Ontiveros @ Textdriven

History: I started out using Google calendar to keep the wife aware of my travel schedule. Since my profession keeps me traveling, I needed a way to share my work schedule without giving her access to my company’s corporate calendar of course. As time went on, I imported different public calendars: US Holidays, Class Schedules, etc. This is all fairly standard as I was merely blocking out the time.

I’ve used Backpack, Basecamp, and several other “online systems” to manage my classwork in the past. My typical workflow was to maintain a list or page for each class while breaking down each week into individual to do items: Read Chapter 2, Write Case 1, etc.

Since one semester quickly turns into the next. If you are like me, then you are constantly looking for a better way to stay organized and stay on top of your weekly deliverables. While many of the web applications that I use do certain things well, none of them does everything that I need. I tired of flipping back and forth between the different applications.

My class time has always been “blocked off” in Google Calendar, but I decided to try to come up with a way to take advantage of the “list views” in the Gcal. The Agenda “tab” will display every upcoming item in all of your check marked calendars. The “Search Results” will obviously display only the items that you query for. The task was to come up with a way to display class work which needed to be completed, edit the entries to signify completion, and isolate these items in the search results.

My solution was to create a calendar for each class. All of my school related calendars are green incidentally. I created “all day” events such as Read Chapter 2, Write Case 1, etc., and listed them on their due dates. Because the “Search My Calendars” will search every field for each entry, it is possible to include certain words only for your class work. I chose to give these entries the reather obvious label of “class”. If I search for this key word, it will isolate and list only my classwork.

I append the name of the calendar entry to include “DONE” in the title. This essentially checks off the item and labels the task as done. As the semester goes on, there will be more “DONE” items than non “DONE” items. Open up the Search Options, and include “Done” in the “Doesn’t have” and you quickly filter out those items. As the semester ends, then I’ll simply hide these calendars and create new ones the following term.

What’s the point? This setup allows me to get rid of one of the previously mentioned online applications. One less online app to manage.