Why should you start utilizing Google Calendar?

By: Srikar Savaram

Here’s my case for why you should use google calendar. It not only makes your life much easier, but makes it more utilized. This service is easily integrated to your life and very easy to use. You can also download it on your phone to get notifications on the go.

There are multiple reasons to why you should use it and there are other articles that explain the technical aspects, but I will be dwelling into my personal usage and how it has helped me be a better student. The main things to know about Google Calendar is that you can use this on your mobile device and computer. There are options for the service to notify between hour intervals before event and/or assignment is due. For example, an event at 8 pm would send a notification 30 minutes or 60 minutes beforehand. You can also have it remind you 10 minutes before. These can all be played with and customized in the settings. Google calendar can be linked to your email and your canvas so you DO NOT need to reenter everything form your canvas calendar to your google calendar. There are options for organizations to send their members a link to all the events that will occur for the semester by letting members have access to the google calendar link so they can add it to their own calendar. This is a very beneficial tool as this prevents you from retyping and making your calendar more efficient. The interface is very easy to use and applicable to your daily calendar needs.

My personal experience with Google Calendar starts like this. I went into college using a to-do list on a paper and hand-held planner. This did not work for me as I had to do a lot of mental thinking and making sure I did not lose those items. What I mean by mental thinking is that I had to think back to my planner or to-do list instead of being able to easily know on the spot when I am walking to class. I missed general body meetings (GBM) and had an assignment that I did not work on until an hour before the due date. I needed a change of pace and a new method of keeping everything on track. I was introduced to Google Calendar. I invested my time into it and made/linked calendars for clubs, studying times, and school work. This made my life 100% easier. As I was walking to class and wondered “what do I have to work on today or what my week looking like”, I could easily look at this with the click of a button on my phone. I was able to update it immediately if things changed. This allowed me to better utilize my time and focus on more important things instead of wasting time to think back to what I had to do. Google calendar also helped my social life as I knew how my week was going to look before committing to social events. Knowing how your week looks will allow you to strategically plan out how to attack a week of hard work in an efficient way. If you do not believe me, then I highly encourage you to try it on your own and see the efficiency change in your life.