17 Feb How to Color Code with Artful Agenda
Using a Color Code to Plan
Color coding your planner is more than just a way to make it cute and vibrant. It’s also a great way to help you get organized, stay on track, and be more productive, especially if you’re a visual person.
Figuring Out Your Perfect Color Coding Method
There are many different ways to color code. You may have to try different methods to figure out which works best for you and how your brain is wired. Here are a few examples of how you can use color coding.
Color coding by category
This is the method that I use! I break my calendar down into the different aspects of my life, and I’ll use those categories to keep track of meetings and due dates, and for any time blocking that I do. For example, my categories are Personal, Family, Work, and Kids’ Activities.
Color coding by urgency
If you’re someone who always feels like they’re doing everything last minute, color coding by urgency may be a great way to help you! If you decide to organize your planner this way, you could make your lists in the List tab using a sort of stoplight system. Things that are red are the most urgent (things with quick deadlines), yellow are things that can wait, but need to get done (anything that has a deadline, but you have a bit of time before it), and green are things that should get done, but there’s really no rush (like folding laundry).
Color coding by project or class
Organizing your planner like this can come in handy if you’re a student or you have a job that involves a lot of project deadlines. Start by picking a specific color for each class or project. Then use Artful Agenda to block off work or study time for each category. You can also schedule out timelines, indicate due dates, and visualize how you can manage your time between each project or class. And, of course, you can use the colors to indicate when you’re in class or when you have meetings.
Color coding your schedule by the time it takes to accomplish a task
If you think visualizing how long a task will take could help you when scheduling your day, color coding by time may be beneficial to you. You can break tasks up into how long they should take or how long you want to spend on them. For instance:
- You could dedicate three hours to a work or school project with the intention that the project will be completed at the end of that time.
- You can decide that you should take 30 minutes to tidy up a certain room in the house, even if you know that time won’t make it completely clean.
- Then, you can schedule 15 minutes at the beginning of your day to read your preferred news source or favorite blog so that you don’t get distracted later by looking at it.
- To use this method, you could assign different colors to certain time increments, like 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour and three hours, and put the tasks into your schedule using the colors you chose.
How to Use Artful Agenda to Color Code
Start by deciding which color coding method you’d like to try, and create separate calendars for each of your chosen categories. Then, assign each of those calendars the color you would like for it to be. Artful Agenda has a bunch of pretty colors you can choose from, or you can use hex codes to create your own color combinations. We’ve even written a blog post about how to use hex codes in Artful Agenda. Read it here!
Remember, you might try to color code your planner in a certain way just to realize it doesn’t help you. Just try a different method until you find the one that works best for you!
Start color coding for a more productive day using Artful Agenda!
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