Paper Diaries

Some people still carry around their paper calendar. I’ve got nothing against paper, I love it. And please continue to organise your life is a way which has no reminders, events can’t be moved ( they can be scribbled out and re-added ) and you can’t search for items.

It works for you, so continue using your paper diary.

But, you can’t quickly email all the members of your meeting, or provide them with attachments.

You know, it works for you...

And, you can’t see your events against someone else’s, all you can do is say “You free the thursday after that? No me, neither”

Carry on, this way of working works for you. Until you leave it in a taxi that is.

But you know, it’s not all about you. A calendar isn’t your way of seeing what you are doing. It’s your way to let everyone else know what they’re doing to make their lives more effective and easier. 

Online calendars are like indicators on a car, they don’t help you get around the roundabout, they let everyone else know where you are headed and what is in your mind. Online calendars are for everyone else. Everyone else can look and see what you’re doing, maybe understand you and your job better, and maybe do some of the work about when the best time for your next meeting might be.

And whenever I see someone with a paper diary, I think, what have they got to hide? They may be more tactile and familiar to the person, but they’re private and hidden and hardly transparent. People with paper diaries often don’t know that they can easily hide all their events and meetings content showing only whether they’re free or not.

People with paper diaries send you emails that ask, “Are you free next Tuesday morning or Wednesday afternoon?”. They don’t expect that they can look and find that out for themselves by looking in my calendar, saving me a job and the endless ping pong of emails where I say something along the lines of “I’m free Wednesday afternoon, but only until 3, is that any good?”

When someone let’s you view their calendar, you can also make decisions about if you even need a meeting. For example, I have looked in other people’s calendars and seen “Interviewing candidates” and realised that someone is really going to be too busy for my meeting request that week and so I”ve either found a way to not have the meeting or suggested a time when they’re not so pressed for time.

People with paper diaries tend to send emails like that, rather than just call someone, but that is another story. Those sort of email exchanges about dates can last for months whilst a meeting is organised and negotiated.

Please carry on using paper diaries if that’s what works for you, I too have a stationery fetish and love a high quality pen, but you have a civic duty to your colleagues, and not just the ones you know, to use your Google Calendar in a way that people can get on with their jobs without endless email exchanges or telephone calls.

Please carry on being a mildly luddite individualist with your paper diary but also have a thought for everyone else around you and consider how everyone benefits when everyone uses Google Calendar to let people know what they’re doing and when.