If your life feels harried and out of control it may be time to take a closer look at how well you’re utilizing calendars. Sure, you might have your daily to do lists to help you with day to day chores, but a calendar can help you stay on track and help you plan for the long haul. Let’s look at three important ways that calendars can make your life more productive, simplified, and on track.

Accountability

An article from Successful Steps puts accountability as the number reason to regularly use a calendar. They state that “just the act of making an appointment helps set a date and time aside for a specific activity. Not only is setting aside a specific date and time helpful for meetings and doctor appointments, but you can also use this strategy to carve out time to spend with friends or to complete specific tasks on your to-do list. Now we don’t have to leave it up to chance that we’ll finish that lingering task because we already assigned a date and time for it.” This means that through utilizing a calendar you can make yourself accountable to everything meaningful in your life from the small to the complex. If you’re worried about not having enough space to write in all of these activities the Jumbo Print Wall Calendar may be just the thing you need. There are 2 pages per month and each square is the size of your stand business card of 2.5” x 3.5”.

Health Benefits

Trying to remember everything that needs to be done and when it needs to be done by can be overwhelming if you’re not writing it down. Sometimes just the mere act of writing something down can take a weight off your shoulders. Not to mention you can then see everything at a glance which helps in scheduling future events as well. According to Psychology Today, using a calendar or daily planner can reduce stress and help keep you healthy by planning out things such as exercise, dietary planning and ensuring that you go to regular doctor or dentist appointments. Handwriting your schedule out can further tap into health benefits which helps explain why paper calendars and planners are making a comeback in today’s technological word. An article on Rewire explains “there’s something about connecting your brain with your body through the physical action of thinking while writing that makes us focus more on our thoughts. Plus, with a paper planner, there’s no chance of getting interrupted by the parade of other notifications coming through at the top of the screen.” This Large Print Day Calendar  has its own tab with an introductory area showing the previous, current and future months with space for notes and appointments. On the following 2 pages is that month's calendar with large numbers and ample space (2" boxes) to write notes, reminders, appointments or shopping lists.

Record Keeping

Keeping an updated calendar can also be beneficial for locating information in the present for something that took place in the past. When determining when certain things need to be scheduled such as hair appointments, oil changes, or pet grooming it helps to know when it was last done. Depending on how detailed a calendar you keep it can also help you keep track of when you last saw friends or family or when exactly you saw a certain movie or play. In fact, the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired compares a written calendar to a Rolodex of life’s memories, “all of the memories on that Rolodex are linked to other memories, and in relation to the sequence in which they happened… A calendar provides a static communication system that can be referred back to (or forward to) over and over.” Another affordable calendar option is this Large Print Wall Calendar. It can be hung on the wall or used on a desk and is designed for you to see the entire month on one page with a large box for each date. To see what’s currently on sale at ILA please sign up for our newsletter, view our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, or visit our website.