---
title: Increasing calendar effectiveness by 2X
date: "2022-01-25T08:01:20Z"
lastmod: "2022-01-25T08:01:23Z"
categories:
  - experiments
  - how-i-do-things
wp_id: 3271
description: "Color-coding calendar events by reach doubled the author's weekly impact while freeing ten hours of personal time, though the exercise also revealed how crude reach is as a proxy for effectiveness."
keywords: ["calendar", "effectiveness", "time management", "measurement", "productivity", "experiments"]
---

![Increasing calendar effectiveness by 2X](/blog/assets/2022-01-25-12-48-12.webp)

I took a [2022 goal to be 10X more effective](/blog/my-year-in-2021/). In Jan, I managed 2X. Here's how.

## What is effectiveness?

I don't know. I'm figuring it out.

But to start off, I measured the **number of people** my actions directly impact. For example:

- Discussing my [Tools in Data Science Course](https://onlinedegree.iitm.ac.in/course_pages/BSCSE2002.html) or [writing a blog post](/blog/) impacts ~500 people.
- Mailing all [Gramener](https://gramener.com/) employees impacts ~200 people.
- Shopping with my wife impacts 2 people -- her and me (in very different ways).

Clearly, the impact **is not equal**. But it's a start.

## How to measure it?

Since Dec 1, I categorized all my Outlook calendar entries into one of these categories:

![](/blog/assets/2022-01-25-12-47-55.webp)

Red is "low reach". Green is "high reach". This is what 6-10 Dec 2021 looked like:

![](/blog/assets/2022-01-25-12-48-12-1024x796.webp)

I continued this for 8 weeks.

## Did effectiveness increase?

In Week 1, I reached 30 people on average. This was the control week.

In Weeks 2-3, the reach increased from 30 to 77. In Weeks 4-8, it settled at 64.

![](/blog/assets/2022-01-25-13-02-23-1.webp)

So, yes, effectiveness increased. in Jan 2022, I reached **twice as many people** per week as when I started off.

**I didn't measure quality/impact**. One-on-one coaching has more impact than a lecture. Reach is just a crude first approximation for effectiveness.

## How did this happen?

What gets measured, improves. I'd categorize each entry on my calendar. This enabled 3 things:

1. I'd try to remove low-reach (<50 reach - red) items. This reduced rom 45 to 29 hours a week.
2. I'd try to add high-reach (>= 50 reach - green) items. This increased from 12 to 18 hours a week.

![](/blog/assets/2022-01-25-13-14-30.webp)

So, I now have **10 more hours of "me time"** every week, while I still **reach 2X** as many people.

## What next?

I'm exploring better measures of effectiveness. I believe:

- **Effectiveness is goal alignment**. It's personal, and purely a function of your priorities.
- **Effectiveness is multipled by assets**. Actions that create assets improve effectiveness.

Once I discover a robust measure, I will to re-categorize my calendar and re-run this experiment.

If you use a measure of effectiveness of impact, please let me know -- I'd love to learn from that.

---

## Comments

<!-- wp-comments-start -->

- **[My Year in 2022 - S Anand](/blog/my-year-in-2022/)** _31 Dec 2022 8:42 am_ _(pingback)_:
  […] 10X more effective. I improved my calendar effectiveness 2X in Jan. But I realized this is actually efficiency. Not effectiveness. Maybe effectiveness […]

<!-- wp-comments-end -->