Last week, Sally wanted to know, does my schedule rule me or am I the master of the beast?
Wow, calendars, schedules, timetables, all synced on my mobile device? Given that I’m currently juggling two part-time jobs, as well as writing for two blogs, doing occasional house-sitting and working on several volunteer projects (to name just a few things keeping me busy at the moment!), you’d think I would actually be on top of mobile scheduling.
I’m not. I have a paper-based diary. The only thing mobile about old-school technology is that it is almost always traveling with me.
However, I do have an online calendar for each job (neither calendar syncs with my mobile device, or with each other). I have regular dates & times of scheduled blog posts. I have weekly & monthly deadlines for volunteer projects.
Do I get muddled? Occasionally yes. Mostly no. I am generally where I am meant to be most of the time. Generally if it all goes belly-up, it’s down to me, not the technology, that didn’t get all my ducks in a row. And no amount of technology could change that.
I can definitely see the potential for mobile calendars in libraries, especially the idea of students being able to book a study room and add it to their mobile schedule, or grandparents adding recurring story time sessions into their weekly events calendar.
I’d love to have a digital calendar that also allowed me to add in “possibilities”, events that I might want to go to, or places I might want to be reminded about. Instead of adding in an definite appointment, it’d give me a gentle nudge to say “ooh, did you remember that the vintage market is on this afternoon?” or “remember the cool shoe shop has a late night on a Thursday”. I could wake up on a lazy Sunday morning and look through all the things that I *could* do, instead of focusing on what I *have* to do.
So Sally, tell me more.