Digital Dads is a sideline I’m exploring in which I’ll be talking about ways we dads can use modern technology to make our lives and those of our families so much easier.
Or at least not muck things up so much. Again, we dudes probably have slightly lower expectations. Just live with it.
So, here’s the deal.
For a while, I was the stay-at-home dad. I was responsible for my appointments, the appointments of three active young dudes and for knowing where and when would be my loving bride, known to me as She Who Must Not Be Late.
I wasn’t very good at it.
Of course, I had the wall calendar with appointments for each little dude in a different color, mine in black. That should have worked great. In fact it probably would have worked great if I had actually taken the time to look at the week’s worth of appointments before the week began.
I was always forgetting about one thing or another and having to race places that I should have been at with plenty of time. Or reschedule. It was a mess and a certain someone who did not have a Y chromosome, and yet lived in our house, was not happy about it.
And then the future arrived. With my futurephone, I found a much better way to actually keep track of appointments and remember them. I found the synching calendar.
Oh, what a joy.
I could still use the different colors for different little dudes, but this time they would each have their own separate Google calendar online. I could display each calendar together or by itself.
Even better, I could set alarms to go off which would remind me — in plenty of time — so I could actually go where I was supposed to go when I was supposed to be there.
Also, I could share those calendars with the wife, known to me as She Who Must Be Kept In The Loop, so she would know what was going on even if I wasn’t there.
Now, I’m not saying I’m perfect about this stuff. No, far from it. Still, this is a much better state of affairs now than it has been in the past.
If you don’t have this sort of set-up, you need to get one. Fast. If you do have a futurephone, start using your calendar program to fullest advantage. Put everything in there. And give it an alarm. It works. Once you get started with this and get used to the way it works, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.
Try google.com/calendar if you want to use something that can be seen by people who don’t have your phone in hand. That is, everyone else but you.
It really works.
