IT
In this regular column Charles Zealey, of ITSolve, covers all aspects of business and personal computing. If you have a question about IT matters, e-mail it to Charles at: itmatters@itsolve.co.uk
It has been well said that having two diaries does not make you better organised than the person who has just one. While I know many people who manage with just a paper diary, many of us run our lives with one or more electronic diaries.
Why electronic?
After all, there are so many benefits. It makes changing, adding and deleting so easy – no more hard-to-read alterations. You can search for meetings you had with a particular person. You can easily add relatively large amounts of information to an entry.
You can view the same information in a number of ways, monthly overview, annual overview, daily details. If you want to you can print it in a number of ways.
Phone, PC, server or web?
Perhaps you use a diary on your phone? It is always with you, it can be consulted in meetings; it can be set to remind you of appointments; you can add to your task list as soon as you make a commitment.
Or perhaps you have a diary on your PC? Or a diary that can be shared with other people you work with; maybe they can even make appointments for you? Or maybe you use one of the well-known web-based calendar systems such as Google or Yahoo. They all have their advantages and disadvantages, so choose one that works for you.
Getting it all together
You may find that you need to use one or more calendar systems – if you do you need to find a way to keep them in step with each other, or “synchronised”. You may find specialised software is available (most phones will come with software to enable synchronisation with Microsoft Outlook for example). If not, or if you have more complicated needs you could experiment with www.scheduleworld.com with has a whole range of possible options.
Many systems have more extensive capabilities including contact and address lists, and task lists.
So with all the tools available there’s no need to have more than one diary.
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