Productivity 101: calendars (nouns) and reminders (verbs)
My parents upgraded their iPad last week so I spent part of the weekend showing them some of the newer features. My Dad decided he wanted to get to grips with using the Calendar and Reminders apps so I verbalised for the first time something I’ve only known implicitly.
Calendar items are for events and therefore should be organised around NOUNS.
The advantage of this approach is that you can enter specific times for the event. This can then generate ‘remind me 30 mins before’ functionality, etc.
Reminders or To-do list items are for actions and therefore should be organised around VERBS.
The thing I tried to get across to my Dad is that if you need to include a time in your to-do list or reminder then it should be a CALENDAR item.
Personally, I use Google Calendar (events in blue) and the Tasks functionality (in red):
Hopefully that all makes sense. Separating out your verbs from your nouns can help enormously with productivity! 🙂
