By brendan at 13 August, 2007, 7:53 pm
Yesterday I met with an MBA student from Monash that I mentor. One of the topics we discussed was how to achieve work life balance. His issue is that he works around 70 hours a week as well as study. Unsurprisingly his 3 kids are starting to wonder where he lives.
I don’t have exactly the same issue, however I do have the problem that both my wife and I work, plus our children always have activities that we need to coordinate. There’s nothing worse than your Childs eyes, when you turn up to school, rushed as usual, and find everyone else is in the class is wearing jelly bean colours, and yours is in school uniform.
Anyway, the solution we came up with a family calendar that’s online. Since I have Google as my internet home page, I use the Google Calendar http://www.google.com/calendar , and have it displayed on my home page. I have setup calendars for myself and kids, the Churchill Club and other important dates.
The Google Calendars are of course free and full featured. They work pretty much the way you expect them to, adding events that are all day or for a short period or even recurring. The other nice thing is that you can invite other people to view your calendar. For instance my wife, whom has her own calendar that I view, can see exactly what I am upto and make entries as she sees fit. For instance she can see that we are free on Sunday for lunch so can accept an invitation. Alternatively, my mother can see my calendar but not make any changes. Also, for obvious reasons, she can’t actually see any of the detail of my calendar, only that I am available or unavailable.
The nice thing about my Google calendar is that is available anywhere, which mostly means at work and home. However it’s also available to me when I’m out for coffee. Using another free (kind of) product called GooSync, I can synchronize my mobile hone with my Google Calendar, no matter where I am. I say kind of because the data transfer on my mobile costs me, plus I can subscribe to an advanced account if I want to synchronize lots of calendars.
The Google Calendar also allows me to view lots of other calendars as well. Such as Australian Holidays, Sitting days for the Legislative Assembly and Council in Victoria, Farmers Market Days in Melbourne, and lots, lots more.
Finally, there’s a whole lot of other functionality I can use with my Google Calendar, invitation to parties and free updates by SMS. I’m not using it yet, but its useful to know there is room to grow. The result of all this? I’m happy and can negotiate “date night” with the wife with much less stress.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
No comments yet.