Organizing Your Life with Google Calendar

I feel bad. I feel like I’ve been holding out on y’all by keeping this life-changing organizational system that is Google Calendar a secret from you guys! It wasn’t purposeful, trust me, but I figured it was time to finally share the love and let you in on why we think Google Calendar is the best thing since sliced cheese. First of all, let me say that I was a paper planner/calendar gal for YEARS! And I even said multiple times OUT LOUD that I would never go all-digital with my calendar because I just didn’t trust technology. Well, I’m eating my words now, folks, because I’m telling you, this is the best app ever, and I’ll never go back to paper. Oops, better not say “never” again, right!? Let me start by saying I’m not being paid to write this and have no affiliation with Google at all. I just really love this Calendar, and I think it would be a huge asset in your life, just like it is in mine! Ok, so after using this calendar for a good two years now, here are a few reasons why we (hubs and I) love it so much: 1. You can access the calendar from your phone, laptop, tablet, the moon, whatever! All you need is a Google account, and you can create one of those for free if you don’t already have one. 2. You can share your calendar with anyone. So as long as my husband is signed in the same account, his and my calendars are always synced. This is my favorite part for sure! He can see everything I put on the calendar, and I can see everything he puts on the calendar, so we’re always on the same page and there’s never any confusion. We still have little kids right now, but I can see this working awesome for when they’re teens and have their own events/activities to add to the calendar. They’ll easily be able to use their phone or tablet, or whatever contraption they’ll be using in the year 2030, and add their events in as well. It’s a great way for the whole family to be on the same page. 3. You can organize events by color. Y’all, this especially makes my “occasionally OCD self” so happy! This calendar allows you to color coordinate the different events you have, so, like if you want to make all of your business events one color, birthdays another color, and family events another color, you totally can! I keep our family events in blue, birthdays in gray, my blog/coaching events in yellow, and my photography work events in red. Holidays automatically come up in green. Love it!

4. You can set reminders, sync this calendar with your Apple calendar, and even set events (like birthdays or anniversaries) to repeat every year so you don’t have to re-enter those every year. Another cool thing is you can even view the calendar at a month’s glance, this week, 3 days, or today view.

5. The last thing I want to mention that’s super cool is using your computer (or the Google Tasks) app, you can add to-do’s that you want to accomplish that day and check them off as you complete them. I’m such a list person, but have trouble keeping up with paper, so this makes my life so much more organized! And who doesn’t get satisfaction from checking something off a list, am I right? This is the task app version:

This is what adding a task looks like from your computer:

So how does it work? Entering events into Google Calendar is so easy and I’ll show you how to do that using the app on your phone (it’s just as simple from your computer): 1. When in month view, tap the day you want to enter an event. Then tap the plus sign at the bottom right corner

2. From there, tap “event” and then enter the name of the event. If the event is something like a birthday you can tap the “all day” button, but if it’s something like an appointment that you need to enter a time for enter the start and end time.

If you want your event to repeat yearly, weekly, monthly, etc., you can tap “more options.” 3. You also have the option to set an alarm to remind you. This is a lifesaver!!

4. If you want to change the color of your event just tap on “default color”

5. The last feature I like to use sometimes is the “add note” function. I use this a lot if I need to remember to bring something to a function like a church potluck or my son’s class parties.

Was that helpful? I hope this helps some of you get organized like it did us! I remember my husband and I having so many “discussions” over not communicating our schedules well when we were using our paper calendar, and since switching to Google Calendar, we literally have not had one argument over that. It’s taken so much stress off of us, and I love that I can access it from anywhere and don’t have to leave clients waiting to know if I’m available until I can “get to my calendar.” I was scared in the beginning that Google would just lose a lot of my appointments or events, but it hasn’t happened once. It’s so reliable! I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: we won’t be going back to paper since this works so seamlessly. Give it a try! You might love it!

XOXO, Anna