As time goes on, I’m finding more and more value in duplicating my calendar. I don’t mean duplicating in terms of having a backup (though that’s certainly wise), but in literally copying all of your appointments by hand to a different system.
I started this about three years ago with the Full Focus Planner. Each Friday I’d hand write all of my events for the next week, and then update them each morning for last-minute changes. It’s super inefficient, I know, but I consider work like that to be intentionally inefficient and very beneficial.
I’ve since done it a few different places, such as the reMarkable tablet, Roam Research, and others. I’m now doing it in Tana, but the tool really doesn’t matter here. Really, it doesn’t matter if you just write it all down and throw it away, because the key is the process itself. There are some advantages to keeping it, but if you’ve gone through the process than you’ve already extracted much of the value.
The benefit I get from this is simply taking the time to look closely at my calendar for the coming week, make changes as needed, confirm meetings, and really just make sure everything is tight and ready to go. It forces me to address every event, even for just a few seconds, and not be able to just skim over everything.
Do you keep a second copy of your calendar anywhere? I’d be curious to hear about your workflow.
