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so we're gonna dive into 10 calendar
hacks and tips that you can apply to
your own calendars today and really get
better use of your time in today's video
today we're very lucky to be sponsored
by clockwise here's a little bit more
about them so this month's sponsor is
clockwise clockwise are doing some
really interesting stuff in the market
right now with artificial intelligence
and for those who are new to clockwise
it's a smarter way to schedule that
works for teams now flexible meetings
are a great feature allowing you to move
meetings using ai to work for everyone
and create blocks of time that are free
in your day now flexible meetings and
clockwise help one to ones and find the
most efficient time and fix conflicts
and you can choose which meetings are
flexible and set preferences for how
flexible they are
now clockwise actually state they run up
to 1 million calendar permutations per
team to create the best possible
schedule for everyone imagine a
supercomputer playing tetris to put
flexible meetings into the best possible
place based on your preferences we do
that every day to unlock time and help
foster a healthier way of work now
there's also focus time it's another
experience and clockwise helping you to
set a goal for focus time every week as
you can know this can be a huge life
saver to those deep focus sessions
during the work week and clockwise will
block any two plus hour slot in your
calendar as focus time and even help
quiet the noise by snoozing
notifications in slack and keeping you
in task by syncing with asana now over
ten thousand organizations run on
clockwise including reddit atlassian
pinterest and netflix and it's great to
have them on as a sponsor you can check
out the link in the description below
now as you can imagine there's plenty of
different ways to enhance your calendar
and one of the first ways i'd recommend
is to include time zones now you can do
this with google calendar and the
majority of other applications on the
market but adding a secondary time zone
can help you to do a lot of useful
things not only see the time in the
other country but arrange appointments
that are better suited to external
parties in particular i find having a
secondary time zone on my calendar is so
helpful for making sure that i'm aware
of san francisco time zone just because
typically a lot of the startups are from
there and you can apply this to your own
situation as well whether you're working
with a country in asia or over in
america it doesn't matter adding that
secondary time zone to a city can be
really beneficial
so tip number two is overblocking this
is a really common tactic that a lot of
people use is tend to use their calendar
to block every element of time possible
now obviously time blocking is a really
effective technique and we'll come to
that a little bit later however
overblocking can sometimes overwhelm you
in the amount of stuff you can do and
what i'm speaking specifically here too
is meetings now meetings are beneficial
but sometimes and a really popular
technique more recently asynchronous
communication trying to push you towards
reducing the amount of meetings you have
and seeing whether the communication is
possible through asynchronous this will
significantly reduce the amount of
meetings on your calendar
and help you towards spending your time
better because a calendar is the best
representation of your time in the
visual format in my opinion so making
sure you're not overblocking yourself is
really key sometimes this is hard
because we work in companies but also
making sure that we're not overloading
ourselves is really important so being
aware whether you can turn a simple
calendar rent into asynchronous
communication is vital
number three is working hours and this
is something again that is really suited
to asynchronous and remote work but
adapting your working hours inside of
google calendar can be a great way to
save yourself some time and make sure
people don't disturb you or book certain
appointments with you for example if
it's picking up your kids or starting
the day a little later being able to
adapt these working hour times on a
regular basis and changing them based on
your routine can be really helpful and
especially with what we've seen over the
last couple of years with remote work
people tend to try and be a bit more
flexible with their schedules so
adapting your working hours through here
can be a great way to showcase that
number four is actually seeking out
calendar clients and tools much like our
sponsor clockwise there are some great
clients and tools out there that can
help you go a bit further with your
calendar and i wouldn't be too afraid
about trying some calendar tools and
implementations can save you time and
whether it's a small connection between
one calendar another it can save you
some valuable time a good example of
this is for example microsoft teams and
the likes of google calendar you can
actually connect those two together and
be able to create appointments via
microsoft teams without leaving the
platform so that can be naturally
something to be aware of that calendar
can be expanded just beyond the regular
basic apple calendar and google calendar
number five is conferencings tools this
is something small that if you haven't
set up yet can save you loads of time i
more recently set up on my own calendar
application and it saved me loads of
time just being able to set up meetings
really fast with a regular for example
our sunday evening meetings for bento we
regularly set them up and i've recently
done it with google me and whenever i
don't do it with google me it's that
fact before the meeting of you know five
minutes of setup but connecting whether
it's zoom google me or another software
that you're using to your calendar
application can be really helpful
number six is time blocking although i
talked earlier about overblocking time
blocking is actually a great technique
and really one way to optimize time
blocking is using different calendars
and the colors this can be super helpful
for example you could have a calendar
that's specifically tailored around your
daily routine putting in the runs and
maybe the walks you do and maybe even
breaks and things like that but you can
use different colors across your
calendar to really represent focus time
for example could focus time could be in
red and like for example blue could be
more relaxed time etc you can really
adapt this to your own needs
now clockwise actually has a great focus
mode that's worth checking out in the
link in description
number seven is connecting it to slack
or another synchronous communication
service that you use for example if you
want to keep your employees updated this
is really helpful for just saving time
making sure they are aware of what
meetings you're in can be really helpful
and even getting little notifications
inside of slack or other services that
your calendar has updated is really
helpful and there are loads of these
little applications that can be great
plugins here's what we're showing on
screen is a good example of clockwise is
one
number eight is actually a very simple
thing you can do in google calendar but
get a daily agenda email a newsletter
that rounds up what meetings you have
for the day this could also be populated
and created with mailbrew which is
another email newsletter service that i
recommend checking out in the link
inscription
number nine is calendars of interest now
this is something that a lot of people
skip past but actually helping have the
calendars of interest pop up is really
helpful whether it's for religious
events or even the events that are in
your country that routinely happen this
is helpful just populating your calendar
with these automatically and one thing i
definitely recommend checking out is if
you're into a sports one sometimes on
the sport website when you go to the
events page or calendars page for the
upcoming events you'll see a calendar
integration appear i actually set this
up every single year for the formula one
and it's really helpful to be able to
have that inside the calendar so that
any conflicts come up and i can cancel
anything around the f1
making sure that that's the priority for
the weekend quite obviously number 10
and our final recommendation is one that
i've taken from scott friesen who runs
simpletivity a great youtube channel i
recommend checking out and he recommends
to actually put emoji in front of any
recurring events for example run 5k put
an emoji in front of it and it'll make
it feel a little bit more special and a
little bit more visually appealing
something that i recommend checking out
anyway folks a big big thank you for
stopping by today if you're new to the
keep productive youtube channel make
sure you're subscribed but if you want
to check out our sponsor clockwise for
powerful calendar improvements i'd
recommend checking them out in the link
in description anyway folks a big big
thank you feel free to comment with your
calendar tips below if you're fancy
giving other people some recommendations
thank you everyone and i'll see you all
very very soon cheerio
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