I have struggled with this forever. I have gotten OK with lists of things I need to do and organizing those in a few different places I actually will look at, but what do I do about scheduling/calendars? I can do what my work calendar says but anytime I make my own schedule, it becomes invisible to me and I don’t even consider it very quickly.
Anyone have any tips for scheduling tasks and actually following through with it?
I use the todoist app which adds it to my calendar and lets me set a default remind me time
I have the same issue, and I haven’t found any good solutions either. Todoist worked for a short while, but I quickly realized that a task manager with no calendar is almost useless to me. I’d love to hear others’ systems.
Edit: I know Todoist can sync with Google Calendar, but that’s an extra app and a Google account on top. I won’t be renewing my subscription when this one runs out.
I use TickTick which has calendar integration for the paid plan. https://ticktick.com/
Screw fiddly digital calendars. They all have the same flaw most organizers have: they require you to stick to their system. I completely switched to a bullet journal and I am happy with that. The free form of it allows me to add or remove anything to my liking and so far this has worked wonders. It’s of vital importance to do the daily migration to the next day in the evenings though.
I have the same “invisible calendar” problem as you. It’s like once I input something into the calendar, my brain marks it as “dealt with” and moves on. There is no part of my daily routine that promptse to check the calendar (or weather) and nothing I could do with the information if I successfully looked. I can use it for appointments (with the "warn me via push a day before, and hour before, and ten minutes before flags all turned on), and to remind me it’s recycling day, but for complex tasks? Forget it.
What works for me is making the tasks take up space in the physical world. For example, if I need to take something to work, or to eg. the post office on my way to work, I hang it by the front door or put it in my bike helmet. If I have to do something in the morning after breakfast I set it on the dining table. If something needs to be stored downstairs in the basement I throw it in the laundry bin and sort it out next time I take the laundry down.
For me it has to be an audible alert from a device that I will hear no matter what. Cell phone alarm is great. If you have a smart watch, even better. If you live on your computer then something like an outlook calendar alert might work for you. Now when the alert happens you still have to do the thing. I tell myself that doing the thing avoids more pain than not doing the thing and then after a while it becomes routine and I just do it without any justification needed.