Productivity apps played a huge role in this transformation. Still, I didn’t use the Calendar app on my phone beyond the usual use cases like meetings, checking holidays, and birthdays.
One of my friends did, and it took him a painful heartbreak to realize the true potential of the Google Calendar app.
He didn’t find anything that I’d call ‘hidden.’ Instead, he used all the known features, but he used them smartly to his advantage.
He narrated the whole story to me a couple of days ago about how he did it, and it completely changed how I see Google Calendar.
4 quiet Calendar upgrades that changed how I manage my time
Google Calendar’s lesser known features can dramatically improve time management
My friend created recurring routines on Google Calendar
Developing discipline takes time. It requires a lot of planning and practice. My friend created recurring routines to achieve discipline again in his life.
Recurring events or tasks are those that repeat daily, weekly, or monthly, or even yearly. You can also set custom days using the repeat menu.
My friend would create events like Morning walk, Gym, Sleep before midnight, Call parents, Journaling, and then change the Does not repeat menu to Every day.
These recurring events helped him stop feeling directionless after he woke up every morning.
These recurring events helped him get back to a healthier mindset, something he lost after the heartbreak.
Setting a notification for each event
In Google Calendar, you can set notifications for each event. Setting up a notification is an important step because it ensures you don’t forget the event.
My friend used to add multiple notifications for each event. This would have given him alerts 30 minutes, 15 minutes, and 5 minutes before the event.
These reminders appear as phone notifications and lock screen alerts, so it’s less likely that you will miss these, and that was the whole point.
Deleting future plans was the hardest part
They shared calendars, invited each other to events, planned trips together, and whatnot. After choosing to move on, he removed all the shared calendars.
This erased all their plans that were supposed to happen in the future. He told me that this was the hardest thing to do — way harder than deleting photos.
To unshare a calendar, you must use the Google Calendar web client. You need to follow only a few easy steps to stop sharing your calendar with someone.
Open Google Calendar on the web, click the three-line menu, hover the mouse cursor over the calendar you shared, click the three-dot menu, and select Settings and sharing.
Next, click the Shared with option to see the people you shared your calendar with and remove anyone you want.
Color-coded calendars
My friend doesn’t open the Google Calendar app every day to learn about his plans for an entire day. Instead, he uses the Google Calendar widgets, just like me.
However, his Calendar widgets look far more exciting than mine. The only reason I felt that way was the use of different color codes to mark each event.
This wasn’t his motivation, though. My friend used different color codes for each event to have clearer visual clarity.
I took inspiration from him and tried the same color-coding trick myself, and suddenly my entire day looked far more structured.
To use color-coding in Google Calendar events, select a time slot in the app, tap the event card, scroll to the bottom, and tap the Default color option.
This will open up a range of color options. Google Calendar has 11 color codes, which are more than enough to have a unique visual clarity for each event throughout the day.
I use Basil for workout, Blueberry for work, and Banana for social.
This is the first time Google Calendar felt personal
Technology alone is interesting and thought-provoking only to a handful of people. The trick is to use it to make things easier for everyone.
This is when technology feels personal. Google Calendar had everything to make me feel that way, but sometimes it takes the right situation to see the personal side of an app.
As much as I feel sorry about my friend’s heartbreak, I’m glad that I didn’t have to live in a similar kind of situation to discover that side of Google Calendar.
I won’t let it go to waste. I’ll use Google Calendar the right way, just like my friend did, to be more disciplined and efficient in everything I do in a day.
