Regularly uploading a paper calendar
February 25, 2019 12:26 PM Subscribe
I keep an online calendar with Google. My wife uses a paper planner. (Together they fight crime!) What's the best way for me to get her appointments online so that I can better schedule things that impact both of us?
Right now I either have to be at home looking at her planner, or remember to have her send me a picture of what week is in question, but both of these require some proactiveness and can be difficult to do during regular business hours, which is when I'd be setting appointments with businesses.
I'm looking for a solution that creates essentially no additional work for my wife. I'm ok with solutions that require me to flip through the calendar, but I'm hoping to do better than the naive solution of, every day, manually comparing the canonical paper copy with what's online and adding/deleting the changes.
For reference, she uses what I'd call a "monthly planner" - the book has shows a month in calendar form over two pages, and she indicates times of appointments by relative position within a given day's box and then by writing the time down. Something like this, only actually labeled for each month.
Maybe there's something I do to swap out a colored pen each day of the week so Tuesday night I only look for green changes, Wednesday I look for blue, etc? Or maybe there's a system of Post-It message flags that won't create a lot of extra work for her? Someone must have a better idea.
Thinking about it right now, I'm ok spending up to 10 minutes a day on the diff/sync process. Bonus points for ways I can use email invite functionality on my end to get a reminder that something needs to be written down in her calendar.
Right now I either have to be at home looking at her planner, or remember to have her send me a picture of what week is in question, but both of these require some proactiveness and can be difficult to do during regular business hours, which is when I'd be setting appointments with businesses.
I'm looking for a solution that creates essentially no additional work for my wife. I'm ok with solutions that require me to flip through the calendar, but I'm hoping to do better than the naive solution of, every day, manually comparing the canonical paper copy with what's online and adding/deleting the changes.
For reference, she uses what I'd call a "monthly planner" - the book has shows a month in calendar form over two pages, and she indicates times of appointments by relative position within a given day's box and then by writing the time down. Something like this, only actually labeled for each month.
Maybe there's something I do to swap out a colored pen each day of the week so Tuesday night I only look for green changes, Wednesday I look for blue, etc? Or maybe there's a system of Post-It message flags that won't create a lot of extra work for her? Someone must have a better idea.
Thinking about it right now, I'm ok spending up to 10 minutes a day on the diff/sync process. Bonus points for ways I can use email invite functionality on my end to get a reminder that something needs to be written down in her calendar.
You could ask her to draw a line (or half of an "x") next to each entry/change she makes; then, as you update the change in the online version, you turn the line into a + sign or finish the X. Then you only have to look for the single line stuff.
posted by brainmouse at 12:49 PM on February 25, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by brainmouse at 12:49 PM on February 25, 2019 [4 favorites]
Similar to brainmouse's suggestion, a common scheme for keeping manual records in sync is marking edited pages. Ask her to put a mark in the upper right corner of the page in her planner whenever she adds or edits an event on that page. You cross off the mark when you sync the events on a page with the online calendar. Finding just the one or two pages that need review each day involves just rapidly flipping through corners of the pages in the planner looking for a mark that has not been crossed off. This is not quite as efficient as more complex schemes (such as marking every edited event or using multiple colors), but is less prone to failure and works very well when most changes are additions rather than edits.
posted by RichardP at 1:01 PM on February 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by RichardP at 1:01 PM on February 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
How much are you willing to spend? Moleskine has a Smart Pen and Diary/Planner that will do this. I use it (for notes, not for the diary, which is new) and it works well. But it's not cheap....
posted by The Bellman at 3:25 PM on February 25, 2019
posted by The Bellman at 3:25 PM on February 25, 2019
Best answer: Highlight or mark events on her calendar after you put them on your calendar. Look for the unmarked items.
Make events on your calendar a different color and then switch them to the default after you put them in your wife's calendar.
posted by meemzi at 4:32 PM on February 25, 2019
Make events on your calendar a different color and then switch them to the default after you put them in your wife's calendar.
posted by meemzi at 4:32 PM on February 25, 2019
Depends on what and how much your trying to schedule, but: she holds a certain period of time every week/month and you fit appointments in there as much /as soon as possible. You could agree that the hold is removed, say, a week before if you haven't booked it.
posted by momus_window at 5:25 PM on February 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by momus_window at 5:25 PM on February 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: I think rw and meemzi distilled things down to a workable solution for our needs, but these are all great thoughts. Thanks hivemind!
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 8:36 AM on February 26, 2019
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 8:36 AM on February 26, 2019
This thread is closed to new comments.
Seriously. I'm both of you in this scenario. I capture appointment requests on paper because it's faster and they are so numerous. On an periodic basis no less often that weekly, I compare my google calendar with my paper one and use my home office robot (in my case, Alexa) to add new events.
posted by rw at 12:34 PM on February 25, 2019