A Better Way to Keep Track of Recurring Appointments

Appointments can be challenging to stay on top of.

It’s not just remembering to go to the appointment you scheduled - that’s what calendars and reminders are for.

It’s also remembering to make the appointment in the first place.

Why Recurring Appointments Are So Hard to Manage


Most adults more or less successfully stay on top of various appointments - annual physical, dental cleanings, eye exams, and haircuts. If you think through what’s actually involved in doing this, it’s a minor miracle.

To make this happen, you need to know or look up

  1. The practice or business you go to for that. If you’ve moved or they’ve since closed or no longer accept your insurance, you might need to find a new provider
  2. How to contact them. A phone number, email address, or online form, etc
  3. When you last went in
  4. How often you’re supposed to go in
  5. When it’s time to go back, based on 3. and 4.
  6. What your availability is around that time is

Not mandatory, but helpful to know:

  1. How far in advance they make appointments available
  2. How far out they’re typically booked

Then, you need to remember to schedule an appointment somewhere between when appointments become available and when they fill up, add it to your calendar, protect it from scheduling conflicts (or reschedule), and remember to actually show up.

Multiply that by the number of appointments for you and anyone else (like a parent, spouse, or children) whose appointments you also schedule.

The preventive care appointments above are just the most common. Maybe you also get an annual skin cancer screening with a dermatologist, or see other specialists - a neurologist or cardiologist, for example. Maybe you see a therapist or psychiatrist. Maybe you go to a chiropractor, a physical therapist, or get massages regularly. Perhaps you get manicures, pedicures, waxes, spray tans, or other personal services.

The amount of effort (and potentially stress) needed to stay on top of all of this has the potential to be overwhelming.

The good news is that understanding why it’s overwhelming is the first step to managing the chaos.

A Simple System for Tracking Recurring Appointments


Working backwards from the above, you need:

  1. Timely reminders to schedule an appointment (far enough in advance that appointments are available, not so far out they’re not accepting them)
  2. The target date
  3. Details necessary to make the appointment at the ready (contact info, name of the provider to schedule with)
  4. Your calendar open to the target date so you can quickly choose the best option

To know when to schedule the next appointment, you need two pieces of information:

  • when you last went
  • how often you're supposed to go

From there you can calculate the target date.

But the target date isn't actually when you need to think about it.

You need to remember several weeks before the target date, when appointments are actually available.

This is really just a special case of infrequently recurring tasks. It’s totally possible to build this system with just a piece of paper and a writing instrument of your choice or a spreadsheet by following the same steps, but reserving “next due” for the “timely reminder” date, and adding extra columns for the next target date, contact info, provider name, min weeks before, max weeks before, next window start, and next window end dates.

Signs Your Appointment System Isn't Working


I said above that most adults more or less stay on top of their appointments. Mostly it's less, and it looks like this:

  • You only remember to schedule appointments after you become overdue.
  • You can't remember when you last saw your dentist.
  • You put "Call dermatologist" on your to-do list every few weeks.
  • You miss the ideal scheduling window because appointments are booked months out.
  • You feel like you're constantly starting from scratch.

The Shortcut to Staying On Top of Appointments


A dedicated recurring appointment system should do the bookkeeping for you.

  • It should remember when you last went.
  • It should calculate when you're due again.
  • It should remind you during the scheduling window—not on the day you're already overdue.

That's exactly the problem I built Gantry to solve.