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Productivity Hacks to Make The Most Out of Google Calendar

More people depend on Google Calendar now, but not everyone knows how to maximize it. Read these tips for a solid productivity boost.

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Now more than ever, Google Calendar is proving to be an essential tool for anyone who needs help keeping track of their busy schedule. But many of its great features aren’t getting used, because a lot of people don’t know about them. 

Productivity Boost via the Google Calendar App


So let’s take a look at the things you should know about managing your events on Google Calendar, so that it can become a much more efficient tool for you.


Creating events is how you get things started on Google Calendar. Clicking on “Create event” brings you into a mini-event editor, which lets you quickly add a reminder for an appointment, phone call, or any other important happening in the future. This is where most people stop, doing only the bare minimum of what’s required to create an event. 

Of course, that’s not how we roll, so let’s go ahead and add some extra details.


Tip #1: Use the event description field

The events description field can contain all sorts of associated information for the event that you're planning. 


When you click on “More options,” you’ll see the full event screen and all the options that are built into the editor. 

In the description field, you can add formatted text (notes about the appointment that you're planning, reminders for yourself, etc.) which everyone who’s included in the event can access. For example, if you're booking a meeting with your team, you can type in the meeting agenda here. 

You can also attach different things here, like a document that has a list of different topics for your meeting. This attachment can come from Google Drive, or you can upload it from your computer. 


And again, if there's multiple people involved, they all will have access to all of the assets for the meeting that they need.

Your formatting options are versatile: You can create bullet lists or ordered lists, incorporate web links, apply boldface or italic styling, and so on.


Tip #2: Email and update event guests via the Google Calendar app

In the guest area, you can add additional people to your meeting. Google Calendar will automatically send invitations to those individuals via email. 



And if they say that they're available in the email, it'll automatically populate their calendars and let the meeting host (in this case, you) know that they are available. You can give the attendees permission to actually modify the event details, invite other people, or see who else is coming. 

Anytime you make a change to this event, everybody on the list can be notified; you always have the option to let everybody know about any changes or not. For instance, if you're just adding some agenda items, you might not want to let everybody know. But if you're changing the time of the meeting, then you want to let everybody know, of course. 


Tip #3: Use ‘Find a time’ on the Google Calendar app

Next is a feature called “Find a time,” which is extremely useful if you are booking a meeting with multiple people.

You know how difficult it is to get everybody available for a meeting at a certain time. Fortunately, Google Calendar has this feature built in.

It works best when everybody on your team is using Google Calendar, so that the app can then check their calendars to see what their availability is. Basically, it goes out and crowdsources everybody's availability, and lets you know when they're available, so that you can actually book a meeting that people will actually have time to attend.

I found a really great tutorial video from a teacher in California named Josh Harris (you can check out the video on his channel here).


Tip #4: Add meeting location (even if it’s just an online meeting)

Unsurprisingly, Google Calendar has location services that are built in (thanks of course to Google Maps), allowing you to set the location of your meeting. So when you click the location field, you’ll see an example of how the entire Google ecosystem works in sync. Personally, I think this is one of the best features of this app.

Let's say I'm booking a meeting with my team for Halloween. And so we're going to plan a Halloween party meeting. Now, my team is spread around the entire world, so it'll be difficult for us all to get together. But still, I can choose one physical location, just to serve as a pin for the event itself. When you type the direct address of the place into the field, Google Maps will find it for you. You can even type the name of a restaurant or convention center and the app can locate it. 

After you do this, Google does a neat little thing: it finds a nice header graphic for your event (because you wrote “Halloween party”) and adds a cute, appropriately themed image. It does this for everything from dental consultations to Christmas parties. 

It displays this same header image across all the other places where I can access my calendar (like my smartphone). 

Basically, Google Maps and Google Calendar sync across all my devices, helping me get to the right location of my meeting on time. 


Tip #5: Manage your Google Calendar notifications 

Google Calendar will notify you of upcoming meetings and appointments through a variety of different mechanisms.



You can choose to receive an email notification of an event, or to use the notification tool on your smartphone or computer to let you know.  I've got mine set to use device notifications only and let me know 10 minutes ahead. 

But if you are the sort of person who needs more time to prepare, you might choose a different time frame, say, an email reminder 45 minutes or half an hour before your meeting. So you can set up your different notification systems to best suit your own work style. 

Tip #6: Use customizable recurring events on your Google Calendar app

Now, if you have recurring events in your life, you can set that up as well using Google Calendar’s feature that allows you to set up repeating events. 


You can set up a daily repeat between 8 AM to 9 AM to block off that time for your morning routine, for example, so that it's not accidentally booked in any other calendar by some other person who created an appointment with you in it.

Additionally, if you go into the custom menu, you can choose a day of the week for which you can set up a repeating event. In my case, I set up a recurring event every third Wednesday of the month for my YouTube Meetup group. Even though the date of that repeating event will change every month (because naturally, the third Wednesday of the month will be a different day in the month), it still sets up the repeating event. This way, I’ll never miss it, having that booked and blocked off in my calendar. 


Tip #7: Use shortcut views on Google Calendar

Last but not the least, you can customize your view on Google Calendar based on your  preferences. 


You can have the month view up by default; sometimes, though, if you want to dive down and glance at a day, you can use the glance view. Just go over to the drop down menu and choose the view you like.

You’ll also notice that there are some keyboard indications that we can actually hit to make the process quicker. If we want to view the day, for example, we can just hit D and it will change to the day view. Tapping W will show us a week at a glance. And so on.


Furthermore, you can also use the number keys to achieve the same effect. So if you hit number 1, that shows you the day at a glance. Number 2 shows you your week at a glance. Number 3 shows the month at a glance number, 4 shows you your work week, and 5 shows you the schedule view (a list of all of your appointments).

On my smartphone, I have the schedule view on my calendar by default, as it’s simply the most efficient way to do it on such a small screen. 


I hope these tips can help you make the most out of Google Calendar! You can watch the full video here for a more comprehensive demo.

Oh, and if you want to become more efficient at using the different digital tools for work at your disposal, sign up to our Webinar Wednesdays here.

Have fun storming the castle!

7 Google Calendar Tips and Tricks To Master Google Calendar Without Breaking A Sweat

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