8-2 FAQs | Combining Calendars - Work & Family [8 mins]

Transcript

1. Module 8 - FAQ: combining work & family calendars Wed, 4/27 9:50AM 8:26 SUMMARY KEYWORDS calendar, work, dentist appointments, meeting, intertwined, separate, husband, page, dentist, formal, invite, check, travel plans, person, tuesdays, event, personal, blobby, frequently asked questions, tuesday SPEAKERS Patricia Sung Patricia Sung 00:03 Alright, you're in module eight frequently asked questions. And today's Frequently Asked Questions are all going to be about combining calendars which should be separate, which should be together. And the first one is about word calendars and personal calendars. How to decide whether they should be two separate things, or one together depends on how you separate your work. Patricia Sung 00:27 For example, when I was teaching, I go to school, I do all my work there at school and teaching in school and my meetings at school, I did most of my lesson planning greeting at school, obviously, some things did come home with me, but they weren't tied to my calendar. And then my personal stuff was separate from that there was no intertwining of them. So for me there, I kept two separate calendars of what happened at school stayed on my desk. And then the only time I would put things in my personal calendar was if, for example, like if we had a staff meeting on Tuesdays, it was like irregular some Tuesdays. Yeah, some Tuesdays now, so I would put that in my personal calendar, so that I would know like, Okay, I definitely will be at work late today for this meeting. But otherwise, I kept those separate. Patricia Sung 01:12 Now, I work from home, and my life is very much intertwined with my work, the way that I work is, you know, in these, you know, the cracks of the day, I'm not sitting down at my desk for eight hours, it might be okay, two hours here, an hour here. And that looks very different than when I was teaching. So in this case, because my work is so intertwined with my personal life,
2. those are all on the same calendar, I do color code them, so that I can easily glance at, like, what is for what and I do have, like, I have a separate Gmail for my work stuff than my personal stuff. Patricia Sung 01:48 And I do try to put the stuff on the work calendar, but just from a digital standpoint, sometimes I mess it up, and I don't do it, right. So I've just accepted that, like, Hey, this is how it is. And I just make sure that all the work stuff is color coded in a different color, so that it's easy for me to pick out, I can go ahead and like, not show my Work calendar, and that will take most of it off the ones that I did the right way. But I realized that there that really wasn't giving me any benefit, like I really didn't meet that. So now I'm just gonna like, it doesn't matter. It just goes on there. And it's color coded. So in that way, my work and my personal suffers is very intertwined. So it makes sense for them to be in one place. Patricia Sung 02:31 So that's what I would ask you is that when you think about your work, is it very separate from your personal life? Or is it more intertwined, and that's just going to depend on the job that you're doing in the responsibilities that you have? The other combination that we get a lot is for, like your spouse or partner, how do you keep that information and keep everybody on the same page. In our family, we tried doing a separate calendar, and that was too much to keep up with totally failed. They had I've tried other apps to try, you know, that did not work. What we found that works best for our family is that my husband has his own calendar, I have my calendar, and then we just invite each other to anything that's for both of us or for the whole family that the other person needs to know about or coordinate around, we just send them an invite to it. Patricia Sung 03:29 So for example, you know, if we're having dinner with a friend on Thursday night, when I make that appointment, I send him an invite, and that automatically shows up on his calendar, he doesn't have to do anything, even if he doesn't like accept it, it still shows the same thing. Like if he has, say a dentist appointment after work on Thursday, he'll send me the invite, so that it'll show up on my calendar and I'll see like, okay, he's not going to be there for dinner that night, because he'll still be at the dentist. The ice the caveat to that is that you do have to make sure that you label it in a way that makes sense for the other person. Patricia Sung 04:07 So like, my husband just sends me an appointment that says, dentist, then I look at it and I'm like, why my dentist appointments for me, both my kids, my husband like I need them labeled. So that's something I have to remind him sometimes and be like, I can't I can't rename your event. Like can you please write dentist and your name so that I know who is who is because I have all of the dentist appointments. So that's really what's worked out best for us is just to
3. invite the other person and not try to keep up with another calendar because I really want this to be simple and easy for you. Not more work and trying to sync another calendar is more work. Patricia Sung 04:45 Now, how do we stay on the same page knowing that like we don't have like everything that the other person is doing? And you we do have the option where like on Google calendar like I share access with my husband can look at my calendar anytime if he wants to be never does, he just asked me? Well, you know. So that's an option to just remember side note. But the way that we stay on the same page is we have like a weekly check in. That's worked pretty well for us while my husband was traveling a lot, and he wasn't as involved in the day to day weekly meetings were fine. And it's not like this fancy formal meeting. Patricia Sung 05:28 You don't call it to order at a precisely 7pm On Sunday, it just sometime on Sunday, we would check in and be like, hey, which, you know, he used to travel a lot for work. So we like, hey, which days are gone? What time? Is that flight actually coming home? You know, because sometimes he'd run on my calendar, like he'd be in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, but like, I didn't know like, are you going to Pittsburgh on Tuesday or coming back from Pittsburgh on Tuesday? Are you flying back in the next morning, like, that's our time to kind of shore it up and be like, Okay, here's what's happening this week. And that's a good time to just check in and be like, hey, what, you know, we have this special event on Thursday or you know, there's a reminder, there's a championship blobby ballgame on Friday. You can do this in five minutes, have a check in. It doesn't need to be like an hour long family meeting here. This is really good, too. I Patricia Sung 06:21 f you have teenagers who you know, are starting to drive and be on their own is it everyone's on the same page, you can just do it like around dinnertime or bedtime? Or find a time where you're already together at some point in the day and just do it then don't try like make another event to keep up with when's the time they're already all nearby each other on you know, sometime on the weekend to look ahead at Miko. Do you do it on Friday to do like the weekend and the upcoming week? And then as you kind of do these meetings, you'll figure out okay, these are the things that matter. Patricia Sung 06:58 For example, checking in on like, who's gonna do daycare pickup this day? Or I got something going on. I know I normally do this thing on Tuesday, can you do this thing on Tuesday, you will start to see what are the patterns of the places where you need to connect when you have that awareness to say, okay, what are the things that really matter? And then you can make a note in your calendar, if you know, okay, we usually have lunch together Sunday afternoons. So at 1230, I put a note on my calendar that says talk about these three things, who's picking up kids every day? Important dates, travel plans, and then you've got like, kind of like a system going?
4. Patricia Sung 07:36 Um, I think that for me, I think that's been the key is that it's not a super formal thing, because when I tried, I tried to do a super formal thing for a while and that just didn't fly who didn't keep up with it. And letting your partner know, it's more of like a, I want us to all be on the same page. I want us to be like things to run smoothly. It's not like a I must know what you're doing at all times. It's not a creepy meeting. It's a we're a family unit. We all work together towards one goal. We're one team one dream, how are we going to make that happen? And that weekly check in is a big help. So hope I covered all that stuff that I wanted to say. All right. If you have more questions, let me know. Shoot me a little No. And I will talk to you soon.