All posts by Hunter Meine

10 Activities for Your Inner Outdoorsman

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10 Activities for Your Inner Outdoorsman

Sheltering in place for many long months has taken its toll. Now that the warm weather is finally here, it’s time to get outside! Your Calendar is just itching for you to fill it with some outdoor activities.

Activities for Your Inner Outdoorsman

Your inner outdoorsman might need some waking up after hibernating for the winter or from living in the city for too long. Luckily, there are a number of activities suited for everyone from the biggest homebodies to the backwoods enthusiasts:

1. Camping

Need to get away for a weekend? A camping trip will do just the trick. There should be at least one campground within driving distance from where you live, yet far enough away that you feel like you’re on an expedition.

If you’re unable to travel or just don’t feel like completely roughing it, camp out in the backyard. This can be just as fun, especially with small children who don’t travel well. Besides, camping within walking distance from the kitchen is the best of both worlds.

2. Hiking

The great thing about hiking is that you can go at your own pace. There are trails of varying difficulties so you can go on a calm afternoon stroll one day and get in a solid uphill workout on the next. You can also decide just how long you want to hike, simply turning around when you’re feeling ready to head back home.

If you live in the concrete jungle without access to nearby hiking trails, look for greenbelts and parks with walkways instead. These are beautiful and accessible places to talk a walk or go on a jog by yourself or with family.

3. Rock Climbing

Daredevils around the world chase the thrill of summiting the largest and most difficult peaks they can find. There’s a great sense of accomplishment that comes from completing a rigorous climb and enjoying the spectacular view of your achievement.

The reality is that not many people are willing and able to participate in outdoor rock climbing. However, you can have just as much fun doing some indoor rock climbing. Your innermost outdoorsmen will be just as entertained, and you’ll be much safer all the while.

4. Biking

You’ve heard the saying “it’s as easy as riding a bike”. There’s a reason this phrase has been around for so long; you never truly forget how to ride a bike. Put that to the test by saddling up for a bike ride.

There are varying degrees of biking for everyone from aspiring Olympic athletes to parents looking to unplug their kids from video games. You can take a mountain bike to hit the trails, get a street bike for some intense exercise, or take the family on a Sunday ride with whatever wheels you got. Biking can even replace your commute to work if you’re within riding distance.

5. Bird Watching

Want to enjoy the great outdoors without feeling like you’re only trying to survive? Give bird watching a try. This activity surrounds you with nature but encourages you to stay as still as possible instead of hiking up a mountainside.

Many bird watchers take a guidebook and a set of binoculars and try to spot as many species as they can. To take the hobby up a notch, grab a camera and work on your photography skills. The pictures you take will make a wonderful record of the time you’ve spent outdoors.

6. Golf

Another way to get outdoors without expending too much energy is to play a round of golf. You can get a good walk in or enjoy a ride in a golf cart, one of the best forms of transportation out there.

Most golf courses are immaculate. Groundskeepers do an excellent job keeping everything green and luscious. You’ll almost feel like you’re walking through a field in the woods instead of on controlled, manicured grounds.

7. Water Sports

You don’t always have to be a landlubber to be an outdoorsman. You’re depriving yourself of a lot of great experiences if you stay away from the many lakes and rivers in our country.

For the adrenaline junkies, white water rafting is one of the most exhilarating water activities you can find. For a calmer experience, take a canoe or a paddleboard onto a serene lake.

8. Archery

Archery has come a long way since it was first invented. Before it was a method of self-defense and survival. Today, it’s an outdoorsman hobby for testing technique and accuracy.

The reason that archery falls so far down the list is that it’s a fairly expensive hobby. Quality bows aren’t cheap, although arrows are reusable and targets can be made at home. You might be able to find a local archery range that allows you to rent bows and a range to give it a try before making a full commitment. If they offer archery classes, add one to your Calendar for some beginner instruction.

9. Fishing

There aren’t many activities as therapeutic as fishing. Minimal effort is required to set up a pole and wait for the fish to bite. After casting your line you can sit back in a chair and read a book or let your eyes rest for a moment.

If you have reliable data, you can even get some work done while at the fishing pond. Take the time to catch up on emails or schedule a phone call in your Calendar for the time you’re out fishing. Just make sure that work doesn’t completely overtake your outdoor experience so it feels like you’re still getting away.

10. Horseback Riding

Can you imagine a time before cars? While today people will commute many miles just to and from work, many years ago the distance a horse could ride was your limit. Getting back to those deep American roots will be sure to bring out that inner outdoorsman of yours.

There’s nothing quite like riding a horse. Commanding such a powerful animal is an experience not many can say they’ve had in today’s world. Setting up a horseback ride in your Calendar for a picnic or just to feel the wind in your hair is an event you won’t soon forget.

Pick a couple of these outdoor activities to add to your Calendar. Use up your weekends and afternoons to get out and experience the world while you can.

10 Activities for Your Inner Outdoorsman was originally published on Calendar by .

Avoiding the ‘Black Hole’ of Customer Engagement

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Avoiding the ‘Black Hole’ of Customer Engagement

Automated appointment systems make life so much easier for both businesses and their customers. Booking and executing an appointment have never been more efficient. However, you need to be careful about falling into the “black hole” of customer engagement that can form around automation. 

Too many automated appointment systems facilitate client interaction during the booking process but end there. There are no response mechanisms or continuing interaction throughout the rest of the customer journey. Make sure you don’t lose people after they click the “Submit” button by following these tips:

Keep an Agent Within Reach

While online appointment software and other digitized features have nearly endless benefits, sometimes customers just need to talk to someone. It gets frustrating when you’re stuck with a chatbot and need to ask a more complicated question that only a human can answer. 

One of your employees doesn’t have to be available to help customers 24/7, as chatbots are able to do. Still, make sure your customers know they can speak with a customer service agent during business hours for more complex problems and concerns. 

When solving customer problems, your CS representatives have an excellent opportunity to further engage with customers. They can ask leading questions to get customers to provide feedback that, in ordinary situations, they might just keep to themselves. Have your reps record any comments customers make so you can take action on the issues they think need to be addressed. 

Send Out Customer Surveys

Customer engagement after the appointment is just as important as engagement before and throughout. The feedback you receive from customers provides valuable information on ways you can improve or practices you should continue using. 

After an appointment, send out a short email thanking customers for their business. Include a survey link in each email and ask customers to respond to questions about their experience. Make sure the survey link is easy to locate within your message. 

Use Social Media Regularly

If you want to engage with your customers when they’re not at your business, turn to social media. Roughly 70% of Americans have a social media account, most of which are used regularly. There are plenty of opportunities for customer engagement here.

Social media can spur customer engagement in several ways. An ad campaign will gather clicks that can lead to more appointment bookings. Inviting comments on posts provides another platform for customers to voice their comments and mention concerns the company can address.

Track Key Data Metrics

When customer engagement gets placed on the back burner, you have to find new ways to bring it back to the forefront. Set goals to track key metrics using customer data. In order to accomplish these goals, you’ll have to monitor customer engagement via online interactions. 

Set up your website to track customer engagement online. You’ll be able to see how long customers spend on your website, what pages they visit, and your landing page bounce rate. This information will help you adjust the layout to place forms and resources where they’ll best be seen. 

Data metrics can be drawn from your in-house team as well. Tracking the percentage of customers who accept an upsell will show you how customers are responding to this sales tactic. If percentages are low, you’ll know you need to change your strategy.

Incentivize Engagement

Some customers will purposely place themselves in the black hole of customer engagement because they simply don’t want additional interaction. If something goes wrong, they’ll either grin and bear it or take their business elsewhere without a word. 

Customers have the right to keep their thoughts to themselves, but your business benefits from their feedback and engagement. To draw them out of the woodwork, incentivize engagement to get the highest engagement rates possible.

A common business strategy is to take survey responses and use them as raffle tickets. Customers who leave feedback are entered into a drawing to win free services or other perks that are valuable to them. Using this tactic, you’ll receive more feedback than just the occasional review from those with strong opinions. 

Be Transparent

Nowadays, customers might associate surveys and unprovoked emails with marketing schemes intended to make a sale. Be transparent about the real reason you’re looking to boost customer engagement so they don’t shy away from your overtures.

For example, you might be reaching out to customers to inquire about a service package your company provides. Make it known from the get-go that you’re sending the survey to gauge whether you should continue to offer the package (or whatever your reason is). Customers won’t feel like you’re only trying to sell them something and will be more likely to provide honest feedback. 

Make Engagement Count

Finally, when you gather feedback, do something about it! Customers will fail to see the need for interaction and engagement if your company isn’t listening or reciprocating. 

Let’s say customers consistently mention the long wait times they experience before each appointment with your business. Instead of just nodding in sad agreement, come up with a solution. Do you need to install self-check-in kiosks in the lobby or take measures to stop appointments from running long? Your actions will inspire customers to continue to provide feedback, as they’ll know it is being used to improve their experience. 

Learn to spot the signs of a customer engagement black hole so you can steer clear of it. As soon as you feel your business being drawn in, take the necessary steps to adjust your course. By doing so, you will retain more customers and keep your operations running smoothly.

Calendar Analytics Tell How You Use Your Time

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Calendar Analytics Tell How You Use Your Time

How are you using your time at work? How are you using your time at home? If you don’t measure these analytics on yourself — you really don’t know! Did you make your to-do list for today? Is a to-do list the way you measure your success — a checked-off list? But what if you really took ten times longer to do — or accomplish that to-do list than you really wanted to take? You won’t know the answers to these questions in your life and work unless you use Calendar Analytics to tell you the truth about yourself.

Calendar Analytics Tell How You Use Your Time

Did you know that businesses waste an estimated $37 billion on ineffective meetings annually? Yes, that’s billions, not millions, of dollars lost simply due to inefficiency. You can keep yourself and your business out of the equation by using Calendar to master your time management.

Every time you use your Calendar to plan meetings, track hours, or organize your day, it’s working behind the scenes to make time management easier for you. The secret is Calendar Analytics, part of your dashboard that calculates how you’re using your time. With this insight, you can better tell how your time should be spent to be more productive and efficient:

Meeting Distribution

Start by looking at the distribution of your meetings. When you plan a meeting in your Calendar, it gets archived into an analytics bank. With enough data, you will be able to see where you’re spending the most time and will be able to make adjustments accordingly.

For example, you might look at your time analytics and see that half of your meetings are set up with your sales team. You might not have noticed the attention you’ve been giving one department over the others and can take the steps necessary to plan more meetings with your other teams.

Your Calendar will also keep track of meeting size as well as the rate at which invitees accept or reject your meeting invitations. These numbers will help you organize more effective meetings and save time doing so.

Location Recommendations

You can waste up to 30 minutes a day simply looking for a place to hold a meeting. While picking the right location is rewarding, all that lost time will hurt you in the long run. With Calendar Analytics, you can save that time and put it to better use.

When you plan a meeting in your Calendar, include the location where it takes place.  Your Calendar will track where your meetings occur most frequently and will make recommendations to you based on when and where your next meetings are located.

After a little bit, Calendar Analytics will develop a system that will save you plenty of time when it comes to planning meetings — and executing on your plan. The time you would spend looking for the perfect restaurant to meet a client can instead be used to prepare your sales pitch or respond to the last of your emails.

People Analytics

Just as important as how you’re spending your time is who you’re spending it with. People analytics show who you’re meeting with the most by analyzing the people invited to your Calendar events. As an example, you might realize that you haven’t scheduled a one-to-one meeting with one of your employees in a while, and they’re due for a meeting with you.

People analytics, like all time management tools, extends beyond the office. How much time are you spending with your spouse and family? If you see their ranking drop on your list of people you’ve been meeting with, it’s time to plan some more family activities to improve your work-life balance.

Time Balance

Speaking of balance, there’s nothing time analytics do better than help you get your life on track. Anywhere you feel like your efforts need to be focused better can use the help of time analytics to tighten up. Whether that’s spending more time with family or getting more exercise, your Calendar can help you.

Keep track of when you complete certain activities and their duration. The more you’re able to track, the better. For example, tracking the hours you spend watching Netflix will give you concrete evidence that you’re spending more time on the couch than you’d like. Use the information you find from evidence to change your life by scheduling your time differently. Lower your binge-watching time by adding time to read or go on a walk in your Calendar to replace it.

Your Calendar will display your time usage in percentages at first glance, but you can look at the hours and minutes you spend in particular meetings and activities as well. Set goals on what you want to accomplish, like a certain number of hours spent at the park with your kids a week, and use your analytics to gauge your progress.

Team Analytics

Calendar analytics work so much better when your whole team is on board. Everyone’s Calendars will work together to make team meetings a breeze and office productivity increase. As a leader, you’ll be able to direct your employees so much better with personalized time analytics for each person.

Make sure you’re scheduling those one-on-one meetings with your employees with regularity. Have them come prepared with their Calendar analytics. An overview is fine if they have personal family information included in their Calendar. Talk with them about how their time is being used and how they can improve. Perhaps they need a better morning schedule or to pick a closer restaurant for their next lunch break.

In addition, you can share your Calendar as an example of how time analytics helps you use your time more effectively. For this to be an effective teaching moment, you need to be using your Calendar diligently; otherwise, you won’t make much of an impact. Strive to set the example with time management as the leader of your organization.

You’ll be amazed by everything you’re able to accomplish by using Calendar analytics to structure your everyday life. Not only will you be able to fit so much more into your schedule, but you’ll also feel less stressed as you plan things out and create the perfect balance.

Calendar Analytics Tell How You Use Your Time was originally published on Calendar by Hunter Meine.

Why You Still Need an Online Calendar Even When You Use a Physical One

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Why You Still Need an Online Calendar Even When You Use a Physical One

If you already rely on a physical calendar, you might not see the need to add an online calendar to your arsenal. Your current time management system might seem to work just fine. However, you’re missing out on a lot of potential by shirking additional technology.

Using a paper and digital Calendar, map, or any other hard copy is entirely up to you and beneficial in many cases. If you still need some convincing, check out the ways your daily life will benefit from implementing an online calendar to your existing system:

Online Calendars are Portable

As great as a physical calendar might be at home or in your office, you can’t expect to carry it with you everywhere. Even pocket calendars and portable planners can be burdensome at times. Worst of all, a physical calendar can be easily left behind, leaving you in the dark.

You can access your online calendar on any electronic device. All you need is a cell phone and a connection to the internet and you’ll have your calendar easily accessible. You can even adjust the settings in your Calendar to be able to view it offline.

Sharing is Caring

A lot of the events on your calendar will involve others. You’ll need to coordinate with coworkers and family members regularly, which is more difficult to do when trying to sync paper calendars. Sharing an online calendar keeps everyone on the same page with real-time updates and notifications.

You don’t have to share every detail of your online calendar with others. Choose to share individual events, or create a separate calendar that keeps your private events hidden. You can also decide if those you share with can edit events or simply view them, depending on what you’re trying to organize.

Last-Minute Changes Happen

Life is full of unexpected events. Making last-minute changes on paper calendars is messy, and sometimes impossible if you don’t have it on your person. It’s much easier to go with the flow and adjust to unforeseen circumstances when you also have an online calendar handy.

Let’s say you have a meeting with a client scheduled for 3 P.M. You come into the office and see an email in your inbox asking if the meeting can be bumped up to 2 P.M. With your online Calendar, you can adjust right then and there.

If you have your paper calendar handy, this is also possible, but lacks a certain detail. Your online calendar can also send you reminders of upcoming events. A digital reminder that your meeting was moved from 3:00 PM to 2:00 PM will help you remember the change even on a busy day when your attention is divided.

Different Calendars Have Different Uses

Physical calendars get crowded really quickly. There’s only so much room to add events and details. And the more you add, the more difficult it is to read. A better strategy is to designate your paper Calendar for one use, and your online calendar for another.

Your paper calendar, which is likely hanging on the fridge, can be reserved for family events. Your online calendar will contain your work responsibilities, daily routines, and personal events. The ability to create multiple calendars online allows for even greater organization than keeping a stack of paper calendars lying about.

Physical Calendars Can Get Lost or Damaged

No matter how careful you are, there’s a chance your physical calendar can get lost or damaged. This is especially true if you have one in reach of kids who can grab, smudge, and rip the pages from your calendar. If your paper calendar is lost or damaged, there’s no way to get back the information you lost.

Online calendars store all their information online. Some online calendars even offer cloud storage options for maximum accessibility and protection. Even if your cell phone gets lost or damaged, your Calendar information can be accessed from a different device, retaining all the details you need.

Online Calendars Have More Features

Simply put, physical calendars just don’t have the bells and whistles you can find in online calendars. You can’t drag and drop events or change color-coding on demand. One of the best features of an online Calendar is tracking your time to the minute. Time analytics really unlocks your productivity levels on a day-to-day basis.

Physical calendars have their merits, especially for those who prefer to write things down and add some calligraphy flair. However, not everyone has a legible chicken scratch. This means being able to type out your event details is a helpful bonus to your online Calendar.

For frequent fliers, an online Calendar is a necessity. Thanks to the power of the internet, your Calendar will automatically adjust to changing time zones. This ensures you don’t miss that important business meeting because your paper calendar is still on Eastern Standard Time.

Both Calendars Allow for Different Time Management Techniques

For those using a Calendar to try and optimize their time, an online Calendar blows paper ones out of the water. You can implement more complex time management techniques than you could with pen and paper alone, which allows you to make more use of your time. In addition to time analytics, you can also try:

  • Timeboxing: Separate your day into blocks of time dedicated to specific tasks and activities.
  • Pomodoro method: Work in stretches of 25 minutes with a five-minute break to encourage focus and prevent burnout.
  • Eisenhower Matrix: Prioritize your tasks to get the most important stuff done, set aside nonsense, and delegate when possible.

These techniques are much more difficult to pull off with just a paper Calendar, but might work well with both. For example, drawing out your Eisenhower Matrix might help you visualize it better so you can type it out into your online calendar with more precision.

There’s nothing wrong with preferring one type of calendar over the other. Just be aware that you might be selling yourself short by not giving them both a chance to thrive together.

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