Use A Special Calendar Colour For Deadlines (As Opposed To Events)

Use A Special Calendar Colour For Deadlines (As Opposed To Events)

Most of us hate deadlines, but they’re part of life. If your deadlines are whooshing by, adding a unique colour cues you in that the deadline is creeping up.

Photo by Team Dalog

The New York Times interviewed marketing professor Dilip Soman from the Rotman School Of Management at the University of Toronto. She explains how colour-coding your tasks on your calendar might remind you to stop procrastinating:

Colour can also influence the perception of time, she said. She and Professor Soman found that simply by coding a stretch of calendar days in the same colour — say, blue — with an assignment occurring on the first “blue” day and the deadline set for the last “blue” day, people were more likely to complete the tasks. Once again, this serves to make the future deadline seem more like the present.

This is a different way of creating a “now/” rather than a “future” deadline. Friday may be five days away, but that blue shading on your calendar is a splinter in your mind reminding you to get the job done every time you look at it. Gmail and most other programs let you change the colour of an event. Mix up the colours so that way you don’t become too accustomed to blue being a deadline every week.

If You Want to Meet That Deadline, Play a Trick on Your Mind [New York Times via Inc]


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