Tracking Monthly Goals With MS Word Calendar Wizard

I’m a big fan of “To Do” lists. This probably stems from many years trying to stay on task on tight deadlines as a software developer. My “To Do” lists often just consist of small sheets of paper or scribbled entries in a notebook. Of course, my “To Do” list changes from one day to the next and sometimes even from hour to hour.

Nevertheless, I need to have some general guidelines for what I need to accomplish over the course of a day. But what about longer term “To Do” lists? Ones extending out to a week or even a month?

Sometimes it’s very helpful to plan out goals and tasks you want to accomplish for the coming month. A daily “To Do” is task-focused, whereas a monthly list consists of both goals and tasks that you want to accomplish. The trick is finding some format that presents the days of the month in an easy to view manner. Hmm, sounds kind of like a calendar.

I learned about the MS Word Calendar Wizard from another Internet marketer’s mailing list. I’m sorry, I don’t remember who you are, but I’m certainly very grateful. And as a show of my gratitude, I’ll pass the great tip on so others may benefit from it as well.

I have been using MS Word for years and I probably only use about 20% of its features. If I can crank out a formatted outline without smashing my monitor, then I’ve done pretty well.

The Calendar Wizard can be accessed by selecting “New” from the “File” menu and then clicking on the “Other Documents” tab. This is where they cleverly hide it!

From here, double click on the Wizard and another Wizard pops up to guide you through creating your calendar. I select the “Boxes and Borders” style and the “landscape” orientation. Finally, choose the month and year you want and click “Finish“.

I’ve created a folder to store my calendars under “My Documents” called “My Calendars” and this is where I save my newly created calendar.

There are usually a few empty squares on the calendar before the month starts. This is where I enter a numbered list of goals I want to achieve for the month. I use 9pt Arial font for this so I can squeeze a lot into a square. For important deadlines and events, I’ll stub them in on the appropriate date squares. This allows me to begin mapping out the month in advance.

Then I can start adding in specific tasks as each week progresses. I use the same numbered lists as the monthly goals. I find it’s best to fill out daily tasks the night before. That way, I don’t waste time each morning trying to figure out what the heck I need to be doing for the day.

Later on during the week, I’ll go back and see what tasks actually got completed. Some will have been completed, but just not on the day they were entered. That’s OK, I just enter the date completed after each task. This then helps me stay on track and see how much I’m actually getting done.

At the end of the month, I look back over my calendar to see how many of my goals I achieved. Anything not completed then gets moved onto the calendar for the next month along with any new goals that I can think of.