(whooshing music) - [Scott] Can Google Calendar be used as an effective to-do list? Absolutely and in today's video, I'm gonna show you how. Hello, everyone, Scott
Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more
done and enjoy less stress and in today's video, I'm gonna show you how to set up Google Calendar to be a very effective to-do list. I'm also gonna show you how to use this on the mobile version of Google Calendar and last but not least, I'm gonna cover the pros and
cons of using Google Calendar as your to-do list but I think what you're gonna find out is that the pros far outweigh the cons. But first, I'd like to thank
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or see the link below. Let me show you three different ways on how you can set this
up within your calendar. The first on that we're looking at here is pretty basic and that is
using the All-Day Events area to create new tasks, so I'm just gonna create
a simple sample task here. New task 1 and I'm just gonna hit save. It's going to appear here
in my All Tasks area. I can see that I wanna do
this tomorrow on Tuesday but I can quickly and easily
drag it and move it to some other day. What I love about this
technique, about using it here on my calendar is I can
see the relationship between this task and all of my tasks alongside my other appointments
and where I need to be. So, for example, maybe I'm
having a heavy day today. I'm not sure if I can get
through all of these tasks and I'm saying to myself,
"I don't wanna really review "this resume that I have to." I'd like to move that out
to maybe Thursday or Friday. But then wait a minute,
I'm actually interviewing someone on Wednesday. I can't push it out that far. Maybe I can put is out til Tuesday. I can see that relationship
and make decisions based on that. So, again, what we wanna
do is, using the all day events area, simply click on that area and you can start adding
a new task right away and whatever it is, it's
going to appear in that all day task area and
even if you think that you can't add all the
same details as you would in another to-do list,
well, hold on just a second. By hitting the edit button
in any of these tasks, you can add not just a
location, but of course, use this description area
to add bullet points, to add an attachment. You can even change the color
of this task if you wanna highlight it in some other way. That brings me to the second
method that we can use with managing our tasks
here within the calendar and that is that you can
have a separate calendar just for your tasks. So, here I've created one
here called to do list. I'm gonna enable that and
what you can see here is that I've added a few other
tasks here 'cause remember, some of our tasks will be
included as a part of our day. Maybe this is something really important, recording this new video
and I need to make sure it happens Thursday morning. But here's another example
that I have up above. It's labeled in this green
shade or this green color which I've selected. So I can separate out my
tasks from everything else. That's a second method if
you wanna actually keep it on a separate calendar. Of course, Google calendar
makes this very, very easy for you to do so. All you need to do is
just say Add New Calendar and then you can add as
many calendars as you want. Of course, toggle through those calendars here on the left hand side. Now, the third way that you can implement having a to-do list within
Google Calendar is to make use of the actual task function or tasks app which is built right into Google calendar. So you'll notice on the right hand side, you have the task functionality
here where you can create tasks. You can check them off
directly from this side menu and in order to see them
here on your calendar, all you need to do is
enable tasks here on the left hand side. So here, you can see I've
got about three tasks aligned this week. They align with these
ones that we see here. Now the one thing you
wanna be careful with is that although it makes
sense to be managing your tasks and if I drag this task over
to Thursday, for example, that is gonna be reflected. There you see that it moved
over here on the right as well. However, when we switch
to the mobile version, you're gonna notice something. These are not going to appear
because on the mobile version, these are not integrated
into Google calendar. You have to manage them
within the Google tasks app. So be weary of that. You may or may not like that
as a part of your workflow. Now one other thing that you
can always add to enhance your to-do list here
within Google calendar is the reminders feature. So I'm gonna enable the reminders feature and here you see I've
got a couple that appear. Now, what is the difference
between reminders and tasks and the all day event tasks
which we have created here? Well, reminders will always carry over. So if I don't complete this
particular reminder on Monday, it is going to carry over to Tuesday. I'm gonna have to address it eventually and check things off. Reminders can be day
specific or time specific, as you see down below here. If you don't know how
to create a reminder, let me show you how to do so. If I wanna create a reminder here, let's say nine AM on Wednesday, all I need to do is click on that space and instead of starting to
add the title of this event, I'm gonna first click reminder. You can see just below the title, event is the default selection, but I'm gonna select reminder. So now, I can add in a new reminder here. I can just hit enter
on my screen and there, I've got that reminder. Now if I wanna change this
reminder to an all day reminder, I can so so as well. All I need to do is select
it, hit the Edit button, and now I can select the all day option. Here you can see that that
reminder now appears here at the top of my list. Now, one caveat I'm gonna
talk about a little bit later on in the video is
one of the things that you need to watch for. Before I do that, let's
jump to the mobile version of Google Calendar. Alright, so here we are
within Google Calendar on our mobile device. As you can see, at the top of the screen, I have my all day tasks. Technically they're all day events, but I'm using them as tasks
at the top of my screen. What I love about this is
that whether it's early in the morning or if I scroll all the way to the end of the day, those
tasks always remain visibile. They're always at the forefront. If I scroll over here
to the next day here, you see I have a combination of tasks, appointments, and a couple
of reminders as well. So if you wanna add a new
task within Google calender, we're gonna hit the plus
button in the bottom right hand corner of the screen and
we're gonna select event because remember, we're
using all day events. So here, I'm just gonna
call this one Task 2. The only think you need to
keep in mind at this point is that we wanna hit the all day toggle. Unless you want this task to
appear at a specific time, you wanna select all day and hit save. Now that task will appear
at the top of your screen. Now if we wanna add a reminder, again, we're gonna start with that plus button but this time we're gonna
select the reminder option. Let me just type in a quick reminder. Let's call this one Reminder 3. If I wanted it at a specific
time, I can select that here. I can select this to be
at 8:30, for example, or I can hit the all day option and again, it will be all day as well. Now, don't forget, you may
need to hit the down arrow here to reveal all of your tasks. Now, this will stay sticky,
meaning that the last time you've selected it or chosen that option, it's gonna remain that way. So, here you can see
I have a few reminders that I need to look at
along with all of my tasks. Now this is one of the,
I guess, both pro and con of using reminders. Here you can see that
it will never combine your all day events. We can see them listed out
individually but you will notice here that it has
combined my reminders. I've got two here. If I select it, I can now
read and see those two, but you cannot, by default,
expand those reminders. Lastly, I wanna cover
some of the pros and cons of using Google Calendar
as your to-do list. Now I've already highlighted the pros of seeing your tasks up above and always having them stay in the forefront
as you go about your day. But one of the things that
you wanna watch out for is that of course, these all day events which we are using as
tasks will not roll over. At the end of today, these
two green tasks will not roll over to Tuesday
like this reminder will. Now, this is a con, but in some ways, psychologically, it is also a pro. What I mean by that is that
it forces you to engage with your calendar and
specifically with your to-do list. Too many of us don't engage
with our to-do list often enough and then after a day or
two, we end up deferring a large number of tasks
to the never next day. Well in this case, this sort of forces you at the end of your workday or
at the very end of your day to review what is leftover
and have it move over. Drag it over to a more appropriate day where you can accomplish that task. I hope you enjoyed
today's overview of using Google Calendar as a to-do
list and I would love to hear your experience as well. So be sure to leave me
a comment down below. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel, give
this video a thumbs up, and don't forget to leave
me a comment down below. Remember, being productive
does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
