Couldn’t figure out how to discuss this topic, whether it was better to do a poll or hear feedback.
I understand this may not apply for all, I will try to think of a few examples and this may be a slight venting.
In terms of your calendar entry,
If you are doing school pick-ups or drop-offs.
– Do you put them in your calendar and block out the time?
Same goes for all sports activities that the kids may have.
– Do you add a “driving” block time?
Same goes for work (those who need to commute)
Both my wife and I work from home, but we had a change up with the school for our kids. So it involves multiple drop-offs at different locations at different times.
(i.e. Child 1 is in Grade X, therefore they are at this location at 7am, but Child 2 is in Grade Y, and is therefore at this other location 9am)
Translation
Wake child 1, get ready for school, drive out, come back home.
Wake child 2, get ready for school, drive out, come back home.
Begin to start my day at home with whatever is on the schedule.
Same thing happens at the end of the school day, both children have different end of day times.
In looking at the positive, I trying to arrange my schedule and focus on “micro-accomplishments” because of the choppiness of the morning and late afternoon.
Any seasoned veterans out there and what apps to help through the day?
I try to put all hard commitments on my calendar, even though I know when the regular ones are. Recurring events mean it’s not something I think about. The travel time feature in Calendar and Fantastical (haven’t tried it in others) works well for me.
I work in an office and don’t enter commute or start time.
Yes, those staggered school start times are not conducive to deep work, but it’s just a season!
This may be too basic for your needs, but we use a shared “Family” calendar, which includes all the kids stuff. The person taking them goes in the title in parentheses. This way, everyone knows all the family commitments, but one person is responsible (mom, dad, grandma, etc). For myself, I also have a “Commute” calendar that I use for significant drive time with more control than using the travel time feature mentioned.
As far as what goes in the calendar, I tend to use the “hard commitments” approach as well: will someone suffer if this thing doesn’t happen at precisely this time? So picking up the kids qualifies for me
Yes, my family absolutely does this. Anything that involves a person being at a location at a time doing an activity of some sort (more on that below) gets a calendar entry. So all three of your examples above get entries on one calendar or the other. The thought is that each of those situations impose a certain set of constraints on what else could possibly be done during that time, so recording those constraints in a common place helps in deciding what else can be accomplished (if anything) at those times (e.g. work call while driving alone but not screen share, no calls when family is in the car, etc).
Like @evanfuchs mentions above, we have a “Family” calendar that we share. Anything that involves only one or the other parent goes onto that person’s calendar, while everything else goes onto the Family calendar. Wake-up, bed time, and lights out are all on the calendar as well, mainly because that’s the best way to make the phones buzz to remind us that those things should be happening.
I was wondering if I was too crazy or complicating things. My wife and I do have a shared family calendar. I do all the pick-ups / drop-offs becauase of my start/stop schedule. But was trying to figure out whether it was practical or helpful in having the calendar say “School Pick-Up”, “School Drop-off” in the calendar and then having the commute in there as well
I do put in “drive to/from …” events that start at the time I think I/we more-or-less should leave the house. That way the 15-minute-to-go notification is the signal to wrap up what’s going on and start heading for the car. And the at-start-time notification is “we should be in the car” signal.
And FWIW, that system is mainly for me … I’m not always the best at watching the clock, so the phone’s buzzing is to get me to get moving when I should.
I also set Due reminders (and have Siri reminders configured to transfer reminders immediately into Due as well) for getting going.
For the example of a sports activity at 4pm I’m attending that takes 20 minutes to get to I’d block out my calendar from 3:40pm until the end of the event, with the title ‘Sports 4pm’ and set a reminder alarm for 3:35pm.
If each individual family member publishes their own calendar, and everyone in the family subscribes to everyone else’s calendars, they should all have unique colors.
