A list of the planning and scheduling resources I use intermittently or all the time. I’ll update this periodically. Currently I use a mix of Google Calendar, a Weekly Planner, and a Daily Planner/large notebook.

Google Calendar

Nothing new here! I have several calendars that I’m subscribed to and use. The top three that I pay attention to are:

• my lab calendar (x2). We update our extended out of office dates, shift dates, group meeting times, and events that may be of interest to others here. I usually use this to check when the next group meeting is, if I’m on the hook for anything to share at a meeting, and if anyone is out of town/busy
• my personal calendar. I schedule things like game nights, personal meetings, and events I’d like to attend here
• my personal work calendar. This is shared with my supervisors. When I need to get a lot of work done in a short amount of time, or I have huge swaths of work hours I can leverage, I plan out detailed tasks that help me accomplish larger goals with “Target” dates in which I send completed writing tasks to my supervisors/labmates/coauthors for review. I also put in major timeline checkmarks here

Weekly Planner

For those who have been subject to my love of the Hobonichi Weeks, let it be known that I moved into a Midori because their cat covers (and the price jump on the Weeks) convinced me. The weekly planner is a slim, vertical layout, with 2 pages per week. On the left side is M-S broken up vertically throughout the page, and on the right side is a blank graph page. I tend to carry this around all the time to mark in

• 3-5 tasks I want to complete for the day, and
• any scheduled appointments/meetings I have that day.

The graph side is for notes, impromptu ideas, tracking granular details, etc. There are overflow pages at the end, but this isn’t suitable for taking many notes.

Daily Planner

This is where I log meeting notes, plan things in detail, and use as an adhoc planner for whatever it is I need at the moment. (Previously I did this in the Hobonichi Weeks, but I found that the slim format was actually a detriment and I needed more horizontal space). I’ve used everything from a blank notebook, gridded notebook, sticky notes, and tip-ins from scrap paper for this. This year I’m using a Hobonichi Cousin because there is a lot I want to get done and its nicely formatted for me. I use this to

• set monthly goals/tasks on one page per month
• take meeting minutes
• use as scratch paper! Currently it’s arranged so that it’s one day a page. If I overflow the date, I just flip back to the last empty page and jot down the “date/page” I continue on. I often write down equations in these pages when I’m trying to do unit analysis and I need to get away from my code for a moment, scribble out plots and graphs that I think should appear and compare to what I see on a computer screen, or outline things such as my weekly plan, my thesis structure, jot down who I want to reach out to for whatever topic, write down short summaries of papers I’ve read, etc. This is also where those extra random stickers I accumulate throughout the year often end up…

My goal with this format is to actually develop an index this year. If there are key writings that I want to go back to, I don’t want them lost. Last year I just stuck in book marks, but it eventually got overwhelming. This year I want to take advantage of the “year at a glance” page and write down a brief header in those spots so I know where to go looking for when I want to check on the contents of a meeting I had.

This could easily be replicated in something likeOneNote or any other note taking software, but I’ve found I never really used those, and spending the extra few minutes to write down important things from a paper I want to remember works better than trying to dig up my highlights in my reference manager!

Bonus: Google Forms

Sometimes it’s just too much work to trawl through your calendar and fill out a tracker. To track things that take up my time, I use Google Forms! I write out a 3-4 question form for something I want to keep track of all in one place, and I know that I won’t want to do on paper/keep flipping to. The major use of this one is my Teaching Assistant duties. I keep track of my hours in 15-30 minute chunks and classify my tasks. This has come in helpful when discussing expectations and remaining hours in my contract. Its also useful for profs to know how to better assign hours to their TAs for the following year! I create one of these forms each year, and sometimes a more detailed one for certain courses I’m assigned to. I have my phone out all the time, so I might as well use it when I’m feeling guilty that I’m not doing work!

Questions in the form are:

• What course is this for?
• What tasks did you do? (eg. marking, proctoring, communications, prep work)
• How many hours did it take?
• Notes (more details, for example, noting that it was Assignment 1 that I was working on, or if it was an unexpected conversation that was course relevant)

Bonus: Check-ins

All of these tools are useless if you don’t use them. I typically review my calendar 2-3 times a day (and have noticed I’ve missed meetings because it’s muted, so I’m workig on a solution to that!), my weekly planner once in the morning and once at the end of work + whenever I need to jot down an appointment, and my daily planner daily-ish if I want to use all that extra space.