Organizing your work agenda is as annoying as it is necessary. I for one am confronted with the heartbreaking reality that I am in fact not Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada on at least a weekly basis. As great as it would be to walk into work every day, get handed a latte, and have the day’s schedule read out to me – the burden of both of those tasks still falls onto my shoulders.
Unless you are really high up on the food chain, chances are that you too are left with scheduling your own meetings and calls. Organizing and scheduling meetings can take up almost as much time as the meetings themselves, which can make for my least favorite kind of days. You know those days that feel incredibly busy but somehow remarkably unproductive.
Take Back Your Time
One of the best ways of getting back some of the time wasted on scheduling meetings is by optimizing this process. Lucky for all of us, there are some solid options available to people who looking to take back their work days.
A good platform to get started on is ScheduleOnce. Like any good scheduling tool, it streamlines multiple calendars into a concise, easy to understand format. The reason it makes for a good starter app is that it easily integrates with Google accounts and Chrome. It also is a really easy system to get used to. If you use it and feel that there are some needs not being met then it’s a good indicator that more hardcore project management and CRM tools should be looked into.
Help Them Help You
One of ScheduleOnce’s strongest features is that it allows clients and colleagues to request appointment times with you based on the availability and meeting type preferences you set ahead of time. When users sign up, they create a “Meet Me” page which others can use to book appointments with you or your company.
The Meet Me page syncs with your existing calendars, making scheduling a dream. Meet Me also serves as the portal through which users can accept or decline incoming appointment requests. Meet Me pages can be created for each person on the team, and for especially complex schedules – users can create multiple pages to fit their needs.
Users are provided with a URL for their Meet Me page so it can be added easily to emails or websites. They’ve made it easy for people to schedule time with you. ScheduleOnce is available at various price points from free (for Meet Me pages, group scheduling, and scheduling with confirmation) up to plans for $49 a month for all the bells and whistles.
You don’t need a blog post to tell you how valuable your time is, and until we all make it to Meryl Streep status, it’s good to know there are tools like ScheduleOnce to help in the fight to stay on top of our calendars.
