Self-management
Apr 4, 2022
Student-Entrepreneur faces challenges of efficient planning
Dasha is a college student in her final year and she runs a small business simultaneously. Currently, she is building her social media accounts, and on top of all that, she has to keep up with all of her daily tasks.
We were able to have a video call with Dasha and talk about her TimeTree usage.
Dasha told us that her first interaction with TimeTree was through a social forum created by fans of a tv show, where she ended up becoming a moderator. The group needed a calendar for scheduling events and virtual meetings and they chose TimeTree because it was the most convenient.
Dasha has four calendars; a shared calendar with her boyfriend, a hobby calendar, a business calendar, and a personal calendar.
Dasha's events are sectioned into three bigger themes; college assignments and classes, managing a small business, and social media channels. In addition to these, errands, exercise, and basic routines are added to her calendar. Her schedule is hectic and to balance everything out she takes the time she uses for school on the weekdays and makes sure she puts that time towards relaxing on the weekends. Activities such as visiting the aquarium and shopping are for unwinding.
Sharing Calendars changes everything!
Close to graduating, Dasha is working on her final paper and preparing for the final exams. The last year of College has come with multiple group projects and keeping up with them can be a hassle. With shared calendars for study groups and project work, the workload has become more manageable. Dasha says she likes to write longer memos on the project work events just to make sure that everyone knows what they're working on. From the calendar, it is also easy to see who is responsible for which task.
She also says the difficult part of planning with a group is making sure everyone remembers to voice their availability and confirm plans. Due to everyone's different daily schedules, they might forget and it can be complicated to figure out what works best for all members.
A few years back, Dasha shared a calendar with families when she was babysitting for them. The family could easily see where she was needed to babysit and when she was available. If there was an urgent need, the family could see exactly when she was available and there was no need to wait for a reply from her. She says it was very helpful at the time and could work with someone who is in a similar situation.
Calendar organization with labels
Dasha manages her beauty business with her mother. Typical events in the calendar related to the business are order details for customers, meetings with suppliers, and shipment confirmations. They need to make sure that the products are ordered as well as sent out on time for both the customers and the suppliers.
In addition to the social media account of her small business, Dasha also manages her accounts. To efficiently keep up with her plans, she uses different colored labels in the TimeTree calendar. Yellow is for appointments and time set aside to see someone, purple is for anything related to college or social media, and finally red is for high importance to make sure it is not forgotten.
Towards better time management
Dasha concludes that TimeTree has helped her to manage her time better and she is now able to get much more done in a day. She doesn’t easily forget about plans or upcoming deadlines and she can have a healthy balance between college, work, and fun without compromising.
“I would recommend TimeTree to everyone because it’s the easiest app to use. It’s so simple to add events and share calendars with others that even my mom is able to do it despite not being the best in technology.”
Thank you Dasha for the interview! We are looking forward to your next adventures after graduating.
