Google Calendar-Goals

Google Calendar is a Calendar App which has been there for quite a while now. It came into existence about a decade ago. It released on April 13, 2006 as an Online Application for Calendars. And from then on it has grown to become one of the most popular Calendar Apps in the market.

The main requirement to use the Google Calendar is that you must have a Gmail Account. According to latest reports, it is made to believe that Gmail has about 1 Billion monthly Active Users! This means each of these users would have an access to the Calendar App. But whether they are using it or not is another story all together!

Google Calendar is known to import events automatically from  your Gmail to your Calendar. And it can also sync other calendars on your phone. You can set reminders and To-Do tasks. This was all there, but there is one new feature which came out just about two days ago.

It is called Goals. Every one of us might be having some big or small goal which we would like to achieve. It might be learning a new skill or hobby, Loosing Weight/Exercise is quite a common goal. It is always good to have goal but sometimes we don’t stick to our goals and later on we forget about it. Google Calendar addresses this Issue.

It basically allows you to add a Goal of your choice and the App would take care of the rest. And the Calendar App would Intelligently add that event to your already existing schedule. The reason I mentioned “Intelligently” was that it would  look at your calendar and see which times are you relatively free and then it would add that Goal to your calendar.

In a realistic scenario many times , even though we have scheduled to do something  but due to various reasons we might not be able to do it at that point of time. Google Calendars understands this. There is an option to defer the event, in case you are not able to do your task at that point of time. The App automatically reschedules your event to the next preferred time.

In order to set a Goal one would have to follow these steps-

1. On the Calendar application, click on the “Plus” button on the lower right hand corner.
2. There would be 3 options-Goal, Reminder and Event. Select Goal.
3. Now you can choose what kind of Goal you would like to achieve. The Categories are-Exercise, Build a Skill, Family & Friends, Me time and Organise my life.
4. Once you select a category, it has sub categories. Choose the one which relates to your goal.
5. Then you would have to set the frequency-Once a week, Twice a week.
6. The length of the goal-15 minutes, 1 hour.
7. Then select what time of the day works best for you-Morning, Afternoon, Evening or Night.
8. And your Goal is Set!

 

So, in order to get the Goal feature in your phone just install the latest update of Google Calendars. This update released on April 14, 2016.

Android Users would have Google Calendars as a default app on their phone. Iphone users, in case you don’t have Google Calendars, you could install it from the App Store https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-calendar/id909319292?mt=8.

Here is a video demonstrating the Goals Feature of Google Calendars. Hopefully this addition makes achieving goals easier!