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Apple’s latest System update has brought Reminders into the Calendar, so we know where they stand on the question of whether or not tasks belong in a calendar.
Calendars are for events, task managers are for tasks, notes apps are for details. That’s a widely accepted principle. If you are using the traditional version of each of these and you’re happy with the way it’s working, then stop there! That’s all you need.
Because I’m tracking tasks bare-bones style in my notes app, anything time sensitive is manually placed into my calendar. Repeating tasks become either events (if they’re time sensitive) or reminders.
Tasks that need doing sometime in order to move a project along go in my plain text task file, tagged with @1, @2, @3, or @4 depending on whether I plan to do them this week, this month, next month, or 3+ months. What go on the calendar are time blocks for working on a project, not the project tasks themselves.
It is possible to run everything from your notes, Bullet Journal style, with a text or paper calendar and future log. People have done variations on this for centuries. I’m choosing the convenience of a digital calendar, but it’s good to know I don’t need need it.
It doesn’t matter what kind of calendar you choose if you have the discipline to use it properly.
Going old school with paper or a plain text list is fine, as long as you keep it up to date, check it daily (hourly, if necessary), and don’t need automated reminders. As hard core plain-text-analog as I might seem sometimes, I’m no longer willing to follow this approach on its own.
What go on the calendar are time blocks for working on a project, not the project tasks themselves
Apple’s Calendar app does the job well enough, though since learning that you can’t change the number of weeks visible in a month view with the Apple Calendar (Why, Apple, why?), I’ve gone back to BusyCal on my Mac. The trick to not being annoyed by BusyCal, I’ve found, is turning off all app notifications. Anything entered into BusyCal syncs to Apple’s Calendar app, so I control notifications from there.
You can get a free 30-day trial of BusyCal (and 200+ other Mac apps) via Setapp with this link, and the code ELLANE.
Fantastical is the cream of the crop if you don’t mind the yearly subscription fee. It looks great, but I’m not a power user so laying down that kind of moolah doesn’t make sense in my case.
Just like you place events into your calendar on specific days and times, you also need to plan when to do your tasks. People who use purpose-built task managers have an inbuilt calendar that compiles lists of what needs doing at particular times.
Task management works best for me when I block time into my calendar to work on specific projects and areas, and refer to my notes app for the most important task to move each closer to where I want it to be in each. Some routine tasks, the ones I constantly need reminding about, go directly into my calendar.
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