Getting Organised using Google Calendar

I've only been using Google Calendar for just over a fortnight but it's already revolutionised the way in which I organise myself.

Since my default email client is Yahoo! I had a brief try of its calendar application first before finding that it was a little too simplistic and so decided to migrate over to Google's offering instead.

Within a matter of days I had abandoned my previous method of recording everything in an Excel spreadsheet since Google Calendar offered way more functionality. It enabled me to do lots of useful things, including:

• create different calendars for different purposes, recording: school dates, my own personal dates, birthday dates and the all-important holiday dates. Each is given its own unique colour to make it instantly visible when viewing the calendar and can be hidden/unhidden from view effortlessly by clicking on its name at the side.

• subscribe to the 'UK Holidays' calendar which is maintained by Google and which puts on the major festivals and bank holidays automatically to save me the hassle;
• easily embed all the school diary dates (shown in a calendar of its own) onto the school website for viewing by parents without me having to do anything else in future after I've now inserted the embed code;
• sync my calendar automatically with my home PC so that I know I'll still be able to access all my data even if the Internet connection goes down;
• set birthdays to be repeated each year, with an email notification being sent automatically to me 8 days beforehand to warn me to go out and buy a card/present in good time.

In addition, one feature I've not heard that many people speak of but which I think is equally as useful as the main calendar is the little 'Tasks' tab that appears at the side. This lets me type in a to-do list of items which can easily be re-ordered by dragging them up/down and be 'ticked-off' once completed. It's only very basic (there's no option to apply colours or styles, for instance), but I've been finding it extremely handy to quickly note down all the little random things I get asked to do in an average day which I might otherwise forget (e.g. requests to find resources on a particular topic). In the past I've used scrap pieces of paper for this that often got muddled up with other sheets and sometimes even got left in school by mistake which is very annoying - now I can manage all my tasks online either from: a PC in school, my home PC or when travelling about using my iPhone.

Google Calendar is wonderful at what it does. It gives me lots of ways to record my diary dates and to-do tasks for free across different platforms and I really look forward to using it to help me stay even more organised in 2011 than I currently am. If you're not using it yet I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

Comments

[Claire Lowe]

Simon I love using google calendar too, have synced to iPhone and it's with me wherever I go!

[ebd35]

Using Google calendar is simple and just simply works!

With paper diary
you need to have it with you, remember to write appointment, remember to have diary with you in order to check diary in order to remember appointment.

with google
have iPhone with you, write in appointment (with reminders), phone beeps to remind you of appointment!

[Anne_Neal]

I've recently become a Google Calendar fan too. My paper diary is getting no use and we haven't bought a family calendar this year! My husband can view the calendar at work on his laptop, I do the same at home and work. It's also on my HTC desire with a widget on my home screen with upcoming dates and tasks. Brilliant!

[2sparkley]

Thanks for the help Simon, now have a Google calendar on school website. so much easier that what I had before : )