I don’t carry a paper diary. I therefore don’t have to worry about reaching for pen and diary or about losing a diary. All my activities are recorded on Google Calendars which live on Google and on my Android HCD (aka handheld computing device). If I lose the HCD by some stroke of misfortune, I will still have access to all of my agenda. In addition – I can tell from my phone what I was doing or where I was two or three years ago, if I need to – and sometimes I do have to check for business reasons. My HCD is automatically synchronised to my Google cal via the internet.
You’re about to get a panic attack, because you can’t see what’s on that image to the left. Please click on it with your mouse for a much larger view.
You’ll have another panic attack as it will appear a confused mess and ‘all so complicated’. It isn’t!
A few things to know. Google Calendars like what you see in the image, can be several calendars in one. By that I mean you can set up calendars for ‘business’, ‘personal’, ‘training’ etc – as many as you need. Then you can activate one or all of those, in one view. You’re now thinking “Why would I want more than one Calendar – does this have to be so complicated?” You would say that because you don’t know anything about this and how versatile it is. Read on if you wish – else bugger off. I’m not here to compel you to do anything. You are free to use pen and paper…as your ancestors were free to use horse drawn carriages and smoke signals, in the face of new developments.
For those who wish to learn more, you may need more than one calendar in your account because you may wish to share a particular calendar with friends or make it public. In that situation, you may not want your mum’s birthday details showing up to the world. So – you would keep birthdays on a ‘personal’ calendar that you never share. Training events often need to be tracked separately and you may not want to show that to others. But there may be a work calendar that you do want to share with the world or with invited others.
Yes – I said ‘invited’. This Google Cal thing starts off with all the privacy you have for your email. You can then invite others to access it. Those other must have Google accounts. By inviting it means you do not make the calendar in question – say your work calendar – public, but it will be shared with all the privacy you can trust to select others. Most of you are confused. A video is worth a zillion words. See below. But do practise how to use, and Youtube has lots more video tutorials, so need to learn just by trial and error.
