Better Self-Management Using Google Calendar

Google Calendar is more than your normal calendar. It allows you to fully manage your schedule the way you want it to be. Its outstanding customization will make you become more organized and efficient.

However, in case you are not used to all the features, it could be confusing. In this article, we will explain briefly about the useful and unique features that you might not know.

Time Blocking 

Time blocking is defined as a time management technique dividing one day into blocks of time. This is one of the main and basic features of Google Calendar. It simply allows you to add or edit blocks depending on your schedule more efficiently. This will help you to be more focused, understand the overview of your schedule better, and therefore, stops you from overwork/overschedule. Time blocking does not always mean that you need to schedule every minute of the day. Being too precise might has the opposite effect on you.

The first important point that you need to know is that you can add new sections in your My Calendar at the bottom left of your screen and change the setting for each section. As an example, you can divide it into meeting, tasks, personal, and many more depending on your needs. For each setting, you can change the color (this is good for the visibility of your calendar so that you understand the overview and balance of your schedule at one glance) and reminder (you might want to be reminded 10 minutes before a meeting and no reminder for personal events).

After making the sections, then you can add new events easier based on your schedule. When adding new events/blocks, you can even just drag your mouse in the schedule rather than typing the time which is convenient. In addition to this, Google Calendar allows you to set regular events weekly, monthly, or anytime you want.

Some might say it is complicated but it is not. When you have set up your sections according to your activities and make the blocks, you will know the overview of your schedule and know how much work/rest that you need to do in a day/week. Furthermore, you will be reminded by Google Calendar before the important events. This way, you can have a healthier and more productive life balance.

Shortcut Keys

Directing your mouse and looking for specific things that you want could be very tiring. Google Calendar has an easier solution for this. First of all, just by typing cal.new in your search engine will direct you to create new events in Google Calendar. This also works with other Google tools (slides.new, sheets.new, etc.). Moreover, you might know that you can change the view of the calendar based on day, week, month, or year. Guess what, you can just use shortcut keys (D for Day, M for Month, Y for Year) that saves a bit of your time. Typing G will also help you to go to a specific date, and typing T will direct you back to the current date.

Time Zone

In case you are working with clients from different countries, conversing the time manually could be inconvenient. Google Calendar has two features that will aid you in this. First, it is possible to display a secondary time zone and it will appear just beside your main time zone in your Google Calendar. By going into the setting, and then time zone, you can just select the time zone you want. Second, by going into the setting, and then world clock, you can add as many time zones as possible and it will be displayed on your left side of your Google Calendar.

Daily Agenda

It is always good to have an overview of your schedule at the beginning of the day. Google Calendar could send you a daily agenda every day and it will help you to manage to prepare yourself better. You can manage this by going into the setting, setting for my calendar, other notifications, and change the option for daily agenda from none to Email.

Integration & Add On

When we said that Google Calendar is more than just a calendar, it is true. It is possible to integrate different tools and add on to your Google Calendar to suit you the best. A convenient point of using Google Workspace is that one application integrates to other applications smoothly.

Google Hangout which is one of the popular options for meetings is easier to use because you can schedule the meeting from Google Calendar and share the link of the meeting with others. In case you are using Zoom, you can also integrate Zoom into your Google Calendar so that you can set up a Zoom meeting easier. Another example is that you can use Google Keep and Google Calendar at the same time. Google Keep is a free note-taking service by Google and once integrated into Google Calendar, you can manage yourself better by taking notes of the key points from the activities during the day.

In addition to this, you can add Google Calendar extensions according to your needs. Checker Plus allows you have better control of your calendar without even entering the Google Calendar itself. TeamCal allows you to have better control of a team’s calendar and you can view and manage the schedule of your team better. Timely allows you to track the real-time you spend on meetings more efficiently. There still a lot of extensions that could enhance the performance of your Google Calendar.

Closing

Managing your schedule has never been easier. Using Google Calendar’s features such as time blocking tools, time zones, shortcut keys, and extensions, you can customize your Google Calendar based on your needs and when you get used to it, you are guaranteed to become more organized and manage yourself better.

We hope you have a better understanding of Google Calendar after reading this article.