Your home calendar isn’t there just to remind you of family birthdays and anniversaries. It’s no useful only when you develop New Year’s Resolutions and make vacation plans. You can use a calendar in many ways, but most importantly you can tick your home tasks and responsibilities.
By following the below guide, you will create a helpful tool which allows you to maximize your time and minimize the duties your usually postpone.
Before We Begin
Monthly calendars are the most practical options, as they leave you more space to fill than the annual ones, but less than a weekly or daily planner. To begin your work, find a suitable template and download calendar printouts for upcoming months. Choose a plain design for your calendar to avoid distractions, as you will be the one filling information.
- Find a place for your calendar in the kitchen or the room where you spend your mornings drinking coffee.
- Avoid risks to get the calendar broken, wet or stained.
- Place the calendar printout at eye-level, to make it easier to consult it and write information on it.
- Keep a pen at hand so you can write down information as soon as you acknowledge it.
- Color code and create symbols so you can remember tasks every time you check the calendar.
- Provide access to others without allowing them to make notes. Any deviance from your writings will only make deciphering them harder.
- Learn to refuse meetings or invitations, if they may alter your home schedule. However, you shouldn’t eliminate all spontaneous ideas.
How to Use the Calendar to Complete Your Duties at Home
1. Determine Your Priorities
You cannot know your priorities if you don’t outline all your tasks. Think about everything you must do, then split your tasks into categories. You should have duties for your home, family and yourself (including financial responsibilities).
Then, mark them by importance, frequency, recurrence and how long they take to complete. By writing them down, you will realize which of them can be planned accordingly. Also, lists show you how much time you spend on what’s important and how much goes to details.
2. Consider a Timeline
Think about how long your former duties took to complete. Be realistic when you plan the timeline, even if some tasks last longer than you plan them to. It’s more important to complete tasks without time pressure, rather than completing more tasks in little time.
Focus on timeline when planning your week so that two duties don’t interfere. Sticking to a realistic timeline lets you stick to the schedule later. Also, keep in mind that your priority is to fill in your duties, not the calendar itself.
3. Be Smart
Business people usually develop goals by following a key request: they need to be SMART. SMART stands for specific – measurable – achievable – relevant – time-based. Consider this acronym whenever you’re planning to learn a new language, research into a hobby, or study anything.
Any new project requires time and work. So first and foremost, you should make sure that the project is smart. Unrealistic calendars only lead to failure and misuse of a helpful tool. You can also apply this principle to your goals, plans and objectives.
4. Split Tasks by Months
Besides recurrent home-related tasks that you need to complete weekly or monthly, you also have those to-dos that only appear once in a few months. For example, you can plan tax calculations and designate that specific month only for financial responsibilities.
Split those rare tasks by months and try to keep the year balanced. You can even include those dream to do-s you plan to complete and mostly postpone. Remember to keep birthdays and family holidays task-free.
5. If it’s not Necessary, Don’t Plan It
As we’ve mentioned before, you don’t need to fill your calendar. While writing down your duties, you use your own time. Therefore, always consider if a duty is important or you’re just treating it as such. Think about this when you reach the additional duties list to write on your calendar, so you can revise it.
Do you know the saying if it’s not broke, don’t fix it? If your time is free in certain days, don’t engage in duties which aren’t useful. You will need a few days to relax, read or take trips.
Ticking the Calendar
The essential part of your duty completion comes once the above are done and your calendar is fully colored. Then, you need to stick to the schedule and complete the tasks when you plan them to. If you fail once or twice a month, you can keep the sheet and see what needs to be optimized the future month.
To make everything more interactive, you can engage others in your calendar-ticking process. When you are helped, you complete everything in less time than planned. So, you will have more time for yourself and rest.
Featured Image Source: Depositphotos
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