Google Calendar to Simplify Life and Set Goals

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve become something of a Google calendar fanatic.  I’ve completely outsourced my memory to it and have it open much of the day on my laptop and phone.

I used to love having a printed calendar, but disliked having to carry it with me for those frequent times that I needed to check it when I was away from the house.  Printed calendars meant that I usually still had to keep the bits of paper clutter associated with the calendar entry (the slip that listed all the food allergies on the soccer team when I’m in charge of snacks, etc.)

With Google calendar, I either copy-paste the detailed information for the appointment or task and add it to the “notes” section of the entry, or I transcribe the details/contact info on the paper. Then I toss the piece of paper away.  Having all of the information in one place saves me a lot of time and throwing away paper helps keep my house from getting cluttered.

The ability to have the calendar with me at all times (since I always have my phone with me), has really helped me to minimize conflicts and keep on task each day.

Google calendar (free app) helps me keep track of everything: events, appointments, chores, my grocery list, weekly menus, and family and friend birthdays.

There are also some helpful writing-related applications for the app:

I add a mini-outline each day on the calendar so I know what I’m planning on writing that day (and can grab a few extra minutes to write when I’m out of the house and having to unexpectedly wait on something or someone).   Just jotting a line or two down can give me enough direction so that I know what I’m writing next.

I put the editorial calendar for this blog on my Google calendar.

I like adding goals to the calendar using the new goals feature.  Google recently released a new goals feature for its calendar.  You can schedule in your writing goals or reading goals, or even personal goals for exercise, etc.  You add the goal, tell Google how often and what the best general time of day is to complete it,  and Google schedules it into available time on your calendar.  When the goal reminder pops up, you can defer it or mark it as completed .  Google learns what times work better for you when you defer, edit, or complete goals.

Using the calendar as a crutch to outsource my memory and important tasks also helps me feel less stressed out and more creative. Whenever I read about helpful plugins on WordPress or a smart way to optimize my Amazon book pages, I used to feel that I needed to drop what I was doing and work on the task while it was fresh on my mind.  Not only did this put me behind, it also stressed me out because I wasn’t finishing one task before beginning another.  Now I’m scheduling these types of tasks in the future on my calendar and adding the links to the helpful articles in the notes section.

A few tips: 

Print out the month view of the Google calendar and put it somewhere accessible if it’s too hard to quickly see potential event conflicts on the app (sometimes I have to look at a print out to really absorb what my week looks like).

Save time by sharing calendars with someone else.  You can make a lot of different calendars on the Google calendar app and choose which ones you share out.  So if I make a calendar that only has my daughter’s soccer schedule on it, then I can choose to share that one with her so that she knows/can be responsible for her schedule, too.

As a reminder–if you rely heavily on this or the Apple  iCal, remember to back up the calendar.  Can you imagine losing all that data? It would be as if I’d suffered complete memory loss all in one fell swoop.

What’s one of your favorite tools to stay organized and keep up with goals?

And, as a quick note, I’ve got an interview with author and podcaster Stephen Campbell up on his site, The Author Biz (one of my favorite podcasts to listen to and always informative). I’m talking about my experience with pre-orders: