Google Calendar Can Schedule Your Goals For You

Google has just announced a feature that would have seriously been useful about four months ago. A particular school of productivity says that you only put in your calendar items or events that have a definite of fixed time. However, not all things we want to accomplish are one off tasks, and not everything is really a recurring item. These activities usually come under the label of "goals", you know, like New Year's resolutions. Finally, Google Calendar now has support for setting, accomplishing, even delaying those pesky goals.

Sure, you can use some other app for goals, but some prefer to have all task-related things inside one calendar. And sure, maybe you can just set a recurring event in your calendar, but the way Google Calendar handles goals is smarter. Maybe even smarter than you.

You start by adding a Goal, instead of a Reminder or Event, pick a category, like Exercise or Build a Skill, and answer a few questions, like how often or best time for performing the task. Here's the smart part: Calendar actually schedules the goal for you, based on your available time under the conditions set by you.

But it doesn't stop there either. Google Calendar adjusts your goal's schedule depending on your other, perhaps more important schedule. If you schedule something that conflicts with the goal, Google Calendar will move the goal to your next free time.

Sometimes, something comes up and you'll have to postpone. It's as simple as tapping Defer. But don't feel too guilty about it (unless you should be), as Google Calendar will use those data, from completing or deferring goals, to improve its automatic scheduling.

The new Goals feature is rolling out to Google Calendar both on Android and iOS, so make updating those apps your next goal. Google is releasing the new feature to celebrate Google Calendar's 10th birthday, but, seriously, we could have used this at the beginning of the year.

SOURCE: Google