As wedding season begins to pick up, I need something to organize and keep up with all of my photography “stuff,” meaning my blog posts, client meetings, picture engagements, emails, to-do lists, and so much more. I can’t keep it all in my head, and while I love my iPhone for reminders of meetings and places I have to be, I don’t necessarily want what blog post I have going up that day to pop up on my calendar on my phone.
I discovered Google Calendar last fall (I know… way behind the times here), and have really enjoyed using it to keep up with all of my “stuff.” I love how I can color coordinate everything and lay it all out for me to see. I feel so accomplished when I sit down and fill it in or add something to the calendar… I know, I’m lame. But maybe some of you can relate!
Before Google Calendar, I would use my iPhone and try and keep up with everything else like blog posts in my head. I was not doing a good job at my work flow in editing or other things. I needed something I could pull up and refer to on a regular basis.
I have color coordinated my various things I need to keep up with. This is what works for me and what I need for my workflow. You could come up with whatever you need.
Blue: Photography events: engagement sessions, weddings, senior pictures, family pictures
Green: My to-do list of random things
Yellow: Blog posts (You’ll see this the most since I try to do at least three blog posts a week)
Peach: Emails I can plan ahead of time that I need to send out. Obviously if I get an inquiry, I respond and don’t have it on the calendar, but these are ones I know I need to make by a certain point
Light Blue: Meetings with clients, consultations with potential clients, meetings with other vendors in the business
Purple: Client Birthdays and anniversaries from previous year
Red: Deadline dates to deliver client pictures
The first thing I do is pick the date and click “edit event” to go into the actual event. If I don’t do this, I can’t color coordinate the different events.
Once I’m in the event, I type in the name I want it to be and check the event color I have for my different things. I don’t care if it’s checked “all day” because I’m not linking it to my phone, so when it shows up on my day calendar for the month, it just shows up as one bar. If you want to set a time, you can. I don’t ever go into the weekly or daily view of the calendar. I only use it for these purposes.
You can take a look at my March, April, and beginning of May. I try to plan out at least a month in advance. It doesn’t always work perfect like that, but it really helps me to be ahead. I also try and blog ahead of time if at all possible. If you pay close attention, you can even see when I wrote this blog post and when I did the screen shots for the post!
If you also pay attention, you will see that I originally had this post scheduled for yesterday, but then I decided to change it up and do my Engagement Story yesterday since it was our 8th anniversary since being engaged. I change it up when I want to.
Obviously, if something comes up, I will add it, but I try and get as much on the calendar as possible a month ahead.
If you notice, once the day has passed, the event turns a faded color. The initial color you apply goes away.
Here’s my April. Can you see why I need something like this to keep up with my stuff?
What I have so far for May. It will start to fill up more!
I hope this simple use of Google Calendars has been helpful. I’d love to hear from some of you how you’re using it differently!
