The holidays are already over.

Getting back to work after the summer often means stress… You have work meetings, business trips and even your daughter’s dance classes to juggle: you need to get organised!

The work calendar (Outlook & Teams, Google Calendar, Calendar, etc.) is one of the most widely used tools for managing your schedule effectively. Whether you work for a large or a small company, your calendar has become indispensable for planning meetings and making the most of your working time.

This week, we are sharing a few tips to help you organise your work calendar.

1. Have a single calendar

One common mistake is to spread your appointments across several different calendars.
In August, we ran a poll on Hamilton Apps’ social media channels (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) to find out how many work calendars you use. We collected data from 26 respondents.

“How many work calendars do you have?”

No calendar: 12%

Just one calendar: 50%

More than two calendars: 38%

A trend emerges from this small sample: two in five people have more than two work calendars.

Using so many tools can easily lead to things being forgotten or double-booked, and so hold back your performance.

It therefore makes sense to merge your calendars, bringing together all the events in your life (both professional and personal) to make managing your time easier.

2. Record as much as possible

To organise your working week well, you should not limit your calendar to booking appointments. A second tip is to enter as many items as possible, including:

  • Production time, for example routine work, in-depth projects or one-off tasks
  • Travel
  • Deadlines
  • Meetings
  • Free time

The aim of this tip is to give you an overall view of how your time is allocated.

3. Use colour coding

To see your week at a glance, we recommend using a colour code for each category of task.

For example:

  • Yellow: production time, including routine work, in-depth projects or one-off tasks
  • Blue: travel
  • Red: deadlines
  • Purple: meetings
  • Green: free time
  • Orange: personal

The return to work after the summer is the ideal time to make good resolutions. Put these three tips into practice and see how useful your calendar becomes for managing your time.