5 Ways to Make iCal Work for You

iCal is a fairly simple app, and many people use competing programs in place of Apple’s bundled calendar app. I for one am looking forward to replacing it with Leopard’s to-do-list featured Mail.app, or hopefully even sooner with whatever else comes along and surprises me. However, in the meantime it’s the best I’ve found, so here are 5 ways to make it work, if not perfectly, at least a little better.

1. Due Dates
Putting in due dates for iCal “to-do’s” is far too cumbersome to be worth your time. Instead, create 7 new tasks with the name of each day of the week in all caps. They’ll show up with your real tasks, and you can use them as dividers to keep track of what day you need to do things. Make them in a different calendar with a black color so they stand out. Then, you can sort your tasks by putting them under the day you do them, and above the day they’re due.

2. Take a Shortcut
To get the full potential of the app, make sure you know how to quickly get things done. ⌘+K makes a new task, and ⌘+N makes a new event.

3. Get the Big Picture
Month view is the only way to go. Week view and Day view are way too zoomed in on your schedule. Is your day really so complicated that you need to see it in an hour-by-hour break down? Put the time for your event in the description, that way you can see it at a glance from the broader view.

4. Keep it Down!
If you have a pink calendar, a red calendar, and a maroon calendar, you won’t be able to tell them apart at a glance. However, if you have 28 calendars then you’re going to have to squeeze them together on the color wheel. Make only as many calendars as you absolutely need, and unless it’s something that you have things to put in regularly, just use a catch-all “General” calendar.

5. Shrinkage
iCal functions very poorly as a daily planner, but it works pretty well as a task manager. Make the window as small as you can without loosing the space you need to view your events.

What do you use as an organizer? Which is better, iCal or Entourage? Why?