The Day I Deleted My Future

I don’t remember the exact day, but I do remember the tears. I even remember the moment in which I created my demise and it was hours before I realized I was in deep doo-doo.

Here’s the story: I was standing in line with my husband at Wegmans and, like most young modern women, I was putting something on my mobile calendar while waiting. I must have also been playing around with the features in my calendar because I vaguely remember clearing out what I thought was an archived to-do list. I don’t remember the prompt my phone gave me, but I do remember it saying something like, “Are you sure?” and I thought I was very sure so I hit okay and moved on.

Later that afternoon I got a call from my mom asking me if I was still attending a family event. I, (in my foolishly arrogant way) replied, “Yes, Ma, I said I was coming on the calendar invite, why would I suddenly change my mind?” My mom explained how she just talked to my aunt who said I declined the event. After reassuring my mom I would be there, I turned to my husband and related what happened. I probably also added some snarky comment about the futility of replying to a calendar invite when I was going to have to verbally reply as well. This was moments before I realized the chocolate had already hit the fan. That’s when my husband replied that he also noticed I had declined all of our appointments together as well. I stopped what I was doing, turned to my husband and said,  “What do you mean?”. Before he could answer, I rushed to my computer and looked at my calendar. It was blank. Like blank-blank.

My calendar normally looks like this

My mind raced as I tried to figure out when this horrible, terrible nightmare could have happened. That’s when I realized, while standing in line at the grocery store, I had erased all the events on my calendar past, present, and future spanning about 5 years. .. .

To give some context as to why this was so heartbreaking,  I LIVE by my calendar--it lets me know who to call, where to go, and how to plan my day. I even have bedtime events and reminders on my calendar (Hey, a girl needs her rest!).

After my "power play," my calendar looked like this

I use my calendar for every doctor’s appointment, client meeting, wedding, and even funerals. I set it and forget it. It is my proof of life, my personal assistant that keeps me on track with my day and to-do lists--my way of documenting my existence and how I keep track of all my future events.

All of it gone--with one button push while in line at the grocery store! Hours earlier as I was glancing at magazine tabloids about Kim Kardashian (because when isn’t she in the tabloids?) and recipes on the best dessert of the season while I single-fingeredly threw my life into cyberspace wasteland.

As the panic drained my face of color my dear husband sprang into action as he saw the tears rolling down my face.Together we began to look for a solution and came across a software called Spanning Undelete for Google Calendar (particularly the one in the Chrome Apps Marketplace). Here’s what to do if you ever (God-forbid) need to get your calendar back:  Install the app, and sign into your Google profile. The app will see all the calendars you have created so you can then go in and click all the calendar events you’d like to undelete. The only caveat is all your undeleted events will also have “undeleted” in the title (which, in my opinion is a small price to pay for getting everything back!).

My digital misstep happened sometime in the summer of 2015. But in November 2015, Google created a “trash” folder for Google Calendar. During the time of my catastrophe, once you deleted an event you were up a creek without a paddle. Now the trash folder for Google Calendar holds deleted messages for 30 days. This new feature is great for things that you need to add back within a few days (like an event that was cancelled but then is suddenly back on). But for calendar events that you want to resurrect prior to 30 days you can use Spanning.

So, if you’re ever standing in line at the grocery store and you push a button and it says “Are you sure?” Well, you better be, or you might just be deleting your future, too!

Andrea Hancock is a professional organizer & productivity student, blogger, speaker, and educator that assists and empowers busy professionals, business owners and those experiencing major life transitions to create and maintain organizational systems that work for them personally.  Andrea is also founder of Dexterous Organizing, a results-oriented professional organizing company.  Book a free 15-minute Discovery Call to begin your journey to better productivity and more organizational prowess. Also visit our website at www.DexterousOrganizing.com or give us a call at (703) 606-8968.