Pencil Me in Like One of Your French Girls
The lines between our professional and personal lives are blurring. We don’t have a choice. Being stuck at home inherently keeps our private affairs front and centre. One minute, you're yelling at the dog for getting into the garbage, the next you'r chairing a big budget meeting. Calendars have never been so crucial and so obsolete.
The lack of division between our work spaces and home lives takes a mental toll. On one hand you bring more of your “authentic self’ to work - or however your HR team is framing it for you - on the other hand nothing feels sacred or fully your own.
While I’m binging Selling Sunset, my work laptop is in view, silently enticing me to check an email. While I’m in a meeting, my fridge lures me away to make a snack. And I’m one of the lucky ones: a yuppie with a secure job. No kids, no dog, no roommates. Just me and my partner talking over each other in conflicting meetings.
Areeba Siddique for the Girls Unite 2020 Calendar
Save the Date
This week I wanted to dive into a topic near and dear to my heart: calendars. I know I know, that’s some serious Virgo energy for a Sagittarius, but there is no greater feeling than filling out a calendar. I have several for that reason.
As an unapologetic A-type, I regularly use a daily organizer, a weekly planner, a monthly wall calendar, and a yearly agenda. All of these are analogue, which I know is archaic. By now most of us have transitioned to Google Cal, but I’m a sucker for stationary.
Call me a paper chaser.
I also love having a divide between my work to-do list and my personal to-do list. Having standard space for both helps me keep healthy boundaries. I might fill in a work task on Outlook, but my written calendar is filled with social plans, birthday reminders, and fun milestones.
That said, working from home has made those two calendars redundant. Everything is personal and professional, so why am I bouncing between multiple agendas? It's excessive to rebook my Zoom calls on Google and Outlook.
I've even attempted to build my own dream calendar in quarantine, since my five-tiered system just doesn't quite cut it...It looks a little something like this:
If you want a downloadable version, hit me up.
Luckily there are also apps trying to create the ultimate calendar tool. For example, Superhuman, that will pull phrases like "tomorrow at 4pm" from your inbox to create appointments, Woven, that will sync all your calendars and provide data insights on how you can better use your time (I'd be horrified of that data report), and Clockwise, that uses AI to reorganize your calendar and find more blocks of free space during the day.
My personal favourite is Calendly, which sends out your available times for other people to book. That's a pretty big flex in the calendar world. Using Calendly takes away the lengthy back and forth of "what time works for you?" and hits 'em back with a "you book it" instead. Baller.
All of these apps essentially function like assistants that you don't have to yell at. The goal is to create an experience where none of your brain power is used on scheduling. Clockwise, for instance, believes that the better a calendar can understand what kinds of appointments it's booking, the better it can optimize your time. As such, the app has different categories of entries, meaning you can label something as immovable, urgent, with deadlines etc. The calendar can then go through and move around whatever is flexible.
If smart calendars are the future, who knows if we're even going to need assistants anymore. As someone who’s worked the gruelling hours of an EA, maybe this is for the best. Hire someone to do your cost reports, but let's lose the hours of scheduling and rescheduling and rescheduling and rescheduling and rescheduling until the end of time.
Now we can just say "you book it."
The biggest issues with these calendars is access, or, in nerd-verbiage, the “network-effect” problem. Right now we all use different tools. I'm out here building planner templates in excel while Mark is all over Slack - a modern slacktivist, for my comms nerds out there.
In short, it's a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck of conflicting calendar technology.
To become huge in the scheduling market, these apps need to integrate with existing communications tools. No one wants to test out your new platform and re-schedule all of their appointments, but I’ll happily add a Chrome extension that maximizes my calendar time.
RATE! REVIEW! SUBSCRIBE! RSVP!
That said, there are always ways to persuade people to try a new platform. Maybe I would be inclined to use a new calendar tool that was endorsed by The Rock or Martha Stewart. Who knows?
Naturally app developers recognize the power of influencers and social media. Why create just a calendar tool when you can build a scheduling hub? Cue IRL, the startup looking to create a calendar/social media hybrid. The Hustle calls it “Instagram meets scheduling,” and I am simultaneously horrified and aroused.
The thought is this: cool people do cool shit, and everyone else wants to be included. IRL wants to make calendars more communal, meaning you can see trending events, venues, and curators. That way if The Rock shares an upcoming fitness event or movie release, his followers would be the first to know. IRL's CEO puts it like this: “There’s Twitter for ‘follow my updates,’ there’s SoundCloud for ‘follow my music,’ but there’s no ‘follow my events’.”
On the flip side, after COVID venues will be in mad season trying to convince the world they are the best place to spend money. It would be pretty useful to partner with someone who has a popular calendar. Likewise, people are bored. If you can have an easy tool to curate your virtual plans, why wouldn't you?
It sounds wild, but who among us wouldn’t have followed Paris Hiltons’ calendar circa 2001? Despite the fact that the world is shut down, the premise is sound. We have people influencing our taste in clothing, makeup, food…why not our events too?
That said, I’ve been trying to make calendars cool since the 4th grade, so good luck, IRL. Actually, maybe the right tone is - please hire me! I was born to be a calendar influencer. I might not do a great smokey eye, but this bitch knows how to schedule.
With any new social media platform, privacy is inevitably a concern. Is it too personal to see someone’s calendar? At the very least, broadcasting calendars is just another way in which our personal lives are bleeding into public ones.
What’s that gap in my schedule you ask? Oh it’s when I pluck my chin whiskers. Why don’t I have anything planned Friday night? I need to cry about the breakout on my face, thank you very much.
I'm stressed out just looking at this
"Get Back In The Kitchen"
But what would even be on my calendar right now? We’re all tired of Zoom, so I’ve been retreating from the online ‘social’ experience. Not to mention that colder weather is making distanced walks less and less appealing.
Even with an empty social life and no work commute, I still don’t feel like I have more time. Theoretically there are more hours, but practically they all seem to have disappeared. How can my calendar be simultaneously full and empty?
And that's coming from a girl who only has to look after herself. Mark and I aren't parents, we have stable careers, and we weren't one of the betrothed forced to deal with wedding cancellations. The biggest issue we have is living space. Mark and I live in 500 square feet, and we don’t necessarily have the same understanding of “clean.”
I'm not trying to downplay our hardships, but scheduling isn’t one of them. Most days Mark and I sit in opposite ends of our box and work for 8 hours straight. We’ve added new rituals - cooking each other dinner, reading hour, hobby time - but mostly it comes down to us chatting or watching a show before bed. At the end of the days I’m still exhausted, despite not having gone anywhere.
The pressure to be on your A-game is high, even in quarantine. Is it ever not? The influencers of the world have made this whole year seem like a dream in oversized sweaters. What do you mean you haven’t taken a camper van to Banff yet? Do you not believe in self care!?!? Buy this multivitamin while you’re at it. Code #You’reALoser for 15% off.
Of course, women have also gotten the short end of the stick during COVID. Not just because we endure the brunt of these instagram posts, but women still do a disproportionate amount of housework. So much so, that they have been dropping out of the workforce en masse to help manage their family lives. A prime example is all the working moms who lost access to daycares and schools, forcing many to stay home to care for their children to the detriment of their careers.
Part of the mass exodus is also due to the kinds of roles women hold in the workforce.Unfortunately, women’s positions are 1.8 times more vulnerable than men’s during COVID. This so called “Shecession” is now widening the gender gap at an alarming rate. All the progress we had of gender representation at work is disintegrating, and who knows when we can level it out again.
Interestingly, studies have shown that women who earn more than their husbands downplay their success by taking on more housework to compensate. The Atlantic puts it pretty bluntly, “women’s success in the workplace is penalized at home.”
Cue “Ain’t Yo Mama” By J-Lo...
With that in mind, is it any surprise that women have been so much quicker than men to leave the workforce?
Sharing the workload at home is key to closing the gender pay gap, especially since ALL of our work now happens from home. Alas, with developments like IRL, it seems like the next layer of this hell is still to come: the super-scheduling Mommy bloggers.
It's only a matter of time before we start hearing all the 'best ways to get your kids involved in organizing your calendar' screamed at us from moms holding babies in matching outfits. As if living through this pandemic wasn't enough. Never has the pressure to "have it all" been greater, which is paradoxical, since we can't have anything nice right now anyway.
Meeting Minutes
In the original pitch for Clockwise, the founder showed a photo of an ancient calendar. It had the same basic outline as the Google calendar we all know and love today, his point being that the same system has worked for thousands of year. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But, if the presidential debate last Tuesday showed us anything, it's that old things don't always work. As much as I love a traditional calendar, maybe the same model isn't what we need. Although I don't know that a Smart calendar is any better.
With so much of the population working at home, the divide between professional and personal is crucial. While one all-encompassing calendar is convenient, a little separation between church and state is necessary, especially for working moms.
I'm actually going to advocate for something no one who knows me ever thought I would: abandoning schedules.
You always know where to reach me - I'm not allowed to leave. My tools are with me at all times, so I'll get to it when I get to it. Stop asking me to go to pointless meetings, and stop inviting me to planned 'socials'. Lets normalize impromptu calls, random breaks, and some breathing room in our calendars.
I was born to be a calendar influencer, but we don't need a new wave calendar girls right now. We can save them for 2022. And, while we're at it, let's get the men involved. the only calendar influencers I want to see in my timeline are dads.
What I wouldn’t do to see a hot dude with a day planner...Alas, a calendar can’t give me that thrill, no matter how old it is.
