You would think as Tech Savvy Mama I would love all things technology. Not so. The one thing that I am devoutly old-school-paper-and-pencil about is my calendar.
Back in the day I was an early adopter of the Palm. I tried using it as a classroom teacher and it just didn’t work for me. Try putting a day’s worth of lesson plans in a Palm. Besides being too time consuming to enter (because what teacher ever sits?!?) I couldn’t read what was on the tiny screen. But it impressed my teacher friends to no end.
When I left the classroom and moved into a more administrative role and my school system adopted Outlook, I liked using my Outlook calendar. Since I readily admit that I am super Type A, I color coded project due dates, trainings I was conducting, and meetings with teachers in schools. I loved being able to accept, decline, and change meetings and view calendars of my colleagues to schedule time to plan. The only problem was that work and home had to be kept separate. I didn’t want that person who let the whole office to know of her bikini wax just because of shared permissions. Seriously. It happened. And no, it wasn’t me.
So I’ve always kept a paper calendar. Always spiral bound and just slightly larger than half a sheet of paper.
Now along comes Jooners. Jooners is a new online calendar site that claims to “help make planning and coordination easier.” Of course the tech savvy mama in me was immediately curious but the other part of me was skeptical so I created an account to check it out.
Jooners’ various online planners encompass features of Outlook that I like including a list feature and being able to recognize all of your contacts. When you set up an account you can seamlessly add them to your account from your e-mail. Type A me loves that I can still color code. I could assign a color for work, for each family member, personal stuff, and volunteer tasks at my kids’ school. You can also elect to share your calendar just like in Outlook. And since I’m between work and home these days, I could theoretically keep one calendar for both on Jooners.
With more features to come, Jooners has certainly made me wonder if I could go back to an online calendar. The real question is will I really use it? Do I seriously have time to log on to my Jooners account while teaching and plug in the many things going on in my school that are already part of my Outlook? Or do I stick to my tried and true paper calendar?
I’m not sure yet but am willing to give it a try. Give me a couple months and I’ll let you know if I stuck with the paper and pencil or went with Jooners!
What about you? Are you a paper calendar or an online calendar person? How do you keep your family calendar straight now that school is starting again?
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I still prefer a paper calendar. Though hubby and I have share our google calendar so we can see what our work schedules are. But my to-do lists, events and all that stuff is in my paper calendar.
I’m with you. I have yet to find an easy to use, handy electronic system that works for me.
I’ve never been able to keep a paper calendar. I never remember to write things down, and it would never get updated. My normal method of operation was a dozen stickie notes on one of the kitchen cabinets.
Since starting a FT office job a year and a half ago, my work Outlook calendar has doubled as my everyday calendar (server settings only allow users to see that meetings are scheduled; not the title/details). I love that the DH can send me outlook invites for meetings he needs to attend or for his travel schedule. Since Dr’s appts. and other things of that nature need to be made during business hours, it’s easy to plug them into my calendar when I make the appt. from my desk. I can’t imagine what a mess I’d be if I tried to keep two systems going!
I love my Palm and couldn’t live without it! I combine both work and home on it and use Outlook in both places as well. I’m very careful to lock my personal appointments so work associates cannot see my personal stuff — although I have forgotten on occasion! To keep the peace at home, I have a magnetic dry erase calendar on my refrigerator. Once a month, I copy what’s in my PDA to the calendar so everyone in my family can see what’s up! Oh, and when they figure out how to make a bluetooth dry erase board, I’ll be using that to sync with my Palm!
I’ve used Outlook exclusively for the past few years. Before that, I ended up keeping a small calendar in my purse, one on my desk, one on the wall, and hubby had one. Too much to keep up with! Now we both use Outlook, and we have a handy little program called 4Team Sharecalendar that lets us share calendars even though we have no Exchange server and different versions of Outlook. We’re all color-coded and it works really well for us.
Interesting to read the different perspectives on this!
I use Outlook for work and Google calendar for home stuff, but we do also have a wall calendar at home in the kitchen. But there is always a part of me that wants to buy a new paper calendar every year, especially when I see all of the new back to school supplies and pretty school calenders and planners! LOL.
We’re twins Leticia!
I actually have a mini whiteboard calendar that I keep on the kitchen counter. That hold each months gazillion palygroup activities. I have a sprial bound calendar, that has weekly and monthly views, where I plan ahead for my blog and personal events (waxes and all)!
Back in the day of corporate america I used Outlook calendar and also LOVED it.
I have tried a lot of things, but the only thing that’s worked is a paper calendar. I use one of those big desk blotter calendars. I have it on the wall in the kitchen, which is near my door. If it’s not on that calendar, it doesn’t happen.
I’m a FT SAHM now but office habits die hard. I still keep an Outlook calendar to track playdates and appointments, but I just found that I had to buy a little paper calendar to keep in my purse since I don’t carry my computer with me at all times and I failed miserably the last time I attempted to use a Palm. I guess I’m a hybrid user. We’ll see how well I update the paper one. Outlook is definitely the master, though! Thank goodness for its reminders!
Found your site via a link from jodifur. I have been using Outlook since it was first released, and I have digital info that easily goes back pre-1990’s.
Having cell/PDA access to calendars is a must for my day-to-day. If there’s long form editing, I do it on computer and sync down to PDA, but I can add quick notes in the field.
My biggest issue as of late has been migrating from Outlook to a Mac-Centric workflow. The Mac is a better fit for what I do, but I’ve been anchored to my former PC life and Outlook.
I recently switched out my Windows Mobile phone for the iPhone. Windows Mobile kills it in terms of contact/calendar, but I’ve already done some great things with iPhone apps I’ve downloaded from iTunes.
Happy to have found your blog. Looking forward to reading more articles.
Tina from Jooners here….I think we can all agree that calendaring is a wheel that everyone of us “reinvents” for herself. But how about all those sign-up sheets at schools,sports teams, book clubs, etc….? How do you handle those? And the huge back and forth “reply all” emails that they entail?
Give Jooners.com
a try!
I don’t know about you but the first week of school has hit me like a tornado. I am so happy to have Jooners in our community for volunteer sign ups. One AYSO team used email back and forth. I had to read 10 emails just to see when I could sign up for snack duty. What a breath of fresh air to have one email only for the other AYSO team snack duty and help needed with cub scouts.