Extra Time
When starting any latest routine or technique in your life, you may need to devote some additional time to perfecting the method. This can be true with regards to starting to color-code your calendars.
The start-up process will take a moment to set every thing up. You’ll need to choose each category’s color, which could take a number of minutes for those who’re picky. It will take significantly longer if you have got multiple categories.
Then, you’ll have to devote the time to putting every thing into this latest order. If you happen to use a paper or dry-erase calendar, you’ll need to rewrite every thing down in response to its color. With a web-based calendar, you’ll need to go into your settings and change every task’s color. Ease and time length can be determined by how easy or difficult the method is together with your specific calendar software.
It Could Take Some Getting Used to
Moreover, remember that starting a latest organizational system will take some getting used to. You would possibly, by default, forget to write down tasks down in response to your decided color scheme. Then, you’ll need to return and redo this entry.
Furthermore, it’d take slightly while to get used to what each color means. To assist yourself remember your code, write down a legend of what each color corresponds to.
And while this isn’t the top of the world by any means, re-doing something might elicit a groan or facepalm. Correcting yourself will take longer than for those who were already used to the method.
It’s As much as You
Whether or not you alter your whole scheduling system to a color-based organization is as much as you. This list of pros and cons will not be exhaustive — another features, whether negative or positive, might come to mind. The way you organize your life is your selection at the top of the day, so go together with your gut.
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