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3 Google Calendar Hacks that Will Make You More Productive

2 minute read

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Google Calendar is a great tool for staying organized and keeping track of your events. To make sure you’re maximizing everything it has to offer, check out these three hacks for Google Calendar that can help you save time and be more productive.

Display your calendar events in a new Chrome tab

Instead of always opening and looking at your calendar, try the TabTab extension for Chrome. It syncs with Google Calendar, so your calendar events are displayed in a new tab and you can easily stay updated with your upcoming events.

Create appointment slots

You can block off time slots so that people can just book meetings or appointments themselves, thereby eliminating that pesky back-and-forth email scheduling dance.

  1. Select a block of time on your calendar that you’d like open for your appointments. In the event box, name your event.
  2. Click on Appointments Slots at the top of the event box. You can offer the whole block of time as a single appointment slot, or you can offer multiple slots in intervals (e.g., 15 or 30 minutes).
  3. Under Add Guests, add the email addresses of whoever you’d like to book appointments.
  4. Anyone who has the calendar link at the top of the page will be able to book appointments in the block of time you’ve set aside. Instead of having to schedule each appointment individually, you can let people book their own appointments, saving everyone time.

Only show working hours

By default, Google Calendar displays all hours of the day. However, you probably aren’t booking appointments at 4 AM or 10 PM. To only show working hours on your calendar:

  1. Click on the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner > Settings > Labs.
  2. Enable “Hide morning and night.” This will display only working hours, giving you a cleaner, easy-to-read calendar.

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

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