Meaning of colours in categories in the weekly planner

by Beda
(Germany)

Hi,

In your weekly planner there are seven kinds of categories, a empty one and 6 with different colours, blue, green, orange, purple, red, yellow.

What's the meaning of these colours and how can I use them?

The same regarding flags: green, yellow and red. Does that mean how urgent a Project activity is?

I've read the manual, but there's none or no sufficient information about it.

Thanks for your efforts in advance.

Beda


Kell's reply: Hi Beda, thanks for your email. The weekly planner that I have provided is my personal weekly planner.

I like to use different colors to to give me an idea of how I am spending my time.

Why do I do this?

Because I find to get better at using my time I first have to measure it.

While I could easily use a time management log, I like to use categories as a quick snapshot of my time use.

I find that at a quick glance at the weekly level I have a clear idea of how I plan to use my time - in the schedule that I have provided, green generally means proactive and red are client meetings, while I like to use blue for scheduled personal time.

The blank spaces you are referring to are unplanned time (which in a working week need to be at least 2 hours per day to allow for crises).

To do this in Outlook (2010) you use the categorize function. Double click on one of your appointments and then choose 'Categorize'.

To edit the categories and colors just simply go down to the bottom and click 'All categories'.

I don't use flags as I like to empty my Inbox daily - but the flags on emails can be used as a priority system.

Hope that helps.