Remembrance of things future
When timing matters
TLDR: the calendar is the best way to be sure that future events happen the way we’d like them to, which has a name, a 10-letter word beginning with t…
Word count: 606 words
Read time: 3 mins
This is the fifth of a six-part series on Not-forgetting. Please share this email on LinkedIn (and feel free to tag me) to spread the word and spirit of using our time intentionally.
Remembering is one thing, and often not easy. Remembering at the right time, exactly when you need to take a pertinent action, is harder still. Remembering too late is often as bad or worse than not remembering at all (a birthday, an anniversary, a doctor’s appointment, etc).
This very evening, England play the Netherlands (at football/soccer) in the semifinals of Euro 24. England made it through to this stage by beating Switzerland in the quarterfinals on penalties. For each of the penalties, the England goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford, had a pre-determined plan for which way to dive. But with the cacophony and pressure and the multitude of possible penalty-takers, remembering that plan was near-impossible. Yet he managed it, by bringing a water bottle with his best guesses for each opposition player, as reported here. He guessed the first penalty right and saved it — the only saved penalty of the entire shoot-out. What a fabulous example of a high-stakes, just-in-time job aid and forethought.
And it’s always a little bit like this. There’s a future event. You will need to take action on or before it. You therefore need to arrange your future environment such that you will take the right action at the right time.
What kinds of future events?
Loads! Eg:
Anniversaries — of a first date, wedding, first kiss…
Birthdays — of people you care about, of people who will care if you forget.
Appointments — doctor, dentist, or other medical appointments.
Deadlines — school or work that needs to be completed and submitted by a due date.
Meetings & calls — personal and professional; these are almost certainly in your calendar already.
Social events — reunions, gatherings, or family get-togethers.
School events — parents’ evenings, school plays, sports days.
Payments — bill payment due dates, subscription renewals, ending of free trial periods
Travel — flight or train departure times.
Special occasions — Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father's Day.
Christmas — the present-buying and pre-Xmas palaver (we’re unlikely to forget the date itself).
Work events — company anniversaries, team-building activities...
Renewals — passport, driver's license, VISAs, ESTAs...
Maintenance — vehicle, pets, garden, botox injections, hair colouring.
How many of these do you have coming up? For how many of those are you adequately prepared? We’ll come back to a useful action you might take in a minute.
How to remember
There are actually many common methods for remembering. We use alarms, calendars, smart speakers, smartphones, post-it notes, emails, and our memory itself.
But it may not surprise you by now to hear that I think the calendar is the most effective method! Utilising the calendar - ie timeboxing - has many special advantages. It’s:
Time-based — by definition
Easy — almost all of us already use digital calendars
Usable — for almost any kind of future event. (The only events I would not timebox are near-immediate-term ones, like needing to know when to take an egg off the boil, or needing to know which way to dive in a penalty shoot-out)
Visual — the chronology is laid out clearly and in the right order
Searchable — digital calendars ship with this functionality
Shareable — ditto this functionality
Accessible via multiple devices — since it’s in the cloud
Safe — since it’s backed up to the cloud (you can’t *lose* your calendar data)
Free
In fact, do one thing to improve your life immeasurably, right now. Look back up at the list of future events, above. Which of these can (and should!) be placed - as recurring timeboxes - in your calendar right now? Many of them, I expect. So why not avoid unnecessary future upset, for you and others? Become an organised, considerate person, overnight” Not even overnight — in the next 10 minutes. Do it now (or timebox to do it later).
Marc
Links you may like
7 days of Timeboxing (the free email micro-course)
Timeboxing, the book (US)
Timeboxing, the book (UK)
My Insta for shorter-form content
Connect with me on LinkedIn (I will say yes!)