Springtime Activities

With every passing day, winter’s chill fades, and spring’s vibrant colors replace dull monotones. It’s time to emerge from hibernation, dust off your calendar, and join the world in planning your favorite spring activities. However, with so many options available, it can be hard to ensure you make the most of everything and don’t miss out. Here’s how to use your calendar to maximize your enjoyment this springtime.

Prioritize

One of the best ways to ensure that you get everything done is to categorize items by their priority. Start by making a list of everything you want to accomplish by the end of the season. Be open, creative, and liberal with your thinking here. Let yourself really daydream before you judge your ideas and bring them down to earth. Then, break those items into different categories by type: family, travel, work, hobby, etc.

Now that you have a bucket list full of categorized items, there are a few ways to prioritize your goals. You could pick a single category, like family, and prioritize all spring activities involving them. This could mean doing everything family-related, from celebrating Easter Sunday to attending every graduation ceremony. Alternatively, pick from a handful of different categories. You could go on a mountain hike to watch the snow melt and celebrate Mother’s Day.

Imagine yourself on your deathbed if you’re having trouble nailing down your priorities. Look back at your life and ask what you wish you had done with your time. If you feel like you’d regret not doing something, prioritize it. If you’re still struggling, narrow your list even further to about five to ten items. Then, with your calendar’s help, decide on target dates to achieve your goals.

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With your priorities firmly in mind, it’s time to tackle them individually. It’s one thing to say that you’re going to do something and another to actually do it; this is especially true of more ambitious goals, like completing a 30-day project or taking a vacation. Taking meaningful steps towards your goals is important, starting with nailing the date.

Take a look at your digital calendar and choose a day for each of your bucket list activities. Add a new event in the appropriate time slot and — voila! You have your event booked! Now, some activities are simple to execute, like going to see a new movie in theaters. But some items will take extra time and planning, so plan accordingly.

One of the benefits of using a digital calendar is the reminders feature. You can set reminders on the days and hours leading up to your anticipated activity. Label the reminders with tasks like “pack for Easter flight” or “purchase toy for nephew.” They’ll help you break up your larger, multi-step goals into smaller, more manageable steps.

Share

Digital calendars are great for keeping track of goals and activities, but they’re also great for sharing them with friends and family. Share your calendar with others so everyone is always on the same page. This is particularly useful when co-planning events and activities.

Say, for example, your family is going to take a trip to Disney World in May—not just your immediate family but your aunts, uncles, and cousins, too. That’s a lot of different schedules, routines, needs, and wants to keep track of! Centralize all that information by syncing your digital calendars together. Then, you’ll know exactly where in the park everyone is at any given time.

Sharing calendars also helps during the planning stages of your adventures. You can share checklists with other planners to ensure everyone’s on the same page about what to buy. Having everything in one place is incredibly helpful, so no one gets confused or buys the same things twice.

Coordinate

So now your calendar is full of dates, events, and reminders. Perhaps you’ve even synced it with friends and family to plan more effectively. While it’s great you have all this information in one place, it may get overwhelming to parse it all. Reminders here, Zoom meetings there, plus don’t forget your regular day-to-day activities! If you’re struggling to balance all the information your calendar stores for you, try color-coordinating it.

Color-coding is a simple yet incredibly effective way to divide and track a lot of information simultaneously. There are a few different ways to color-coordinate, so pick the one that works best for you. But first, select a color scheme that resonates with and complements your aesthetic preferences. Whether you opt for bold and vibrant tones or softer pastel hues, choose colors you naturally gravitate toward.

With your chosen scheme in mind, decide how to apply it. One way is to apply specific colors to activities of a particular type: planning, meeting, packing, traveling, etc. If you’ve synced your calendar with others, you could also apply a specific color to each person’s respective tasks. Third, you could use a color scheme like red, yellow, and green to denote the importance or urgency of each task or activity. Get creative and leverage color by using it to organize and coordinate your busy calendar.

Remember

Maximizing isn’t only about getting the most out of your life right now. It’s also about holding onto precious memories so you can also enjoy them in the future. In theory, holding onto memories is easier than ever before with the aid of technology like smartphones. But too often photos get buried in your picture gallery as the years go on. Thankfully, your calendar may have the solution you’re looking for.

Reminders come to your aid once again. You can set up recurring reminders and add attachments to them. Use a photo of a precious memory as that attachment to ensure you’ll see it repeatedly. You can even set the reminder to appear on the anniversary of the day the photo was taken. This will keep the memory of that particular time alive as the years go on and your picture gallery accumulates.

Alternatively, you can create a custom calendar using your favorite photos. Set a particular photo as a banner image or theme for a given month. You can even do the same by ordering a custom physical calendar—you know, the kind with a new photo at the top of every month. Don’t neglect the power of custom calendars when it comes to preserving precious memories.

Developing, organizing, and maintaining a fully functional calendar can take a lot of upfront work. But it will be worth it once you’re balancing your busy life with enjoying all your favorite springtime activities. Think of how many seasons have gone by where you weren’t able to do everything you wanted to. That’s time you’ll never be able to recover, and memories you’ll never make.

Don’t let this season pass you by. Invest in organizing your spring activities with a digital calendar ahead of time. By doing the work now, you’ll be able to let go and fully enjoy the moment in the future. And, if you use your calendar to its fullest, you’ll even have plenty of photos to reflect on for years to come.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Greta Hoffman; Pexels