Google Calendars can be one of the most powerful tools for productivity and planning. It is easy to use and you can integrate it with all your devices. As a result, keeping track of your work, school, and family commitments can be easy. You can add new meetings straight from your phone and email and set reminders for them. So, it can be great for people who are too busy to remember their commitments or meeting times.
Recently, Google Calendar added a whole new feature called Time Insights. And as the name goes, it gives you more insights into how you spend your time in meetings. To use the new feature without hassle, you should look into reliable internet packages like Cox Gigablast. As it is only available on the left-hand sidebar on the web version. Most people still don’t know about it because they primarily use iOS or Android apps.
How to Use Google Time Insights to Increase Productivity?
Anyone who has a Google Workspace account can use the Time Insights analytical tool. It includes people with company and student accounts. So, people who have personal IDs ending with “gmail.com” cannot access the feature. To enable Time Insights, you will need to access Google Calendar through the web client.
Launch https://calendar.google.com/ on your computer.
Find the More Insights option on the left-hand sidebar.
The Time Insights option will pop up on the right.
Set Working Hours
The Google Time Insights work best when the calendar knows your active working hours. The insights work by telling you more about the time you spent on meetings. So, to make sure the time breakdown is as accurate as possible, this is what you should do:
Open the Time Insights window.
Click on Set Working Hours.
Wait for the Working Hours and Location settings to open up.
Tick the box for Enable Working Hours.
Setting the working hours can make it possible for Google to enhance and elaborate insights. As a result, you can be more productive because of useful results.
What Is Time Breakdown?
One of the main insights features is the Time Breakdown. It is essentially a color-coded ring that can differentiate between different types of tasks on your calendar. There can be different colors for all the following:
One-on-one meetings
Scheduled Focus Time
Meetings with three or more people
Remaining working hours in the day, week, or month
Meeting requests that you haven’t responded to yet
It makes it easy to locate and filter out only one type of meeting or arrangement on your calendar. For instance, you only want to look at your imminent one-on-one meetings. All you have to do is hover over the color code for it. And all other types of tasks on your Google Calendar will dim.
Using Focus Time for Better Concentration
On the Time Breakdown ring, the top entry you will see is Focus Time. Google released this feature, later on, to provide its users more time for individual work. Focus Time will indicate the period in your workday when you don’t have any meetings with other guests. The option shows up next to the Out of Office and Event tags in Settings. As a result, you can schedule a time when you can finish personal tasks without disturbances.
You can easily set up Focus Time in your schedule. Here’s how:
Open the Time Insights window
Click on Schedule Focus Time
A standard calendar box will open up.
Customize the Focus Time entry name, time, color, and other details.
You can check the box next to Automatically Decline Meetings if you want to make the best out of Focus Time. It can be a great option for people who are always getting pulled into meetings that take up most of their day.
Time In Meetings – How You Spend Your Day
You can also use the Time in Meetings settings from the Breakdown Ring to determine how you spend your work hours. It can tell you more about how much time you spend on recurring or one-time meetings over a three-week average. It color-codes different types of meetings and you can hover your cursor over one to focus on it. The Time in Meetings can detail your current calendar view and also show the next period of the same length. Moreover, you can compare two previous intervals of the same time frame.
People You Meet With – Your Workplace Besties
Another great addition is the People You Meet With tab. It can tell you all the people with who you have meetings. Moreover, you can highlight up to ten people and see your shared meetings. You can highlight any of your main task types or calendars as well. As a result, it can be easier to track all your meetings in one place.
