Tech Tip - Using FantastiCAL for Better Calendar and Time Management

 Calendar applications are one of those things that tend to be a personal choice. Most of the calendar apps essentially do the same thing - keep track of your daily appointments. Whether you have many meetings each day or just the occasional scheduled session, having a single place to keep track of that information is necessary. How you choose to capture and see that information is where the personal component comes into play. That is a big reason I use the calendar application I do. Fantastical has been a popular calendar app for Apple iOS and Macs since its version 2.0 release more than 5 years ago.Fantastical was one of the first apps that allowed for natural language parsing. This allowed users to speak in ordinary, everyday language to their calendars. For example, you could type, ‘lunch with Tracy on Tuesday at 2 pm at Chick-fil-a’ and Fantastical would create a calendar entry for 2 pm on Tuesday to have lunch with Tracy. From there you could easily add an address as well as the companion’s email and invite them directly to the meeting. Today, you can dictate all of that to your phone, iPad, or computer and it will set up the calendar entry and invite automatically. It is quite impressive.Other calendar applications now incorporate some of the same features, but Fantastical continues to remain a favorite for its easy to use views and interface. It is easy to see upcoming meetings at a glance on both the iPhone and iPad screens. It presents a calendar of the current month, but also provides a list view of the meetings for each day. As those events pass, they dim in color to make the next event stand out. This makes it very easy to see what is next and what is upcoming. You can quickly scroll through several days to see the list of your events.If you are looking for a quick week-at-a-glance view, you can position your phone in landscape mode and see your week in time blocks. This is an excellent view for planning for the week. It is also useful if you are working with a colleague and need to find open spaces on your calendar for the current week or upcoming weeks. By swiping to the left, you can see the weeks ahead to look for open times quickly.The extra screen space on the iPad affords all of the views at once if you choose. You can also see I graphical representation of the week at the top, the month view, as well as the list view as a default. This view allows for some longer range planning, yet is easy enough to view for daily usage. Fantastical makes it easy for you to use whichever device is best for you. It synchronizes across all of your iOS devices once you complete the initial set up. It automatically pulls the calendars from any of the accounts you already have set up on your phone or iPad. You can select which calendars you want to view within Fantastical if you have multiple calendars set up on your device. This is a great way to separate personal and business calendars if you choose. The option exists to see both in one place which I find handy.Fantastical is a great tool developed by Flexibits, you can find more information and details about the iOS applications at their site for the iPhone.In addition to the iPhone and iPad apps, they have software for the Mac as well as the Apple Watch with connects seamlessly to your phone information. The information looks great and is easy to read on your wrist whenever you need it. There are plenty of great reviews of this product, but this onedoes a nice job of sharing the features of Fantastical while comparing to a few other similar applications as well. Fantastical is available for $2.99 (iPhone) and $4.99 (iPad) in the App Store. I hope you will find it has useful as I have.Share how you use your favorite calendar app in the comments section.Join other retail leaders in continuing their development journey with Effective Retail Leader.com. SUBSCRIBE today to receive leadership tips directly to your inbox and monthly newsletters that provide many tools to help further develop your leadership skills. JOIN NOW!No spam ever - just leadership goodness.