How to Set Up Your Schedule Management System 🗓️

Simple steps for establishing The PIES Method for Digital Organization

Most of us would be completely lost without our calendar — it keeps our lives running smoothly.

I recognize that there are a million ways to use a calendar, and if you’ve found a way that works for you — even if it’s far from what I’m about to suggest — THAT is wonderful.

Because calendars are the tool I see people “abusing” the most often. Many people expect their calendar to organize their entire life — using it to not only manage their time and schedule, but tasks, reminders, ideas, habits, little notes they don’t want to forget! It can lead to a state of disorganization really quickly.

So today we are going to dive into the third system of The Pies Method, our Schedule Management System, and I’ll explain how you can optimize a digital calendar to ensure it's working for you and not against you.

Note: If you’re keeping track, you may have noticed we’ve skipped over the “E” in PIES and gone straight to S, but don’t worry, we’ll cover “E” in the next post — this order just makes more sense when you’re initially setting things up.

---

🤔 What is a Schedule Management System?

Your Schedule Management system helps organize your time and obligations.

You’ll use it for things that are time specific, so you know where you need to be (or what you need to be doing) and when!

---

🎖️ Key Features

Digital Calendars are one of the best examples of how technology can help make us more efficient. While I love a good paper calendar for certain things, when it comes to managing meetings, appointments, and events a digital calendar is superior. An ideal one should be able to:

• Set events as recurring, so they automatically populate week-to-week, month-to-month, or year-to-year — reducing your workload and ensuring you don’t forget things

• Trigger multiple reminders via text, email, and pop-ups to ensure you never miss an important meeting

• Allow you to share specific events or entire Calendars with other people, so everyone has the info they need

• Find ideal meeting times by comparing the schedules of all event attendees to reduce the back and forth

• Automatically add events from your email, such as flight info or hotel reservations

• Allow you to add multiple calendar “layers” so you can turn each one on/off individually

• Allow you to add custom colors so you can control the aesthetic

• Has strong encryption, two-factor authentication, and clear privacy policies so all your personal data stays safe

• Allows integrations with services like Calendly or Acuity so you can allow clients and customers to schedule meetings with you

• Provides cross-platform compatibility so that it syncs seamlessly with other calendars across your smartphone, tablet, and computer

---

✨ Examples:

Some of the things that could go in your Schedule Management System would be:

• Birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates set as recurring annual events so they automatically appear on each occurrence.

• Your 2:00 pm client call, including the video link for the meeting and contact information for all attendees

• Childcare plans and schedules, shared with the people who need the info

• The 6:00 AM hot yoga class you’re signed up for on Tuesdays and Thursdays

• Bill payments and other important date specific-reminders

---

👩🏻‍💻What I Use and Recommend

I’m such a visual person that I need a calendar that is *aesthetic*, with a simple, clean interface and the ability to customize how it looks. I need to be able to create multiple calendars on their own “layer” that I can share with specific groups (such as course students) and allow clients to book calls based on my availability across multiple calendars…