Self management is one of the 5 competencies of social emotional learning. It is one that focuses on:
- Goal Setting
- Impulse Control
- Organizational Skills
- Self-Discipline
- Self-Motivation
- Stress Management
When it comes to self management – stress management and organizational skills are very closely linked. In this world of online teaching and learning, having a series of emails about deadlines can instantly become quite stressful. One way to help relieve this stress AND become more organized as a whole is to create a system wherein anything with a due date receives a calendar event. This is why I love creating events from emails in Gmail.
Any time I’m asked to attend a meeting or to complete something by a particular date/time, I create a calendar invite from the gmail message. When there are multiple people on the email thread, you can choose to share the invite with them, or keep it to yourself. Sharing the invite enables everyone to quite literally be on the same page in terms of when the meeting is, and what it is in reference to.
Too often, emails back and forth can become overwhelming, and deadlines can easily be missed. By creating an event from an Gmail message, it’s easy to manage time better, without things falling through the cracks. So the next time that you send or receive a message that has time-sensitive information in it, go ahead and turn the message into an event and save a little time by referring to your calendar.
