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How to use Google Calendar for getting Organized

Posted by sudhirmangla December 14, 2008

Most of us lead extremely busy lives and often find ourselves bogged down with multiple work projects. If you’d like using something bigger than your Blackberry or cell phone, something smaller than your date book or Day Planner, and have frequent access to a computer and the internet, you can finally get it together with all the features of Google Calendar.

  1. Create a Google account and make your way to the calendar page. Go to www.google.com . Click on "more" at the top left edge of the screen to open the submenu, then click on "calendar". You will be taken to the "Welcome to Google Calendar" page. Create a google account if you do not have one. If you have one, log in and go to calendar.
  2. A blank calendar will appear for you to personalize with your appoints.
  3. Click the “create event” link in order to get started with organizing your work projects. You’ll be directed to a page to add details such as the name of the task you are scheduling, it’s time and date, its repeat status, and a few other options. A useful feature built into the Google Calendar is its reminder option. Instead of worrying about forgetting an important event, you can easily setup a reminder via email or popup.
  4. Select the “save” button when you have completely finished entering your data. The newly created event will be saved to your calendar according to your preferences. If you have several work projects going on, then consider color coding them. This will provide you with an easy to spot method for identifying each work project. In order to access this feature, create a different calendar for each project. There will be a different color assigned to each one.
  5. Customize the created events for each work project by choosing the “manage calendars” link on this page. This link will bring you to the calendar settings area to share your created calendar, setup notification preferences, or even hide it. This is also the location where you would delete a calendar when it is not needed any longer.
  6. Edit your global settings. At the top right of the page, you should see your google account name. Click on "settings". Here are the subsets: general, calendars and mobile setup. Under general, you can set your time zone, how you want your week to start, add weather, etc. You may pick your default view here, too. Under calendars, you can add more calendars to "My calendars" for different areas of your life. Think of it as the old highlighter/ different colors of ink trick to code your day. Make your divisions meaningful for YOU like I’ve made them work for me. For example, in my google calendar, I’ve created separate ones for my personal life, my children’s events, birthdays, the school calendar, household chores and work chores/meetings, each with their own colors. At a glance, I can tell if I’ve got lots of things to do for the kids or if I have lots of household chores or if I have that treasured "free" day. Just below "My calendars" is "Other calendars". Check your yahoo groups to see if there are any with calendars that you’d like to import. For me, I was able to download the public school calendar and keep myself from having to add those by hand.
  7. While still in global settings, pick your calendar view. It may seem like a small thing, but the whole point is to make this calendar work better for you than any other system you’ve used so far. At the top right, you can change how you view your calendar, based on your preferences and the busyness of your days. Choose from "Day, Week, Month, 3 Days, Agenda".

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