6 Creative Scheduling Tips to Ensure You Don’t Forget Appointments

Becoming an adult means booking and keeping track of essential appointments. And the older you get, the more appointments you have to book. Or, maybe it’s just more complicated to remember all of them. Either way, once you become responsible for making your own appointments, you need to ensure that they stay on your radar. But this can be hard when you have a busy, demanding schedule.

A calendar is a fantastic tool for scheduling and reminding you of important appointments as long as you input the event. Keep reading for six scheduling tips to ensure you don’t forget your necessary appointments.

1. Use Reminder Features for Appointments

Taking advantage of reminder features is one of the easiest ways to ensure you don’t forget vital appointments. Many popular calendar apps, including Calendar, Microsoft Calendar, and Google Calendar, have built-in reminder features. When scheduling an appointment, you can create a reminder as a pop-up notification, email, or text message.

There are several other ways you can customize appointment reminders in your calendar. First, you can automate appointment reminders so that you always get a reminder when you schedule something. You can also choose how far in advance you’d like to receive reminders (30 minutes, 2 hours, an entire day, etc.). Additional customization options include sounds, notes, and images. You can also choose to receive select reminders across connected devices.

Creative Tip: Use Personalized Voice Reminders — This can add a unique and personal touch to your reminders. For instance, instead of a standard notification, you can record yourself saying, “Hey [Your Name], remember your dentist appointment at 3 p.m.. Don’t forget to bring your insurance card and arrive 10 minutes early!” Most smartphones allow you to set custom ringtones for notifications, so you can use these recordings to make sure your reminders feel more urgent. This approach can be particularly effective if you tend to ignore standard notifications.

2. Stay Organized by Color-Coding Your Calendar

Making your calendar look organized takes time, but the effort is worth it in most cases. Simply adding appointments, meetings, and other events to your calendar isn’t enough—you need a system. Using color coding to distinguish between different types of events on your calendar is a great way to stay organized.

If all appointments in your calendar are one color, they’ll blend together. However, using red for appointments and green for work meetings helps you differentiate between the two. Instead of your calendar looking like a monotone wall, it’ll be visually appealing and organized. To successfully color code your calendar, consider the psychological feelings associated with colors. For example, purple relates to creativity, while red screams urgency.

Creative Tip: Use Color Themes for Specific Projects—Take your color-coding to the next level by using color themes based on specific projects. For a big project at work, you can dedicate a specific set of colors to it, making it easy to see how much time you’re allocating to it.

3. Use Recurring Events for Regular Appointments

Some appointments happen regularly. For example, you might have specific doctor or dentist appointments every six months. Regarding beauty and wellness, maybe you can schedule monthly hair or nail appointments. They’re part of personal maintenance and upkeep, seemingly never-ending.

When you create recurring appointments, you let your calendar do the heavy lifting. Half the battle of keeping an organized calendar is the scheduling aspect. Once you have a filled-out calendar, it’s just a matter of using it to keep your days structured. Making certain events recurring is just one of the many ways you can save time.

Pro tip: When you review your calendar and make updates, evaluate recurring appointments. Some appointments might not need to happen as often, and others may need to happen more frequently. Determining the frequency that works for you will help you stay organized and productive throughout the week.

4. Share Your Calendar With Family and Friends

When it makes sense, share your calendar with family, friends, and co-workers. Not only does it keep everyone on the same page, but it keeps important appointments top-of-mind. Whether you have a work meeting, doctor appointment, or parent/teacher conferences, more people means more visibility. More visibility means it’s less likely that your appointment will be forgotten.

Beyond increased visibility, shared calendars offer many additional benefits. Sharing calendars with teams increases productivity, facilitates communication, and improves everyone’s time management skills.

Sharing your calendar with family and friends also has benefits. They are the people you talk to most, so keeping them in the loop makes sense. For example, if you and your friend have lunch weekly, it’s easier if they know your schedule beforehand. Or, if your parents provide childcare for you throughout the week, having access to your schedule might be helpful.

5. Sync Your Calendar With Other Devices

Syncing your calendar across all your devices is a surefire way to ensure you don’t forget important appointments. With so many devices, from smartphones to voice assistants to tablets to computers, synchronization is a must. You’ll be reminded of important appointments often by using a digital calendar and syncing it across devices. A voice assistant can remind you of appointments during your morning routine. You can receive reminders on your smartphone and your computer. Use all the tech you have to your advantage.

While you’re syncing your calendar across devices, make sure to also integrate it with the platforms you use often. For example, integrating your calendar with your work Slack account will let your team know when you’re away from your desk. You can schedule focus time to put your head down and finish a big project, and then Slack will show a “do not disturb” status. This can also be used for fun tasks, whether walking your dog or grabbing lunch.

Creative Tip: Utilize Smart Home Devices for Scheduling — Take advantage of smart home devices like Amazon Echo, Google Home, or Apple HomePod to track your schedule creatively. For example, you can set up routines with your smart home devices that remind you of appointments through different triggers. You might have your smart lights change color at certain times to remind you of upcoming events (e.g., turning red 30 minutes before a meeting).

6. Review and Update Your Calendar Regularly

Lastly, make sure you review your calendar regularly. Use time blocking to give yourself ample time to do this. Every moment in your day should be accounted for, even if some time is blocked off to handle administrative tasks. When you have a break in the middle of work-related tasks, use that time that’s blocked off to review, update, and organize your calendar.

Time blocking can be a great way to ensure you get the most out of the hours in your day. When you start implementing time blocking, ensure you understand the strategies for doing so. For example, one of the most popular time-blocking techniques is task batching. Using this technique, individuals will group similar (usually smaller) tasks together. Knocking out similar tasks all at once makes it easier to switch modes throughout the day. It improves efficiency by making moving from one task to another easier throughout the day.

The only thing worse than feeling overwhelmed by appointments is forgetting about them. From incurring no-show fees to dealing with rescheduling, missing an appointment can cause a great deal of stress. Luckily, all it takes is a little organization and creative scheduling to ensure you don’t forget appointments.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Karolina Kaboompics; Pexels