Most of us have packed workdays filled with meetings, emails, deep work sessions, events, personal to-dos, and more. When life gets overwhelming, it’s necessary to have great digital tools that can help you organize tasks.

What if we told you that one of the best tools you can use to optimize your days is your calendar? Keep reading to explore the benefits of categorizing your digital calendar, view six ways to organize it, review best practices for your calendar, and learn how to use Fellow to master the art of calendar categorization.

The benefits of organizing your calendar into categories

1. Improves focus

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and unproductive when your to-do list is neverending. Using work calendar categories to accompany different types of tasks within your calendar will provide you with a roadmap of what you must accomplish each day. Using categories will help you create a routine and break large projects into smaller, actionable steps.

2. Improves time management

Beat procrastination by using calendar categories that help you allocate your time effectively. When you categorize tasks, appointments, events, and other to-dos, you gain a clearer overview of your daily commitments. Allocating specific time slots for important activities will ensure each task receives the attention it deserves.

3. Reduces stress

A cluttered task list can take a toll on your health by increasing your stress levels. Categorizing your calendar is one effective way to sort through tasks and determine what stays and goes. Organizing your calendar will help you alleviate work-related stress and maintain a better work-life balance. Plus, you can sleep easy knowing that each item on your to-do list has been accounted for and scheduled into your workday.

4. Makes delegation easier

Some leaders find it challenging to offload work onto employees. Categorizing calendar items can help you decide which tasks you should focus on and which to-dos can be delegated to your teammates. When everything is laid out, your calendar should show you if there are any overlapping items you must reschedule, too.

5. Improves prioritization

Establishing daily priorities is necessary to complete everything on your to-do list. Having a clear overview of your day will help you determine whether tasks are high priority, neutral, or low priority. If helpful, you can even use categories that indicate whether specific tasks are urgent or can wait.

6 work calendar category ideas to organize your calendar

1. Meetings

One of the most important categories you should use to organize your days is meetings. Use color coding to distinguish the types of meetings in your calendar. For example, red can represent leadership meetings, yellow can show team meetings, and blue can indicate one-on-ones with employees. Using color coding can also help you visualize which types of meetings must be slotted into your calendar. For instance, if you know that team meetings require a lot of prep work and focus, you may not want to have a yellow meeting blocked into your calendar directly after a blue or red one.

2. Type of task

Use categories to schedule different types of tasks and deliverables into your calendar. For example, if you work in content marketing, you might want to assign categories for blog posts, social media content, and web copy. If it’s helpful, you can even create sub-calendars for types of work to further organize your tasks or track what’s new, in progress, or completed.

3. Time-based tasks

A time-based task is related to the time you spend working instead of the amount of work you produce. You can block out chunks of time in your calendar based on how much time you believe a specific task will take or how long you’re willing to dedicate to something on a given day. For example, if you have a deadline for the end of the week and the task will take you about four hours to complete, you can schedule one hour into your calendar on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday so you know the job is accounted for.

4. Deep work

Deep work is a peak state of concentration that should be used to learn new techniques, brainstorm ideas, or produce quality work quickly. Set aside time in your calendar regularly to achieve a state of distraction-free concentration where you can work on your most difficult tasks. Align your deep work sessions with the time of day that you feel the most alert and productive.

5. Reminders

Reminders will keep you on track and focused on pieces of information that are essential to achieving your goals. Create reminders within your digital calendar to remain informed each day. You can also set up calendar reminders for recurring events and meetings to remind you when an important meeting is coming up.

6. Personal life

Categorize any personal activities and appointments into your workday (or afterward) as well. Gym sessions, family time, or personal appointments should be accounted for so you can maintain a healthy work-life balance and notify colleagues when you won’t be available. When the workday ends, use your digital calendar to organize your evening and weekend commitments too.

Tips for implementing calendar categories effectively

1. Use different colors for each category

Use color psychology to categorize your calendar and indicate whether a task is a priority. For example, you can use red to note urgency because it’s associated with passion and power or blue for simple tasks or breaks because of its calming effect. Grey is a good color for tentative tasks, while white can represent planning sessions as it's associated with simplicity and potential.

“To determine which color should accompany each type of task, we can use color psychology — different hues cause us to act and feel in different ways.”

— Dan Silvestre, Productivity coach

2. Adjust categories as needed

Regularly review the categories you’ve decided to use in your calendar and adjust them as needed. Determine what work calendar categories ideas work for you and which should be scrapped to make way for new items and calendar systems. You’ll know that a category is working when you can easily identify it within your calendar, and it fits nicely into your workflow.

3. Implement productivity software

Productivity software refers to any app or digital tool that enables you to create and host documents, databases, presentations, meetings, worksheets, and more. Search for productivity software that seamlessly integrates with your calendar so you can track your productivity and link tasks to specific deadlines. Popular digital calendars like Outlook Calendar and Google Calendar integrate with popular project management, messaging, and video conferencing tools like Fellow, Slack, Trello, and Zoom, among others.

How to organize your calendar with Fellow

There are several ways you can use Fellow to keep your calendar organized.

Using Fellow’s extension for Google Calendar, you can seamlessly link your meeting notes with your calendar events to improve meeting preparation.

Begin each day by scanning your calendar to review AI meeting notes and impress your team with your stellar preparation skills. Fellow makes it easy to see a history of your meeting notes and allows you to ask your AI meeting assistant questions about past meetings, so you always show up confident and prepared.

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Parting advice

Calendar categories aren’t just nice to look at. They can also help you organize your days and group tasks and schedule important meetings. There are many ways to optimize your calendar, so try a few before committing to one system. Follow the tips outlined in this blog to develop categories that work for you. Before you know it, your calendar will be your greatest productivity tool!