How I Use My Calendar Efficiently - College Info Geek

Google Calendar is part of my "quick capture" system of tools I use to get ideas, events, and tasks out of my brain as soon as possible.

In this video, I'll go over how I used it as a student, how I use it now, and dig into some companion apps.

Discuss this video:

https://www.reddit.com/r/collegeinfogeek/comments/4aujzd/how_i_use_my_calendar_efficiently/

My book "10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades" is completely free, so check it out if you're interested in improving your grades!

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Companion article for this video:

http://collegeinfogeek.com/efficient-calendar-use/

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Videos you might want to watch next:

How to Get Massive Loads of Work Done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maywlXFRxrs&list=PLx65qkgCWNJIS5Y_CcxifKHjQKf7iqVv5

How to Create a Final Exam Study Schedule: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUbeQ7Q3s2Q&list=PLx65qkgCWNJIgq1Mj0rtsthmpqDGFL8Yn

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~ created by Thomas Frank

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Closed Caption:

Today we are talking
about Google Calendar
because I've been getting
a lot of questions
about how I use my
calendar personally
and Google calendar has
been my weapon-of-choice
for the past five, six, seven
years almost to this point.
So, today in this video,
we're gonna go through
how I use Google Calendar, some
of the tips and tricks I use
both on desktop and mobile,
how I used it as a student
versus now as an incredibly
professional businessman,
and hey, if you guys use
a different calendar,
most of the stuff is going
to apply, not all of it,
but for the vast majority
of it, it's gonna apply to
any calendar you use, so
iCal, Outlook Calendar,
I don't know, like a stone
tablet on the ground,
that one's gonna be a bit of
a stretch, but this will apply
to almost any system
for the most part.
The first thing I need
to stress here is that
Google Calendar is
part of what I call
my quick capture system.
Now, I'm gonna talk about
this concept a little bit more
in a future video, but
essentially, the gist of it
is that quick capture
means you want to get ideas
of any kind out of your head
as immediately as possible
and into a system that you
trust, one that has context,
one that's organized, and one
that will either notify you
when you need to know about
it again in the future
or that you trust yourself
to check regularly.
So, with that being said,
we're gonna get into
how I specifically use Google
Calendar in my daily life
and I need to split
this explanation in two
because the way I use it
today is very different
than how I used it as a student.
As a student, I had my
calendar split into multiple
different calendars because
the concept essentially for me
was to split my life
into different components
and then be able to look at
each component individually.
So, I had specific calendars
for classes, for work,
for on-campus events, I also
had one for other stuff,
just kind of things that
didn't fit, and I also had
a professor office
hours calendar.
By the way guys, if I sound
like a frog right now,
it's because I'm sick, sorry.
One last thing about how I
used my calendar as a student
is that at the beginning
of every semester,
I would put in all the
important dates right away
so like the date when I
needed to sign up for classes
for the next semester, that
would go in right away,
finals week would go
in there, and that way,
I knew it was all set up at
the beginning of the semester.
I wouldn't have to be
worrying about when do I sign
up for classes, when do I
start studying for finals,
it's all set up initially and
then I can just react to it
as it comes up on a
week-to-week basis.
So, that brings us to today
where I use my calendar
in a very different manner and
that's because I'm no longer
a student and my time isn't
dominated mostly by events.
I'm a business owner
and most of my time
is kind of free form, I can
choose to work on whatever
I want to work on at any
time as long as it gets done.
I would say probably about
90% of my time is like that.
The other 10% is scheduled
meetings for the most part
because as a podcaster, I'm
often interviewing people
or I'm being on
other people's shows.
The other main use is for
travel since I'm going to
schools to speak sometimes,
or I go to conferences
that are in different
cities and different states,
I'm often traveling
and when I travel,
I create all day events in
the calendar so they're not
blocking up the hourly slots
and that way I just know oh,
I'm in Denver these days, I'm
in New York City these days.
The last main thing I use
my calendar for these days
is for exercise because a lot
of my exercise is actually
event-driven like my yoga
class is 6:30pm on Thursdays,
so I gotta be there on time
and for ice skating practice,
it's only a very limited
window of time every day
that I can do it, so I just
schedule it on the calendar
and then because
I'm a completionist,
I put my gym time
on there as well.
So, with those explanations
out of the way,
I've got a few more
things to talk about,
first of which is mobile.
Now, I used to use Sunrise
Calendar on my iPhone
to manage Google Calendar
because it was free
and it was beautiful
and at the time,
the Google Calendar app
kind of stunk in my opinion.
That is not the case
anymore, I think the
Google Calendar app is
pretty good, however,
I don't use it because now I
use an app called Fantastical.
The reasons I use Fantastical
is number one, it is the best
calendar app that I have found
for use on the Apple Watch
right now because it's
the one that has glances,
so I can just easily look at
the watch, swipe up and see
what my next event is,
and it also has absolutely
fantastic natural language
processing which means
if I use voice dictation to
create an event which is a
really seamless, frictionless
way to get it out of my brain
and into my phone, then it
will intelligently pick out
the parts of the event that need
to be put in different fields.
And that brings me to the last
thing we need to talk about
in this video which is
scheduling stuff because
email tag is the worst,
trust me, I've got like
50 message-long threads
from a few years ago
where I'm trying to be like
yeah, I'm available this day,
oh you're not available
that day, blah, blah, blah.
You can use technology to
make this much, much simpler.
Now, the app that I use on
a regular basis is called
Calendly and this is an
app that lets you define
certain dates and times
on your weekly schedule
when people can
basically pencil in their
own appointments with you and
this is really, really useful
for people like me who
are podcasters and have to
schedule interviews a lot,
or maybe people like tutors,
anyone who has to open up
big amounts of their schedule
in limited windows to let
people basically pencil in
their own appointments, but
I don't think it's super
useful for students because
you guys usually have a lot
of your schedule already
spoken for by classes
and you're generally just
trying to schedule things like
group project work time.
Now, Google Calendar has
their own find-a-time feature,
but what I found is most
students don't have their
calendar game on lock,
so you're gonna be like
the only person who
has everything really
nicely scheduled
and everyone is gonna be
like yeah, I don't know
what I'm doing next Tuesday.
So, Doodle is what I
recommend for you guys
because Doodle basically
lets you define a date range
and then everyone can vote on
the times that work for them
and you can easily
see the column
where everyone's available.
So, that about does
it for this video.
Now, if you've been paying
attention, you are now a
scheduling ninja though, do not
put that in your Twitter bio
or I will find you, and if
you guys have extra tips about
how to use your calendar
that I didn't cover here,
I would love to
hear them otherwise,
thank you so much for watching.
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