When catching up with someone, I typically ask “what have you been up to recently?”. Unfortunately I find that most people, myself included, have a difficult time consolidating their “recent” into a cohesive answer. Typically someone will only mention one or two substantial life events, sometimes nothing at all and you get hit with an MJ shrug.

This made me realize that I struggled with remembering moments in my life. Maybe this can be attributed to our current environment: we’re overstimulated with never-ending content, notifications, distractions, the need for efficiency, social pressures, and the like. Of course, I remember the big moments — my first kiss, receiving my university acceptance email, having my first ever panic attack after a calculus final, a job interview where I went to the wrong location (yes, this actually happened to me) — because it’s easy to remember the amazing moments, as well as the terrible ones. But what about the moments in between? The moments that are still good or bad but not that memorable. It’s impossible to remember everything but at the very minimum I wanted to have a general sense of what any given day of my life looked like.

Additionally, I wanted it to feel like my days really counted for something, that I didn’t just completely waste it. Especially for the days where nothing noteworthy happened; I still did things but having no recollection of what I did on a given day was, to me, equivalent to that time never occurring. Figuratively speaking of course; time is constant.

Breadth not depth

Initially, I thought of journaling; it makes sense in theory. It can be very therapeutic, it slows things down, and is a great way to reflect on your emotional state. But it can be too time consuming and you can easily get lost in your own thoughts.

I’ve gone through my fair share of tech company branded, Moleskine-copy notebooks without ever really seeing them through and ended up ditching them for weeks at a time. I prefer to use notebooks to write down to-do lists or random ideas and doodles.

I wanted something with more structure that outlined my day-to-day events, was more lightweight, and easily accessible. I still wanted the ability to jot down notes but not with the same depth that one would with the average journal.

My solution was simple: I’m going to write events in my Google calendar after they happen. Retroactively.

Somehow this naturally made sense to me since it’s relatively easy to sync your Google calendar with other apps and devices. This allowed me to fill in my calendar with my phone or laptop whenever I had downtime. Plus I’ve already succumbed to Big Brother errrr… I mean Google, with all their apps I use. Why not add a little more detail about my life?

How it all started

My first calendar log

This was on June 19, 2016, Father’s Day. I didn’t log anything before these events and I have no recollection of what happened. It was a Sunday so I definitely went to church, we probably had an after church potluck for Father’s Day lunch, as is tradition, duh. But these are just assumptions, mentally I can’t confirm it. I can’t bring images to my head.

Looking at the bright side, and the main reason I started doing this, is that I can vividly remember the events that I did write down. My oldest sister, Melissa, who lives in Calgary, was in town to shoot an engagement set with my other sister Noelle (they’re professional wedding photographers). Their shoot was at the University of Toronto’s campus and my sisters wanted to grab dinner after so I killed time at Robarts library. I grabbed coffee at L’espresso. After the shoot we went to La Carnita; please do yourself a favour and get their Mexican corn.

After dinner I headed back home and watched Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers defeat the Golden State Warriors in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA finals (a friendly reminder that Golden State blew a 3–1 lead).

This was almost 4 years ago and I can still pull images from this day into my head. I even remember getting iced coffee at McDonald’s during the drive back home — an event I didn’t log. These weren’t astronomical events in my life (no offense to my sisters, love you!). I picked up an americano, went to the library, got tacos, and watched a basketball game; things that I could do on any given day, things that might not necessarily come up when someone asks “what have you been up to recently?”. Nor are they events that one would make pre-scheduled calendar entires for. But I still haven’t lost these memories; they aren’t dormant in the depths of my mind and need some trigger to recollect them, they’re readily retrievable with a quick tap of my calendar app.

Mundane to Memorable

As I went along with this exercise, I started to notice that the more habitual activities of my life were lacking substance. When you have a set schedule, whether it be work or school or other commitments you’ve made, a lot of the days can start to blend together. Days get repetitive, it’s hard to differentiate what you did at work from one day to the next. So, an additional goal of mine was to make the mundane days a little more memorable.

Seeing a blank or regularly scheduled slate deterred me a bit, it felt I was just going through the motions. To make those types of days stand out, I started adding smaller details that broke the norm: a phenomenal meal, a funny conversation, a finished project or task.

That being said, I didn’t find it necessary to remember all the minute details of my day-to-day routines, that would’ve been a little too excessive — as if this exercise wasn’t excessive enough. Obviously it’s more important to have a holistic understanding of the lessons you take away from life experiences, and I definitely earned that without having to journal every fine detail. And to clarify, I wouldn’t write a Murakami-esque recollection of the scene, just a small footnote in the description of the calendar entry.

Even non-work, non-school regularly scheduled events in my life — basketball games, volleyball games, bible study — were hard to distinguish. It wasn’t enough for me to just put “volleyball” in my calendar. I started writing notes about what the final outcome was, who we were playing, how our team felt. Whatever I could to have that event stick out a little more to me.

Volleyball on Mondays. Bible Study on Tuesdays. This has been my schedule for the last two years.

I started to realize that these footnotes became indispensable. Spending the extra few seconds to jot down granular details added a lot of substance during my reflections and has its practical uses too. I had a friend ask me about recommendations for their trip to Boston so I pulled out my calendar and searched “boston”. An event from August 2016, a few months after I started this exercise, popped up called “Boston Day 1” which has the following description:

Started trip, drove for 6 hours straight, got to Joe’s, went to Clover got Zucchini, chilled at Harvard, MIT, Darwin coffee, Tosconni ice cream, chilled by Charles River, chilled at Joe’s, Redbones for dinner got baby back ribs, went to Kung fu tea got matcha bubble tea

A little obsessive, I know. Conversely, this took around a minute to write before I went to sleep that same day and to me it was worth the little time and effort. This was 4 years ago, realistically I couldn’t have remembered any of these places on my own but after a quick search on the Google Calendar web app, I got a somewhat detailed look at my first day in Boston and a rush of memories from that time.

Make your free time count

This exercise also forces me to look forward into my life and be really intentional with my calendar and inherently, my time. When backfilling my calendar, I have that vantage point of my past few days which simultaneously helps me evaluate how I want to spend my upcoming days.

I’m the type of person that tries to absolutely pack their schedule with activities and people, very much to my detriment. If I was busy the past three evenings, I would try to schedule an evening to rest at home and catch up with my mom. Even if I was vegging out—slowly killing my brain cells, endlessly scrolling through Instagram and Twitter—I would still write that down in my calendar. Having those events is a reminder that I should use my free time in a more meaningful or productive way.

Speaking of productivity, I really didn’t want this tool to be a “productivity hack” or to use it to “optimize my time”. Of course, everyone has their own definition of “optimal.” For me, that sometimes means bettering myself in some way, working on a “side project” (gross), expanding my skills in a hobby, or filling the time with people by going out to concerts, restaurants or other activities a Toronto-based 20-something would partake in that are considered Instagram-able.

A few friends were going to Antonio’s to make dinner. I opted to stay home so I could see my dad. He ended up going to his friend’s place…

Looking back on the days where I did absolutely none of that, it still felt rewarding because I have a footnote of what the nothing consisted of. My day didn’t feel completely wasted. Maybe it’s my inner completionist but seeing a calendar with an event titled “just chilled” with a few notes brought me more satisfaction than having a completely blank slate. Plus, it reassured me that I didn’t have to do something “productive” every day to have a life that felt full.

Blank days happen

Needless to say, I do get lazy with this — missing events, skimping on the details, repetitive events with no distinguishable features. Whole days where I would go to work, come home, do little to nothing, and not have a modicum of proof for the events of that day. Sometimes I won’t backfill my calendar for a whole week and will need to spend a painstaking amount of time searching the depths of my brain to recover any images that spark my memories.

I have a few days where the only event is “volleyball” but nothing else recorded, not even any notes in the event description. Nothing about those days sticks out to me and it does make me a little sad but I don’t dwell on it too much, again, I can’t remember everything.

My Google Calendar isn’t the panacea to my terrible memory, and I never intended for it to be, but there’s so much more I wish I could remember. I’m trying my best to keep memories alive and there are other platforms that help. The intent behind the 1 Second Everyday app is wonderful and adds an extra visual layer to my memory journey. I try to take a lot of photos which I back up in Google Photos since it offers unlimited storage (once more, shout out Big Brother).

There are no hard and fast rules to all this, I’ve changed my approach to my calendar many times. But the end result is the same: I want to have a recollection of my life and I want to make it feel like no days have gone wasted. The experiences I’ve lived, the information I’m absorbing, the people I spend time with, the highlights, lowlights, and everything in between; I hope that these memories paint the picture of a life worth living, one that I hope to be proud of when it’s all said and done.

So the next time someone asks me “what have you been up to, Norm?” I can give the most detailed, long-winded answer ever. Count your blessings.