Howdy!
~bartender? Just coffee, please.
Calendar.
Well, after trying a number of things myself my answer to your question is this:
The technology is kind of irrelevant. What is relevant though, is the habit of having this thing at your fingertips practically always. If you don't have it at hand in less than 5 seconds, it will rot. In my not so humble opinion it is that easy. It got better for me only after I established a weekly review, where I look at the past week and the next. Without that weekly review (on Sundays) the calendar thing sinks into irrelevance fast. And lately I have succeeded in having the thing in my hands when making new appointments. After all these years :)
Some details:
- in the kitchen there is the family calendar on paper. I print this thing out every year. If something is NOT in there, it does not exist. If something else is in there at the same day, that something else wins.
- I have tried twice to use a smart phone. Does not work for me. Even though synchronizing to a private NextCloud instance did work.
- I use emacs/org-mode for most of my stuff, but calendar is a paper thing, 2 pages per month.
- Private and work life are two distinct areas with negligible overlap.
Good luck!