Calendar Creator

I’ll admit I have tried a lot of different solutions for organizing my life in the past few years. I’ve used applications, planners, and even reminders on my cell phone, but none of them ultimately worked for me. However, Google Calendar has helped me save time and get more organized than ever before. Here are some reasons why I have ultimately decided to use Google Calendar to organize my life.

Many Calendars, United in One Place

Google Calendar is a little different than some of the other calendar applications that I have tried. It is basically a Master Calendar with a bunch of individual calendars aggregated in one place. You can have a separate calendar for personal, business, holidays, and anything else that seems necessary to you.

One of the primary features that I like about Google Calendar is that you can customize the color of each individual calendar so that you can easily see what you have happening at any point in time on your Master Calendar. I have a blue calendar for everything related to business, a red calendar for anything personal, a purple calendar for holidays, a gold calendar for birthdays and even a pink calendar that tells me the phase of the moon. All of these calendars show up in one place, each color-coded so I can easily see what’s going on.

Another nice feature is that you can turn on or off individual calendars. If I am focusing just on work tasks, I can turn off my other calendars so that only my work events show up.

Share Calendars With Others

Google Calendar allows you to invite other Google users to share a calendar with you. If you are collaborating with a team of people, this tool is invaluable. This way, all members of a team know when each member is busy. You can also input the location of a meeting so that everyone knows where to go.

Google Calendar also allows you to set permission levels on each individual calendar to control the amount of power you grant to other people. You can allow them to have full access to create and change event details on that specific calendar or set it up so they can only view an event but not edit it.

Load Public Calendars

Google Calendar also has a wide database of available calendars that you can subscribe to on your calendar. I have all of the U.S. Holidays automatically loaded on my calendar. Google allows you to subscribe to numerous pre-populated calendars for free, like your favorite team’s game schedule or the sunrise and sunset times for your city.

Integrated with Gmail

In their attempt to take over the world, Google has integrated Gmail and Google Calendar to allow you to create events on your calendar right from an email. Google scans your emails and, if it finds a date and time, it gives you the option on the right side of the screen to add an event to your calendar. When you do this, the text from the email will automatically be copied into the description for the new event in Google Calendar.

Available Anywhere There is Internet

Unlike an application that you install on your computer, Google Calendar runs entirely in “the cloud,” meaning it is stored on a server that you log in to. This means you can access your calendar from any device that has an internet connection.

Sync Calendars with Your Phone

Something that I have found to be essential is the ability to sync my Google Calendar with my smartphone. This allows me to easily schedule meetings and events from virtually anywhere, even if I don’t have a computer with me.

Since Google makes the Android operating system for smartphones, once you enter your Google account login information your phone should automatically sync with your calendar.

On an iPhone, it is a little more involved but relatively painless. Here is an article that explains how to sync Google Calendar on an iPhone.

Program Reminders

When scheduling events, you can also schedule reminders to help you remember to do something. You also have the option to customize how and when that reminder is delivered. It can either be emailed to you or pop up to remind you. If you choose pop-up and you have synced your Google Calendar with your smartphone, the reminder should pop up on your phone as well.

Searchable

Google Calendar has a search feature that is quite good compared to most applications. This makes sense since Google created it.

As you can see, I am a pretty big fan of Google Calendar. It has helped save me time and streamline my organizational processes. What do you think of Google Calendar? Do you use another organizational tool to keep track of your events?

8 Reasons Why You Should Use Google Calendar