Organizing your life, both on personal and professional fronts by balancing it well with the multi-tasking needs, which is the order of the day, would necessitate deft time management by scheduling events and tasks throughout the day for all days of the month and year. It boils down to respecting time by making the best use of the Google Calendar or another weekly blank calendar template, which helps to schedule events and meetings as well as tasks and reminds you of the upcoming events, so there is no chance of missing.

Google has recently launched a brand-new Google Calendar with a lot of new and improved features that will make your life easier and more enjoyable by helping to take better control of your life.  In addition to familiarizing with the features that tell you about the various ways you can use the calendar, you must also know some of Calendly’s Google Calendar tips to get the most from it.

Setting up the Google Calendar that comes with your personal Gmail address is quite easy. If your company uses the Google Calendar, you must know how to integrate the personal calendar with the official one so that there is no conflict between the two. As you add more events to the calendar, that task of managing the calendar will not remain as simple as it was in the beginning, but there are some cool hacks on knowing which you would be comfortable to allow the calendar guide you through the day for all days of the year.

Cover different parts of your life with separate calendars

To start with, you will have one Google Calendar assigned against your name and appearing under My Calendars. As you can make out from the description that there is provision for accommodating more than one calendar as evident from the plurality. You might like to use the calendar for multiple purposes besides managing your actual schedule. You may use it for scheduling repeated reminders and planning periods of focused work time too. But you have only one place to accommodate varied activities, and all the areas get equal importance in the calendar. As a result, it will not be possible to quickly and easily focus on the important, non-repetitive tasks that you have for the day.

To overcome the problem, create a new calendar for each area of your life, you want to track through the Google Calendar. By clicking on the plus (+) sign, you can create a new calendar and give it a name that describes the area it pertains to.

Add attachments

It often happens that during a meeting, you might need to reference a relevant document like a spreadsheet or Google doc that every participant of the meeting works with. Therefore, it is important to make sure that all attendees of the meeting have all materials they need in the meeting beforehand so that they do not hunt for it during the meeting. By using the feature of attaching documents to the Google Calendar, you can accomplish the task easily.  The attachments are accessible to the guests who can open and review it.

To attach a document to the event, follow these steps.

From the calendar view, click on the event block and edit the event by using the pencil icon. Choose the paper clip icon from the event’s edit screen above the description section. Click on the paper clip icon and proceed to upload files from Google Drive.

‘Find a time’ and ‘suggested times’ to fix a meeting

It can be a tough task to set up a meeting with several people who have busy schedules by finding a common time when all would be free.  This is where Google Calendar can make things easy for you by doing the heavy lifting by using the features ‘Find a time’ and ‘Suggested times.’ Before you use any or both the features ensure that all people you want in the meeting are included in the calendar. Next, you can click on the link ‘Suggested times’ below the guests’ names, and a drop-down list will appear that includes your available time and the times of the meeting guests by avoiding overlap and conflicts.

Another way of finding a convenient time for all meeting guests is to use the ‘Find a time’ link. You will find the link ‘Find a time’ next to the ‘Event details,’ and the schedule of all persons will be visible on the day of the meeting. On finding a time that is free from conflicts, click on it and save by pressing the button at the top of the calendar.

Set your working hours

Although you might not follow nine-to-five working hours, your co-workers could be following it. Google Calendar has a feature to set your working hours that help those with non-conventional working schedules to remain in sync with their colleagues by helping them to remember it. By using the feature ‘Working Hours,’ you can alert other people about your working hours that they can consider when fixing a meeting that falls beyond your working hours.

To set the working hours, click on the settings or gear icon of the calendar and spot the ‘Working Hours’ section where you can input your working hours on each day of the week.

Enable your world clock

If your work entails working with people across the world located at different time zones, you need to know their times corresponding to yours so that you can set up meetings conveniently by knowing their appropriate times. To know the times across other time zones, activate the world clock in the Google Calendar by clicking on the link ‘World Clock.’   To check the times, click the gear or settings icon on the calendar view and select the time zones from you want to see by using the calendar view.  When you return to the calendar view after setting the times zones, the selected time zones would appear as list below the calendar visible in the left-hand sidebar.

There are many more features of Google Calendar that address a variety of user needs.