Emojis in your calendar
Which ones & why
I always ask a Large Language Model (usually ChatGPT) to review the draft of my post, specifically asking it to score it out of 10 — for originality, quality of writing & impact. I then make some adjustments and out it goes. Today’s post scored 9.2/10 — the highest rating I’ve ever received from the LLM using this process. Make of that what you will!
TLDR: Emojis to make timeboxes look, feel & be inviting
Word count: 454
Read time: 2 min
Emojis are a big deal
92% of online communicators now use emojis daily through texting, emailing, and social media. I won’t spend more time here trying to persuade you that emojis are mainstream — I’ll assume you agree. Since I use them in my timeboxes, I even have them in the book.
Why we use them, why they’re useful
3 reasons given by Baylor University Communications and Rhetoric professor, Scott J. Varda:
Enhance the emotional state of the receiver. Scientists have discovered that when we look at a smiley face online, the same parts of the brain are activated as when we look at a real human face. Our mood changes.
Increase the perceived persuasiveness of the overall message. Emojis are doing what the tone of voice does on the telephone and what expressions and gestures do in face-to-face communication.
Strengthen the credibility of the sender or more strongly bind the imagined connections between sender and receiver.
But why do all this to oneself, in a calendar?
Because we are communicating with a busied and likely stressed future-self. We want to enhance the emotional state, persuade and bind connections with that self, in fact, more than any other person. We’re trying to increase the chance that, when we see this timebox coming up, we’re as inclined as we can be to embrace the task and get it done.
Besides, it makes the calendar visualization lovelier.
Emojis I use
🐩 When I’m going for a swim or on a walk with my labradoodle, Lyla.
🌊 My daily morning swim.
🥩🥦🥢 What I’m eating, when an accurate emoji is available.
🎬 Meetings prep. This was courtesy of one of the OTAAT readers.🚆 Getting a train somewhere. There are a few, I like this one the most. That’s the point, to develop an irrational liking, an enjoyable experience, as you reach each new timebox.
🛒 Shopping, usually at Mercadona for me, these days.
🚗 Commuting by car. I’ll often add ‘// something I want/need to think about’ to the title of the timebox.
✉️ A dedicated email session, almost always with the inbox count at the outset, a Right-arrow and then I fill in the email count at the end. My post on this topic is OTAAT’s most popular, ever.
🔥 When making a fire at home
📗 Reading, obviously. And it was also for writing, when I was writing a book.
📽️ Watching a film, along with the film title and the person / people I’ll be watching it with.
It takes just a few seconds to sign off your timeboxes with such a flourish, and embrace your future self warm-heartedly. Try it, see how it makes you feel doing it as well as when you get to your emoji-infused timebox.
Marc
Links you may like
7 days of Timeboxing (the free email micro-course)
Timeboxing, the book (US)
Timeboxing, the book (UK)
Timeboxing, el libro (Español)
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