19 Google Calendar Hacks and Tricks to Supercharge Your Productivity

Google Calendar originally launched in 2009 and is now one of the more widely used scheduling and calendar apps. Using Google Calendar is fairly straightforward, but there are a number of surprising features and integration that you can use to improve productivity in your personal and professional lives.

This article will discuss some of the favorite Google Calendar hacks to enhance your efficiency.

Hacks for Saving Time with Google Calendar

If you're struggling to maximize your time at work, you must tap into the wealth of Google Calendar hacks discussed below.

1. Set a Better Default Calendar View

Setting a better default calendar view is essential in customizing this tool. Remember, most calendars have a standard monthly view. This might work for you, especially when handling complex projects with extended deadlines.

However, if you want to track small daily tasks, you should change it to Day view. This will help you focus on your job's finer details while monitoring the time used in each task.

Generally, there's no trick to setting the default view. However, it would help if you analyzed your work and how you want to accomplish your goals. That's how you'll determine the default view that works for you.

2. Manage Your Calendar, Tasks, and Notes in One Place with Fellow

Your calendar should play a critical role in organizing your next meeting, keeping meeting notes close to you, and informing you of the decision made in previous sessions.

Fellow enables you to keep your notes and tasks tied to the calendar for quick access. This auto-software is focused on streamlining your meetings by offering fine details such as attendees and meeting details.

You don't have to waste time searching for meeting notes. Everything is professionally organized and easier to find.

3. Use Schedule View to See a List of Your Upcoming Events

As a leading business owner, you probably have many issues to handle. Your days are tightly occupied up to the last hour. In such a case, it's sometimes challenging to remember what you'll be doing, let's say, on May 1st during lunch hour.

Google Calendar can help you have a schedule view of all the upcoming events. In addition, you'll have a list of all the events and activities you'll undertake in the next few months.

Again, the goal is to make you organized as you don't have to scroll week-by-week. Instead, you can quickly check your appointments and discover whether you've anything penciled for any specific date and time.

4. Create Different Calendars for Different Parts of Your Life

As highlighted earlier, your goal is to improve productivity in your social, professional, and personal lives. Luckily, Google Calendar allows you to create a separate calendar for each part of your life. Honestly, you can create different calendars for any aspect of your life and your business.

An excellent way to use this feature is to create a calendar for your conference room. In this case, your team will not have to stalk the facility to verify its availability. You'll also cut on unnecessary expenses such as conference room management software.

5. Use "Find a time" or "Suggested times" to Schedule Group Meetings

Scheduling group meetings is always a challenge. There will always be an individual occupied when other group members are available.

It would help if you did not overlook the "Find A Time" tab. This feature allows you to check the schedules of all the group members in one spot to organize the meeting when everyone is available.

However, to access the "Find A Time" feature, you need to connect to your team through Google Workspace or subscribe to your guests' Google Calendars.

6. Sync Meetings with Your CRM

As a business, you have a customer relationship management system in place. Here, you've to attend to customer queries on scheduled dates and times for maximum satisfaction.

Juggling between your calendar and customer relationship management software is annoying and time-consuming. Synchronizing your customer relationship management with Google Calendar using available integrations will make your work easier.

If you have the two systems working together, it will be easier and more seamless to address customer needs without wasting time. Also, it will be easier to honor all the appointments with your customers as the calendar acts as your reminder.

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7. Hide Low-Priority Calendars When Not Needed

As highlighted above, you can create unlimited calendars for anything you want. For example, you can have Google calendars for your conference facility, office messenger, marketing team, and company vehicle.

As much as these calendars are essential, many of them could hurt your productivity. For example, they might clutter your calendar or create an impression that you've too much to handle.

Essentially, you want your calendar to detail main events. Google Calendar features allow you to hide low-priority calendars when not needed. Then, using the same feature, you can quickly access such calendars when required.

8. Minimize Distractions with Fewer Notifications

The ultimate objective of your Google Calendar is to keep you informed. Therefore, you'll always get notifications ten minutes before your next event. This is a welcome aspect as it helps you to prepare in advance.

However, in some instances, too many notifications can distract you. Often, you'll be tempted to move away from your task and check on the Google Calendar.

You can quickly deal with distractive notifications by switching to 'browser notification'. Instead of being pulled to your calendar, Google will show a friendly notice in the right-hand corner of your screen.

9. Make Scheduling Easier by Sharing Your Calendar

If you're working in a team, you should make scheduling more accessible by sharing your calendar. Then, everyone in the group will be aware of your schedule, commitments, appointments, and deadlines.

Also, sharing your Google Calendar with your team members helps to eliminate late meetings or missing deadlines.

You can share your calendar to address your personal life. Family members can quickly see your upcoming events, while your friends can organize parties when you're free.

10. Use Calendly to Make Scheduling Easier without Giving Access

Sharing your upcoming events makes scheduling easier. However, if you've granted access to your calendar, there's a higher chance that your free time will get abused. For example, some people might schedule meetings during lunchtime.

As much as you would like people to know your schedule, you need to maintain control of your calendar. Signing up for Calendly helps you to set availability preferences. For example, you can easily set meetings at your preferred time.

11. Add Any Meeting Documents as Attachments

In group meetings, people want to access all the documents to track the conversation. So, you have to keep sharing the meeting agenda templates, minutes, and other relevant documents with all the group members to keep them involved.

However, you don't have to keep sharing each meeting document with group members. Instead, you can easily attach all the relevant documents to Google Calendar, where each member can access them.

12. Set Up Working Hours to Keep Meetings Aligned with Your Schedule

Professionally, you should attend all the meetings during your working hours. This will enable you to remain productive and incorporate formality.

You should set up your working hours to align all the meetings with your work schedule. For example, you don't want to have discussions while you should be attending to some critical issues at home.

In such a case, it's critical to customize your calendar to communicate your working hours. This will make it seamless for your team and clients to schedule meetings.

13. Email All Meeting Attendants Directly from Google Calendar

There's no reason why you should invite guests into a meeting and then email the details separately. You'll be wasting your precious time by duplicating tasks.

That's why your Google Calendar is helping you to email all the meeting attendants directly. All the details will be captured here, and they will reach your guests simultaneously.

Remember, you can change meeting details on Google Calendar, and your guests will receive an email notification. You can also uncheck some guests who don't have to attend the meeting.

14. Set Up Daily Agenda Emails

Some events might catch you off guard. For example, you could have forgotten an event your manager planned last month.

You don't have to scramble for the meeting. Instead, with a Google Calendar, you can set up daily agenda emails where you will get notifications on what you've planned for the Day.

Daily agenda emails or notifications will assist you in preparing in advance and getting organized with all the necessary materials.

15. Set Events to Private to Keep Meetings Confidential

Sharing your calendar is highly encouraged. It makes scheduling seamless, especially when working in a team. However, sometimes you want to keep some events private.

Unfortunately, if you've shared your Google Calendar, any meeting or event will automatically be viewed by other people on your list. However, you have the option of editing the visibility settings.

Using this option, you can set individual events private. This feature is also essential when you have an out of office confidential appointment.

16. Minimize Interruptions by Setting Time Blocks for Focused Work

If you want to achieve optimum productivity with Google Calendar, you need to set time blocks where you will focus on specific tasks. For example, you can efficiently devote every morning to creative work.

Time blocks are essential as they help you reduce the time wasted when switching from one task to the other. In addition, focusing on a specific job at a time enables you to achieve overall productivity.

However, you need to ensure that you've balanced your time blocks professionally. This will help you avoid spending too much time on some tasks while ignoring others.

17. Automatically Decline Events When You're Out of Office

Although you're focused on listening to your clients' needs, sometimes you need to focus on your personal life. Besides spending time with your family, you'll need time to rest and rejuvenate.

In this case, you need to set up working hours so that you can handle meetings and queries at an inappropriate time. On the other hand, when you're not working, your Google Calendar should automatically decline appointments.

Your clients need to know that you're not available for meetings, calls or invites. This welcome approach prevents unnecessary scheduling, especially when home or on vacation.

18. Add Video Conferencing Link Directly in Google Calendar

The hacks discussed above seem to address in-person meetings. How about a virtual gathering? Google Calendar has also been designed to incorporate a video conferencing link to your event invite. By clicking on "Add Google Meet video conferencing", you'll generate a meeting ID without a sweat.

Google Calendar also allows you to schedule a virtual Zoom event. Instead of using the traditional method of creating a Zoom meeting and sharing the link manually, this calendar will enable you to use the Zoom Google Calendar add-on.

19. Subscribe to Other People's Calendars

Your calendar needs to work in tandem with those of the people around you. You should not schedule events that overlap with other appointments, such as vacations, doctor's appointments, and family obligations.

However, this will only be possible if you've subscribed to other people's calendars. Google Calendar allows you to view multiple calendars simultaneously.

Also, you don't work in a bubble. Therefore, it's critical to know when your vendors, bosses, and co-workers are available for a chat. This will help you customize your calendar to conform with your peers'.

Conclusion

These are some of the top productivity hacks for Google Calendar. However, there's so much tucked inside of Google Calendar. So, as you contemplate making your work easier, take some time to analyze what this productivity tool offers. Chances are Google Calendar has a solution for whatever ails you.

Is it time to enhance your productivity with Google Calendar? Fellow makes your meetings seamless by organizing your calendar, notes, and tasks in one place. Your Google Calendar syncs with Fellow calendar, making your sessions ready as soon as you sign up.

Get started with Fellow today and get a clear picture of your tasks before, during, and after the meetings.