STOP Paying for Planning Apps - Use this Apple Calendar Setup Instead

Most people treat Apple Calendar just like an ordinary place to store dates and some important reminders. But as creators, we need something smarter. I'm going to show you how I use Apple Calendar as the engine that runs my entire week. And when you connect with Apple Reminders the right way, you'll get a productivity system that rivals every paid planner out there. And trust me, I use quite a lot of planners. I always come back to Apple Calendar. If your week feels chaotic before it even starts, you're constantly feeling like you're behind. It is not because you are unproductive. It's because your tasks are living in one place and your time is living in another. Earlier this year, I found myself being burnt out thinking that I was productive, but also I was mismanaging my time. And so Apple Reminders holds all of your responsibilities and your calendar holds your reality. But if you are not connecting both of them so they can work together, you will end up overbooking yourself. You're going to miss deadlines with clients and even deadlines you have set for projects and you are going to feel scattered before the week even begins. So when you go over into Apple Calendar left of my screen, I am going to turn on the navigation pane on the left. I'm going to show you how to create three simple calendars for work, for personal and for your routines and how to color code them. So to the bottom, you're going to hit on add calendar, and then you're going to click on add calendar again, and we are going to put in the first name. So this is going to be work or content. I'm going to choose iCloud. The reason why I'm choosing iCloud because I want this to be synced, not only to my iPad, but across all the devices within my Apple ecosystem or that is signed in with that Apple ID. If you are someone who does a lot of collaboration with other people who are within the Apple ecosystem and they have an Apple ID, you can also share it. That calendar with that person as well. And this is where the color coding comes in. Make sure you're choosing colors that you're able to easily identify with the specific calendars. In this case, if I click on orange here, I can choose the different colors here. But for the purpose of this exercise, I'm going to leave the work as orange and you can also get your notifications. I make sure to turn on the notifications, which will be very important in our later exercise. I'm going to hit on the done button to the top and notice this where content calendar actually comes up here. All right. If I want to add another one, I can go back in here. I'm going to call this admin or personal, right? I'm going to leave it at iCloud. I'm going to leave it at green and I'm going to hit on that. I think I want to do another one. I'm going to call this routines. And in a second, I'm going to show you why I actually changed that to blue. Okay. And I'm going to hit on done. The next thing we are going to do is to actually fill in our non-negotiables. All right. So our non-negotiables are things that repeat every single week, but also you are building the foundation of your calendar. What are those things that repeat every week? If it's admin day, every Monday, if it's a weekly reset day, if it's a day to just brainstorm, what are those non-negotiables I want you to fill them into your calendar. And so it repeats every single week, or if it's a non-negotiable thing that repeats every single day, you can do so. So the first thing we are going to do, we're going to hit the plus sign. I'm just going to close this off. I'm going to hit the plus sign to the top here, and we are going to call this batch record monthly content. I'm going to set a time because I know I'm a morning person. So I may want to actually do this time. Let's say from 10 a.m. And I may want to block off a specific time, right? So from 10 a.m. To 2 p.m. On the third Thursday of every month, that's dedicated to batch recording my content. Now, as it's set here right now, it's for, uh, today's date. But if you want that to be on a specific time or specific days, what you're going to do is come down to the repeat section and where you have never, you're going to click there and you're going to choose custom, right? And I'm going to change the frequency from daily to monthly. And then I'm not going to say each month, but I'm going to say on, and then I'm going to say the third and then I'm going to choose Thursday. All right. So I'm going to just click over here and this is going to repeat every month on the third Thursday. The next thing I'm going to do, I'm going to change the calendar. It's going to set to my default calendar, which is business. But for the purpose of the one that we just create, I'm going to put it on the work or content. And I can choose to get alert a day before, so I can be, uh, be reminded of that standing, um, non-negotiable. And I can also prepare for it the day before. Once that is set, I'm going to hit on done. And notice in my December calendar, it's showing batch record monthly content. But if I scroll over to January, it's going to be there. If I scroll over to February, it's going to be there. This actually becomes the structure for your in which your entire week actually rests on. The second step is actually to connect calendar to reminders. This is where everything changed for me. And it was a total game changer. I'm going to switch to the week view and then I'm going to go into my calendar. So I have a few content priorities and I also have some admin tasks. So if I go into this particular task where I have to edit an Instagram video and I click on the eye, I can choose the date, right? So I can say, I'm going to edit this tomorrow and I can choose the time. And I say, okay, I want to edit this at 1 PM. All right. And I can see if it's going to be urgent. Now, this is a new feature in that once you turn on urgent, it's going to have an alarm go off on your iPhone. In order for this to actually happen, you need to be using the same Apple ID on all your devices. So this was a very good feature that I'm very happy that they introduced. The alarm will activate whether your focus is on or your device is muted. And I love this. All right. I can choose if I want to have an early reminder and I can, you know, add more to this, so I'm going to hit on done. Once you're able to put a date and time to everything, it's literally reminders and calendar holding you accountable to get the tasks that I love that the fact that the Apple ecosystem gives us shortcuts so we can automate our devices and the apps on the device. And so I have two ways that I automate my calendar. So the first thing we are going to do, we are going to go into shortcuts. And so with the focus modes, I want to be able to work on my different devices without interruptions. Before I set up an automation, the first thing you need to do is set up the shortcut, what do you want your device to do? So I have my folders for organization purposes, and I do have an iPad automation tooler. In here, I have something called a color, a calendar check-in to set this up. I would have hit the plus sign at the top here and I would have built it out. The first thing I did, once I hit that plus sign, I make sure to rename. So I'm able to identify that particular shortcut. And then the next thing I went over into search actions and I look for calendar here, once I hit on calendar, it's going to give me a ton of different things that I can automate or create short for shortcuts for on the iPad or relating to the calendar. In this case, I choose get upcoming events. And so with the get upcoming events, I just put a random number of 12. I don't have a 12 events in a day, but just to cover basis, um, 12 events, get 12 events, not from all the calendars, but I can choose from a specific calendar. So in this case, I can choose my work or content calendar. And below that, I just press the arrow down instead of day. Instead of any day, because any day is the default that is set. I choose today, or it could be tomorrow. All right. So I choose today before you come out of it, I do recommend testing it. So if you hit on the play button, it's going to pull the events from today that is on that calendar. Once that is done, um, we're going to head over to automation and then we're going to hit on the plus sign. And then we are going to say when work is turned on, run immediately next. And then I'm going to go down to the automation, iPad automation section, and I'm going to choose that calendar check-in. So every time they work, focus mode is turned on. Um, it's going to do that calendar check in. There is another way. And I love that, that other way I'm going to show you, we're going to go into settings and then I'm going to come down into focus here and then in the work section, I'm going to tap on that. All right. So in the section called focus filters, I'm going to hit on the plus sign and I'm going to choose calendar. And then I can choose when a specific focus mode is turned on, which calendar I want to show up. I don't want to see all the things that is on my calendar. I just want to see that specific calendar that is tied to that specific focus. So in this case, because it's work, I'm going to look for the work or content calendar, and I hit on that and I tap on them. So I'm going to show you the behavior of that when you go in. So I'm going to switch my focus mode from recording to work and notice in the calendar of itself, it's showing filtered by focus, and it's showing that it's currently on and it's only showing me anything relating to that calendar of work or content. All right. If you go back in here, notice on the left, it hide every other calendar. And it's just showing that specific calendar. If I turn this off, it's going to resume back to everything else. And if I turn it back on, it's going to resume to the focus filter that I have selected. This is a game changer. I'm tying your calendar to your focus modes. It is a game changer. It's these little features that literally improves your productivity. If you're interested to learn all my workflows and also my thought process behind building these different types of systems, I do have a productivity cheat sheet that is currently available. You can hit the link in the description and get your copy. It is totally free and let me know in the comments, what are you most excited to do when it comes to your calendar and time management in 2026 coming up? You're planning for the new year. Um, how are you going to use Apple calendar in your new workflow for the new year? Let me know in the comments down below.