Importance of Blocking Time in Schedule

This morning I had a number of work-related meetings and then had to take my wife to the doctor's. She had one of those screenings where they knocked her out and she needed a driver to take her there and bring her home. Furthermore I was not allowed to leave the campus until the procedure completed and my wife awake enough to go home. Being required to stay at the doctor's office for 2 hours, I asked the admitting attendant if they had a soft-serve ice cream machine since I couldn't go anywhere. They did not but she said she would mention it to the doctors. I doubt anything will change but if US prisoners are required to be able to watch television, doctor's offices should provide soft-served ice cream when you have to wait more than an hour.

Fortunately the office did have WiFi to use for those of us waiting. I made sure to log onto the system and get some work done. Should anyone need to reach me, I made an entry in my public-work calendar that I could be reached for anything except meetings. That worked well as I had one fellow colleague reach out for clarification on some of the data I am very familiar with. I provided an answer and continued to work on other things.

Whenever I go to schedule a meeting with fellow work associates, I always check everyone's calendar to make sure I am not scheduling over their activities. My hope is that others do the same with me and they almost always do. There are some occasions when a meeting will have quite a few participants and the scheduler must pick a time that will work for the majority of the attendees. If possible, those that can move things to attend will.

After getting home from the doctor's office today, I looked at the next several weeks and scheduled my morning exercise. I am fairly flexible right now and don't need to exercise at specific times. However when I see my schedule filling up, I block time in my schedule to keep people from taking the only time slots in my day where I can exercise. While some treat daily workouts as optional, I don't; probably because of my love of soft-serve ice cream. My health is important enough to me that I do all I can to stay as healthy as possible. I also blocked off time tomorrow evening to spend time with my wife. That is the description I used: "Time with Wife." Most people wouldn't dare try to schedule anything over it and if they do, it must be really important but there is no guarantee I'll be there. My son is good about scheduling his personal time on his work calendar as well. He is a bit more cryptic in his description as he uses: "Personal time, do not schedule."

A lot of people complain about their work/life balance and with some companies there is a huge problem. For me, I try to let people know when I am tied up with personal things. Being forthright and honest provides a level of comfort and trust to management. That goes a long way towards evening out the work/life balance and helps make my employment at Sony that much more enjoyable. 

Using Google Calendar

I spend a fair amount of time working as an executive secretary for a volunteer organization. This is not something I aspired to do. Instead someone asked me to do it and I said I would. As an executive secretary I basically set appointments for people to meet with the leadership of the organization. Sometimes people ask to meet with the leaders and other times leaders ask to meet with specific people. Google's calendar, which can be found at https://calendar.google.com, does an amazing job and makes things very easy.

Before networked computers became commonplace, someone in my position had to keep paper calendars and have a lot of coordination meetings to make sure not to double-schedule someone. Now it is as simple as providing a scheduler like me with access to your calendar. Most of the leaders of the volunteer organization I associate with have e-mail addresses separate from their regular work or personal e-mail. Then they just log into Google Calendar with it and make sure to give me access to their calendar so I can set appointments for them.

The organization leadership changed significantly last week as nobody is expected to be a volunteer forever. We met as a new group on Wednesday evening and I deleted my access to the old leadership's calendars. The new leadership then shared their newly created e-mail addresses and gave me proper access. The next evening I then went through and created calendar entries for all of the regular meetings. We also had a number of requests for people to meet with the new leadership and I entered those. Fortunately I had lots of experience using Google Calendar in the past and did not have much of a learning curve.

I keep my personal calendar on my iPhone. I can access it from my Mac computer. It is great as I keep all sorts of appointment information up-to-date using both devices without having to worry about which one has the most correct information. They both do as an update on one pushes the change to the other. This would also be a great solution for the volunteer association I work with. The only downside is that everyone is required to use Apple products. Google Calendar doesn't care what phone you use. While you can access it with your phone's browser, there is also an application you can put on your phone. I just always use a web interface and it works great.

Are there problems with Google Calendar? Of course but they are minor. It has all of the features I need it for and appreciate the free price tag. If you are looking for a calendaring tool that makes it easy to share people's schedules, you might want to give it a look. It may also work for you.

Resending a Calendar Invite in Microsoft Outlook

I find that you learn the most about something when you try to use it for something new. Last week I sent out a Microsoft Outlook invitation to a bunch of people across different parts of Sony. One person declined the invitation due to a schedule conflict. He then asked if we could reschedule for a different time. I responded that with so many people on the meeting invitation I had to select a time where I knew most people could attend. He then worked on changing his schedule so he could be a part of the meeting. Now I needed to re-invite him to the meeting.

It is very easy to add someone to an existing meeting but I have never had to add someone to an Outlook calendar invite who previously declined the meeting. Sure I could cancel the meeting and send a new invitation to everyone on my list. That seemed like a lot of work that might annoy everyone who responded that they could attend the meeting. So I looked up the proper steps according to Microsoft and it turned out to be rather simple.

The first thing to do is open the calendar invite and remove the person that originally declined the invitation. Outlook will send out an update to just that one person saying they have been canceled from the meeting when you save the updated invitation. Then add them back to the meeting and it will send out a new notification to just that one person asking them to accept or decline the invitation. Nobody else will get notified of the changes, which is exactly what I wanted for such a large number of people attending the meeting.

I use Outlook constantly but occasionally get to try things that are outside what I have done before. This trick is probably very intuitive if you stop and think about the steps to follow. I appreciated being able to look up the solution and get the software to do what I wanted. Hopefully this trick helps you too.

The Excitement of a New Year

I know that calendars are relatively arbitrary in the sense that our new year is not the same as other parts of the world. However there is something refreshing about the changing of the year. It is like a blank canvas ready for a new painting. What adventures will the year have in store for you and me?

People often look at January as a time to make resolutions. Perhaps they will drop a few pounds or learn a new skill. Last year I took up the guitar and have enjoyed it since. This is also the time for the consumer electronics show (CES) in Las Vegas. One of my colleagues who attended remarked about how large it seemed this year as he got to see what new electronic gadgets will be available in the near future. In the United States, we will have a new President. The press and media think that will shake things up a bit.

Yes we have a new year and so it is time to anticipate what the year has in store for us. My hope is that there is some exciting new technologies that actually make our lives better.

A Good Seat on Southwest

In my post from last week, I mentioned that I live in Salt Lake but work in the San Francisco area. That means I do a lot of flying. I have traveled my whole career and so this is no big deal. The way to make it bearable is to know a few travel tricks. Things like wearing slip-on shoes to the airport so you don't have to do a lot of shoe tying at the security line.

However, the most important trick is to know how to get a good seat on Southwest airlines. I buy my plane tickets several weeks in advance and Southwest generally has the best prices. That means I don't get a seat when I make my reservation. Yes, I have the option of paying an extra fee that allows me to board before everyone, but I found a less expensive solution that helps to be in the first boarding group.

Southwest allows you to check-in, 24 hours before your flight. The order you check in, is the order that you get to board the plane (behind those that paid the extra fee). When I make my flight reservation, I also make an entry in the calendar on my phone. I then set the reminder on my phone so that exactly 24 hours before my flight I can start the check-in process. Since I have an iPhone, I also have the Southwest application which allows me to check in from anywhere. Last week I was at the car wash when the alarm went off. I silenced the alarm and was checked in before the wash cycle completed.

Now that I figured out how to use my calendar to help me remember to check in for flights, I should probably throw in some important dates, like my anniversary and wife's birthday. That reminds me, Mother's Day is just around the corner. Now if I only knew what to get the mother of my children . . .