[00:00:01] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 421 of the Teaching In Higher Ed Podcast, Intentional Calendaring with Dave Stachowiak.

[00:00:11] Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

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[00:00:21] Bonni: Welcome to this episode of Teaching In Higher Ed, I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives, and be even more present for our students.

If you have been listening to this podcast for a while, the name Dave Stachowiak may be familiar to you. I am not going to read his bio, but Dave is going to give us, I don’t know, do you have like a haiku written for yourself? Who are you, Dave, in Haiku form?

[00:01:05] Dave: I was just thinking about haiku the other day and thinking I would write a haiku, but I have not thought about writing one for myself. I host a podcast called Coaching for Leaders. It is all about helping leaders to accelerate their leadership development. Bonnie and I, the great thing about our work is we’ve crossed so many paths over the years of teaching, learning, training, and now podcasting.

It’s been so much fun to be on this journey with you a bit and to be part of the Teaching In Higher Ed community. I listen to every Teaching In Higher Ed episode, and because I’m doing a lot of facilitation, training and coaching, I take something from almost every episode and integrate it into my work. Thank you so much for the show. I learn from it all the time.

[00:01:53] Bonni: I also learn from it all the time, and I’m so just completely enthusiastic about the people that come on the show and all the great things that they have to share, including you. Since we’re talking about intentional calendaring, I know that we both get often asked the question here, how do you do everything that you do? There’s an awful lot that can be explained through intentional calendaring, and being intentional with where you spend your resources. Of course, time is one of those things.

Before we start talking about how we each use calendars, I just want to spend a brief moment just saying what a calendar isn’t. What a calendar isn’t, one of the items that’s really big for me is that it isn’t a to-do list. I am not saying that your calendar, and we’ll actually talk about this as we go, but I’m not saying that your calendar can’t in some ways reflect your intentions around what you’re going to get done in a given day, but just by its very nature, a calendar doesn’t make a great to-do list. It can supplement one’s to-do list, but it’s not really designed very well to be your primary or solely to-do list.

Then the next thing I wanted to say about calendaring is that it’s not always just for you. With today’s digital tools and collaboration the way that they are, there’s a decent chance that some of what you put into your calendar may benefit others, so thinking about it as not entirely a solo-based tool I think is helpful. Now that, Dave, we looked about what a calendar isn’t, would you talk for a little bit about, well, what is a calendar, and what are the kinds of things that it can do for you?

[00:03:31] Dave: Well, I’ll just echo first of all, the point you made about the distinction between a to-do list and a calendar. One of the shifts that I certainly have made in my own career, and I’ve seen a lot of the leaders that I work with make, is running your day off of a calendar versus running your day off of a to-do list. I’m sure there’s a case to be made for running a day off the to-do list, but I think that that gets you into a bit more murky water a lot of the time of being as effective and intentional as you could be, because there’s the tendency for many of us when we run things off a to-do list, to just want to check things off, or to want to tackle something that’s maybe really important, but we don’t really appreciate how much time is going to be involved in it, and we end up getting to the end of the day or the work period or whatever and not feeling a tremendous amount of success, because either we didn’t do the things that were most important, or we started doing things that were most important, but we didn’t complete it.

I think that’s where a calendar can be really helpful, because you’ve done some planning in advance of what’s really most important for me to do, and how much time is that likely to take, at least the best way I can estimate it? Then you’re not making decisions every single hour of every single workday of where I’m going to put my energy next, which takes a lot of time and energy and causes a lot of decision fatigue.

I’d rather make that decision once at the beginning of the week, or the beginning of the day, whatever it is, and then being able to follow the plan that I’ve outlined in the calendar. For me, a calendar is all about intention. It’s about making decisions about what’s most important, least the best I can see, for the people that I serve, in the case of this community, the students, the other faculty members, the campus community.

Of course, that’s going to change. There are going to be many times when that adapts. I think hardly ever it happens for me that a calendar looks exactly like I planned at the end of the day, but by going in with the intention of where I’m starting, I’m so much more likely to focus my time and energy on the things that are most important. I’m also better able to make decisions throughout the workweek, when inevitably someone asks for time, or my calendar gets interrupted in some way, of what’s most important, and what am I setting aside.

That’s how I think about it. A big picture, calendar is about intention. I’m not just making decisions of how I feel in the moment of what’s on the task list, I’ve decided in advance what’s important, and I’m following that plan.

[00:06:11] Bonni: One of the other barriers that comes up around trying to use a calendar as a task list as opposed to having a task list that also might include things like projects and goals and some of the bigger picture things that Dave referred to, is that you can’t see that bigger view in a calendar, you can only see intentions around a given time, a given hour, what have you.

Here are some other common calendar approaches that typically don’t work well for people. One, Dave, that I know has come up for a lot of people for a lot of the time is having zero margin built into our days, these back-to-back meetings. Sandy Morgan, who’s been on the show many times before, has really taught me well and modeled this for me in that instead of having hour-long meetings, she has been more intentional in recent months, maybe even years, I don’t know, Sandy, how long ago you started doing this, but let’s schedule a 15- minute meeting.

Imagine that, Dave, and then give oneself 10 minutes of margin to prepare for all the other things, so have that little bit of margin built into there. That’s another common calendar approach that doesn’t work very well.

Another one that comes up for me often, Dave, is the not closing the loops that emerge out of meetings, open loops. This is an expression used a lot in writing about productivity.

That is, you’ve got all these open loops things that are in a state that is not ideal, either it needs fixing, or it’s an opportunity for growth. If you think about, if we never go back to look at past meetings, past classes, past things that we’ve done, then we don’t have that opportunity to identify those open loops, and then get them into that task manager, that personal project management system to be able to identify those things.

I know that when I had Teddy Svoronos on the show, he talked about even doing journaling, little mini-mini journals after every class session. That can be another way to identify, is there an exercise that the next time I teach this class I want to tweak a little bit and being able to somehow capture those open loops either from scheduled class sessions, scheduled meetings, is it a committee meeting? What have you.

Then the last one, Dave, I’d love to have you touch on a little bit in this section has to do with really, so we’ve been talking about so far the calendar, probably that most people are thinking like, our university’s calendar, but you and I think about calendaring quite different in that we don’t only have digital calendars for our work life, we have calendars that go beyond that.

[00:08:51] Dave: Yes, indeed. This is where I think it’s really different for each person. There are people who have like, I’ve got my personal calendar, I’ve got my work calendar, I’ve got maybe another calendar for other things. That’s not the way we do it. In our family the way we’ve set it up is that we have a calendar for each person. I have my calendar, I can see Bonnie’s calendar, the kids have their calendars that mostly we put things in at their ages right now.

That works out really well for us to be able to see where everyone else is at, what they’re doing. I think you integrate your university calendar in that so they both connect up together so it’s all in one place. I think the key is to have a system. Whatever your system is, whether you have a couple of different calendars, I know sometimes there’s absolutely a case for, hey, there’s things I want to have on my personal calendar that I don’t want my colleagues necessarily to see if they have access to that in the university setting.

That’s the case I think where you just want to be mindful of what’s your system? Do you have calendars that you can see in both places on whatever device or whatever software you’re using, and who else needs to access that or do you want to have access to that or not?

Just being mindful of how do you make that as simple as possible so it’s as in many different places or devices as you need it, but also simple enough that you don’t have events in different places on post-it notes or in one calendar? You’ve got some things in Google Calendar, and you’ve got other things in Outlook, and you’ve got other things on one of your devices. Getting a centralized system is key and deciding on whichever one you’re going to use, whether it is Microsoft Office, or Outlook, or a pen and paper planner. Just be diligent about making sure everything goes into that one system so you don’t have duplicates and things that you’re missing.

[00:10:43] Bonni: I wanted to also mention really quick because I think, before the pandemic, Dave, I probably would have thought it was the most absurd thing that kids, if anybody listening, our kids at this particular moment are 8 and 10 so it felt like, “What on earth are you doing have an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old have a digital calendar?” Well, when we were all doing remote learning, you sure as heck bet it really did really ease some of our systems here at home to have them comfortable with what a digital calendar is, and therefore how to locate their own Zoom links, what have you, and the passwords were there ready for them to go.

Today, they actually don’t look at their digital calendars that much. We’re back to primarily Dave and I just been able to view or not view just depending on what the case is. I have found it still helpful at times to be able to identify something that’s going– they’re old enough now that they have different things that they do different that they do, different activities that one or the other might go to that for us it does make sense.

I did want to mention really one funny thing though. It’s not funny, it’s adorable. It’s wonderful. That is, I think that at least our son is back to using an analog calendar. I think that we ended up– somehow he got it as a holiday gift or whatever, a calendar that hangs on your wall. He has two magnets that stick to each other that serve as his placeholder for what day it is. I can’t tell you, Dave, the last time I went into his room where he doesn’t have identified with these little magnet placeholder things on the calendar, what day it is, that boy does get out of bed and adjust to what day it is.

[00:12:17] Dave: He moves it every morning.

[00:12:19] Bonni: Yes. Anyway, I just wanted to make that quick comment that digital versus analog will depend on where people are at different phases of their lives. Dave and I are mostly going to be talking about digital calendars here since so much of the work that we do involves some kind of collaboration with other people. To me, I don’t want to run two different calendars for myself. We’re talking digital for the primary usage in this particular episode. This would work whether we’re talking about an analog or digital, let’s talk a little bit about naming conventions. Dave, what kinds of things do you find to be important when you think about naming calendar items?

[00:12:59] Dave: I, unlike you, am rarely collaborating with other people on my personal calendar. So I’ve not needed to develop the same discipline that you’ve developed on this. You’ve actually helped me with this over the years of, one of the things I’ve adopted you do is like when something’s tentative, you write in capital letters, TENT: whatever, in your calendar. That way you know for yourself that that’s something you’re just holding a place for. I also know, if I’m looking at your calendar, like, “Okay, that’s something that maybe you’re not going to, or.”

The other thing that I’ve noticed you do is if there’s something that you’ve been invited to, or otherwise invited to but you’re not able to attend, you’ll still sometimes put that in your calendar because you want to know something’s going on in the university community or in our personal lives but you’ve decided, for whatever reason, you’re not coming, or we’re not going as a family.

You’re still like, for social media, for things like that you want to know like, oh, this thing is going on this day, so you’ll actually note that in the calendar, this event’s happening, not going. I don’t remember the exact language you use for it, you can comment on it more, but I think that’s really useful. I know it’s useful for you but it’s also useful for me sometimes looking at your calendar like, “Oh, she’s not going to that even though it’s on her calendar, and she’s aware of it.”

Then the other thing that I try to do with my naming conventions is, especially when I do have someone else involved, most of the invites that I do are through a separate system. Where other people are involved I use Acuity Scheduling for a separate system. On my own personal calendar, when I do invite someone to something, I always try to be conscious of how that’s going to show up in their calendar.

For example, if I was going to book a call with Bonni and I put on my calendar, “Call with Bonni Stachowiak,” and then I sent an invite to he, the way that that’s going to import in her calendar is it’s going to show up in her calendar as, “Call with Bonni Stachowiak.” Well, she doesn’t know what that’s about, like, “A call with myself?” Right? I think that it’s really helpful to make sure that you identify when you are sharing appointments with others or inviting someone to a calendar event like well, who else is involved so that the convention I’ll use is I’ll say, “Call between Dave Stachowiak and Bonni Stachowiak regarding.” Then I’ll usually whatever the topic is.

If there’s more details that are helpful with that, I’ll put that in the notes. If there’s a Zoom or conference link, I’ll put that in that link field. I make it as easy as possible for the other person, when that pops up on their calendar as a reminder two weeks later that it’s 15 minutes away, they know exactly what it is and exactly what the context of that conversation is.

I’m saving them time. I’m also helping that to hopefully be a better conversation because they come prepared for exactly what the conversation is versus like, “What is this?” We’ve all had this moment. “Why is this on my calendar?” Like, “What is this?” “This came from so and so.” That from a standpoint of just putting yourself in the shoes of the other person seeing the invitation, what would they need to know?

[00:15:57] Bonni: Yes, I’m really intentional about those naming conventions. Like you said, Dave, since I have a lot more collaboration things where different people might be setting up these types of meetings, I try to model the fact that we’re going to put right there in the name of the calendar event, what is it we’re doing? Are we discuss: Write: Create: Call: Decide: What is the primary reason for blocking off not just one person’s time but, actually now in this case, at least two people’s time? Wanting to be really, really precise with that and modeling that for others.

The other thing I want to be really precise about has to do with locations. Being very specific, Bonni calls Amanda at, and then actually putting the telephone number in there. For most of us whether or not we’re doing this on our computers or on our phones, that telephone number is then going to be tappable or clickable to actually placing that call. Then the other person also knows who’s calling who and how are we connecting with each other. That’s one thing around locations. If

it’s some kind of a web conference, then yes, put the link to that web conference right there in the calendar location so people know, this one’s going to be on Zoom, this one’s going to be on Teams or whatever it is that you’re using. Do watch for a little convenience, efficiency, ease thing that you can do. That is to include the password inside the link. A lot of these tools, Zoom included, is that you can embed the password right there in the link so it’s one less step. I just click that and it’s actually a link that says, “Oh, go to this meeting ID using this password.” It just makes it a little bit easier.

[00:17:47] Dave: The big picture thing that I also think of here, Bonni, and you’ve illustrated some of the tactics beautifully on this is, how do I be kind to my future self? Is, when I’m scheduling something and I’m going to need to pull this up three weeks from now, how do I make it as easy as possible to get into the meeting, know what it is about and not only for myself, but for others?

I think about that all the time when I book stuff, or I’m writing notes. Or I know I’m going to have to come back to this two to three weeks from now, if I was doing this today, what would be the thing that I would need that makes this easy for me two or three weeks from now and just that mindset of how do I be kind to my future self and to the other people involved with this, and take five minutes to do that now, save so much time for everyone later on.

[00:18:29] Bonni: One other quick being kind to ourselves and our future selves and other’s future selves, whoo, this is getting very meta here, we want to potentially include the actual address for the location. Dave, I once had it where I’m sitting at a Starbucks right off the freeway, right off of Oso and someone else’s also supposedly sitting off of the same Starbucks. We’re like we’re not in the same room. It’s not that big of a place. Yes, as you already know, there literally are two Starbucks within a block of each other. Having that address is going to help just really with that preciseness.

Some people rely on this, I really don’t, Dave, but some people rely on the drive time. A lot of calendaring systems will alert you when you should leave wherever you are in order to get there on time. Again, I wish I could put a little buffer in there and be like, I’d like to get there X number of minutes early. I haven’t seen that it’s that quite that fancy yet. Just, again, helping our future selves I think is great advice for us. Dave, let’s talk just briefly here about alerts, notifications. What should we be thinking about in terms of intentional calendaring when it comes to those default notifications or alerts?

[00:19:41] Dave: I don’t have anything set as a default alert because a lot of my calendar items are calendar items with myself. To the earlier point, I’m like how do I intentionally focus on the things I want to focus on? If I am doing writing, if I am prepping for an interview, if I am creating content, if I’m planning facilitation, those kinds of things are things that it’s me and myself and I am running off my calendar everyday anyway, so I don’t need the extra notifications.

Where I use notifications is when it’s with someone else. If it’s a conversation I have, if it’s I’m facilitating one of our academy sessions, if it’s an interview, my default setting for that is 15 minutes. I want to have a 15-minute heads up. Where I change it, Bonni, is if I need more prep time. Occasionally, I’ll have a 30-minute notification for something because I know I need to stop what I’m doing 30 minutes before this and take the time to prep.

Sometimes I don’t need any prep and so it’s 5 minutes. I know for myself the rule is, is when I see a notification on my calendar, that is almost always something that involves someone else. That way I pay attention to it, it’s important. I can’t even remember the last time I missed an appointment because I’m so consistent with that that I know that when I see that that’s key.

I generally don’t set defaults. I know not everyone follows that same path as I do. When I set up a time with someone else, where they’re interacting with me or we’re getting on a call together or Zoom or whatever or a course, I will usually set the calendar invite in that situation to default to 15 minutes because I know that’s pretty standard for most people. They can always turn it off on their end if they don’t like it when they accept the invitation, but that’s sort of my general cadence for how I handle it with others.

[00:21:30] Bonni: If you think about most of our calendaring tools, even though we might use different ones, there’s the name of the event, there is the time, there’s a location, and Dave talked a little bit about the alerts. One underutilized section of all calendaring apps is that notes section. We talk about being kind to our future selves and especially when we start multiplying the future selves and there’s more than one person involved, the importance of an agenda, to me, is really important.

I like to have that right there in the text field, not as an attachment because not everybody is going to know to look for if I put it in as an attachment or have the ability to open whatever that attachment is. Right there in the notes, in the text field, I want to just get us all used to the fact that if we’re going to get together, there’s going to be an agenda there. Oftentimes, by the way, it’ll come via email as well, but just so that we all get ourselves used to those of us who meet regularly with one another, a place you can go to see what’s going to be discussed anytime you’re working with me and there’s more than one of us there, there’s going to be an agenda there.

Back on episode 367, I had Adaira Landry and Resa Lewiss talk about fuel-efficient mentoring. One of the things they stressed was the importance of teaching students how to do this. How do you set an agenda, set that intention so that the agenda-building part goes on them? It’s something that for me for a long time my office hours scheduling tool has that built-in. If you’re trying to schedule office hours it’s what will we be meeting about so that I can make sure I’m prepared and it’s a great use of both of our time? That’s a really good way to model that for them.

So it doesn’t always have to be you building the agenda. You could have it where whoever you’re mentoring or students or someone else is expected to have that agenda there. I would say, include any relevant attachments but also have them in the e-mail correspondence about the meetings, so for me making sure everything is in one place if I can help it. Then alternatively you could have links to take people to those same files somewhere online. You might have a map there if they’re unfamiliar with the location. Then in some cases you might include even your contact information or if you’re asking someone else to schedule for you, can you capture their contact information in the moment that they’re scheduling.

Back to my office hours, if you use an office hours scheduling system, can you have them put their e-mail in as they’re scheduling their phone number in just in case you need to reach them at that last minute? You’re being kind and intentional to that future self. Anything, Dave, you want to talk about with regard to the notes or attachment section of our intentional calendaring setup?

[00:24:27] Dave: One confirmation and maybe one slight addition, first of all, plaintext on notes is great, save people from having to, especially on mobile devices, of having to open a Microsoft Word document or Microsoft Excel or whatever. If you can put that in the notes field in plain text, it’s just so much easier for everyone to be able to see that and read that when they’re prepping the five minutes before a meeting.

The addition I’d have is on the occasions when it’s either impossible not to include an attachment or I do want to include an attachment just for myself, I use a PDF because that way it’s really easy for everyone to open pretty much on any device without needing an app. Where I most often use attachments is, like you, Bonni, unless people are trained or that’s an understanding in the organization or department, I think a lot of times people miss attachments. Where I use attachments just for myself, if there’s a document I’m going to need the moment that that meeting starts or that interaction starts, I will put that in the attachment field of the calendar, and that way I know it will sync to my device.

This is the example I can think of right now, which is not professional related but kids’ birthday parties. Every time there’s an invitation, every time there’s something different, siblings are invited, we’re going to have food, we’re not, how long it’s going to be, all that stuff. I don’t necessarily want to take all the time to populate my calendar with all those details in the notes just for myself because mostly that’s just something for me and the kids. I will save the invitation as a PDF, and I’ll attach that to the calendar appointment, so it’s really easy for me to pull up.

This is also something I do whenever we travel. Hotels, plane reservations those kinds of things, I usually save any document I’m going to need for check-in. We’re actually doing some travel this week as we’re recording this, we’re going to check into a place tomorrow. I try to just save that as a PDF on the calendar so I know as soon as we get there, I just open up the calendar, the PDFs right there with the confirmation number, all that stuff. So if I need it it’s there, it’s really easy to find, again, in the spirit of how do I be kind to my future self?

I know the one time I don’t have the confirmation number in front of me that’s the time that there’s going to be they don’t have the record or whatever, so I just always put that in there whenever I book those kinds of things where I’m going to need a document at the start of something for myself and I use a PDF because it can be viewed anywhere.

[00:26:41] Bonni: As we were thinking about today’s episode and wanting to be intentional about it, there is so much that we could say about calendaring and the last thing that we want anyone to feel is overwhelmed. A lot of what Dave and I have been trying to stress so far is really thinking intentionally about how we spend our time thinking of it as an investment and then wanting to be kind to our future selves and wanting to be kind to other people’s future selves too, which feels a little bit silly for me to say it that way but truly, I think it’s a really good thing to be modeling that kind of respect and honoring our own time and the time that others may invest in us as well.

The last little area we want to talk about is finding times because what doesn’t tend to be the best use of collective time is sending an e-mail out to 5, 10, 15 people, “Hey, when is good for people?” That’s not a great starting point, so a lot of times technology can help us do this. Even if it’s just one other person, a lot of systems will allow you to say, “Hey, here’s three times I could do this coming week. Here’s a link to go to choose which one would work well for you.” That’s one way to go about doing it. Then there are those kinds of tools where you might have the large group of people and then people can indicate of all these possible times, here’s the time when I’m available.

Rather than us going through all the details of this, I just want to point you to, I have a consolidated list of tools that come out of my book, The Productive Online and Offline Professor. The entire book mentions specifically what tools do I use and then, what are other recommended tools that I don’t necessarily use but really, they’re just not my number one choice but are really good options for people to consider. That link is going to be in the show notes and I encourage you to have a look.

Rather than Dave and I trying to go through exactly how we go about doing this, just a general thing is to be thinking about what is the way of finding times with even just one other person or multiple people that will create the greatest ease, that will provide the most efficiency to not spend the time finding the time so that you can free up the time for the stuff that actually matters, why are you scheduling the time in the first place? That’s where your big payoffs come from.

All right, Dave, here we go. This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. I have a little bit of a, I was going to say a hodgepodge, but how about an eclectic mix this time around. The first thing I wanted to share about is to suggest that people go explore natural language processing on apps, and what do I mean by this. Well, a lot of apps today rather than having to click a bunch of times to enter something, in the case of a calendar since that’s what we’re talking about today, click on the day, click on the time, select the thing.

You can actually enter calendar items just by using natural language, discuss: whatever it is with so and so on such and such a date at such and such a time add it to such and such a calendar. You can do all of that using how you would normally phrase that thing if you are writing it down in an email verse versus actually putting it into a calendar app. I’m just going to have us thinking about kind of that overarching thing. What apps do you use that might have the ability to enter information into it using natural language processing?

Dave, I feel like this is kind of the future that a lot of them are really getting smart about what they’re able to add. A lot of the smart assistants do the various, I’m not going to say their names because then they’ll start accidentally adding information on other people’s calendars, but the ones we can evoke using certain wink-wink, nudge-nudge names for them that will allow us to enter things using our natural language as well.

Dave and I have a shared groceries list. If we said, if we evoked the name of our iOS device, and said to add potato chips to our groceries list, that thing is getting added up there right quick. On a related note, Dave, I have mentioned, I have recommended the app CardHop in the past. I try not to, even though I failed recently, but I try not to recommend the same thing on shows.

Now I’m going to specifically recommend with CardHop. Last time I recommended using it to create labels easily. Now I want to use it to recommend how to add contact information quickly. I have set up that anytime someone schedules a podcast interview to come be interviewed on the show, it sends me an email. Dave, you mentioned Acuity Scheduling earlier in the show. That is the tool that both of us use for, among other things, scheduling the podcast interviews.

It will send me an email and it will have that calendar invite, it’s already gone to my calendar, what have you, but I just quickly highlight the text that comes through because it has their name, it has their phone number, it has their email, and I literally just have to copy that little thing and paste it into CardHop and CardHop is so darn smart, Dave, it actually will go in and create a contact with a first name, last name, the whole thing. It is so seamless. Now I just love it because I never have to go what was their email again? I got to reach out to them. It has been such a nice little addition to my own workflow that I really, really like.

All right, the next one I wanted to recommend is giving feedback to help learners move forward. This was just a great article. We’ve had lots of conversations about grading. The problem with grades was a recent one with Josh Isler. Well, this is a great kind of follow-up to those conversations to be thinking about how we use feedback.

Then I was introduced to some great one-pagers. Just what is one page on a given topic, and one that I wanted to share with people today is on retrieval practice. It’s been a while since we did an entire episode dedicated to retrieval practice, but I certainly still use it on a daily basis in my teaching. What a great one-pager. The person, by the way, who created it has a gazillion one-pagers, and I’m now just very fascinated by this guy’s work. That’s my little hodgepodge of recommendations. Dave, now I’m going to pass it over to you for yours.

[00:33:26] Dave: My recommendation is very intentional with your hodgepodge actually because the app you mentioned, CardHop, the company behind that is called Flexibits and they have another app, which is also even more popular called Fantastical. Please forgive me, this is an Apple ecosystem recommendation. It only works on Mac, iPad, iOS, those kinds of devices.

I love Fantastical because it does all of the typical things you would expect calendars to do. It integrates with all the services and Google and Outlook and all of that. What’s nice about Fantastical, especially those of you who are Mac users like us, is that it goes way beyond the Calendar app that’s included by default with the Mac OS operating system.

I’ll tell you about two features that I use that I love. One of them is, I know so many of us work across time zones with people we’re collaborating with. So much of my work is working with people all around the world so we run into the reality of time zones when I’m talking with someone live and we’re scheduling a time to chat.

The thing that I love about Fantastical is that it has a view on the screen where on the left side it shows you the current time in your time zone on your calendar but on the right side you can turn on where it has other time zone. I can be on the phone with someone or on Zoom and literally do a drop-down to their city and then on the right-hand side of my calendar it shows me, on that side of the screen, the time in their zone. When I clicked on to schedule an appointment and I look at my calendar, I can just look to the right and say, “Oh, this is this time in your time zone.” That saves us much time, every single time I use that. I love that feature that they’ve got involved right on the screen there.

The second feature relates back to something Bonni said a bit ago of being able to use a tool to find times automatically. One thing Fantastical does is if you’re trying to set up a meeting with a group of people, you can set up three or four or five options, and then you can add people to it and hit the propose button. It automatically sends emails to everyone and it says, “Here’s the options for the different meeting times that could work.” People click on it, they indicate what works for them. You can set it different ways but one of the ways you can set it is as soon as everyone’s responded and everyone has one time that works for everybody, it automatically puts it on everybody’s calendars. It’s super cool.

I think that that is a paid feature. There’s both free and paid versions of Fantastical, but it’s really a great tool and there are so many other tools with it that I can’t even– we’d be here for hours. If you’re a Apple device user and you haven’t looked at Fantastical, I think it is a wonderful resource to make your life go a little bit easier on calendaring every day.

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[00:36:14] Bonni: Thanks once again to Dave Stachowiak for joining me on today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Thanks to all of you for listening. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak, and was edited by Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by Ciara Smith and Dave provided support in terms of intentional calendaring and intentional showing up.

[00:36:42] Dave Stachowiak: Showing up when you told me that it was time for us to record. That’s part of it too. Points for showing up.

[00:36:48] Bonni: Thanks everybody for listening, and we’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:36:53] Dave Stachowiak: Thanks, Bonni.

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[00:37:13] [END OF AUDIO]

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.