Diagnosing with colors

Some people like to look at how they spend their time at work to see if they are spending it wisely, like the nice old turtle from Kung Fu Panda. Others are trying to stay afloat, barely one meeting from drowning. Still others can never keep their fingers off Atomic Habits and Design your Life. If all of the above describes you too, then we have something in common and can actually use Google Calendar in very clever ways. Crayons at the ready?

You may only have 12 colors at your disposal - but those should be used!

Preparation

We have a bit of preparation to do. We will configure Calendar to show us how last week was. For that, open Calendar's settings and scroll down to "View options".

Check "Show declined events". I recommend you always leave that on, it's the default anyway. This means that you can decline an event and it gets shown in strike-through font, but it will stay on your calendar. Just in case you change your mind. If you are that high up the food chain that your agenda gets cluttered by tons of pointless meetings, that's a different question. All others: Leave it on.
Uncheck "Display shorter events the same size as 30 minute events": That setting is brand new. 30 minutes was the minimum "size" a meeting could get, now they can get tinier, which is good. Leave it off (unless you have difficulty reading it).
Uncheck "Reduce the brightness of past events": This setting is responsible for making past events look pale, which is good. One look and you know where you are in your day. But that is bad for looking at last week's colors, which is exactly what we are going to do. Disable that temporarily, and re-enable it when we are done.
Take a screenshot of last week's calendar, just in case you forgot what your colors where.

A word about colors

Colors are personal. It does not matter if an event is owned by you or someone else, or if other people are invited to it. Nobody will see what you color events. Each guest can assign their own color to the same event.
If you have access to a delegated calendar, I suggest staying away from that for this experiment. Colors are personal, but since you have access to that person's calendar, you see that person's colors. When you edit them, they change. Which is great - your team probably has agreed-upon color codes.
Repeating events can have different colors for every instance of the event, or one for each individual event.

Let's look at an example: Here is my typical week, colored differently.

My default configuration: "The hard landscape"

I use colors as a tool to see what my week looks like, and to see if I can look forward to my day. On a subconscious level, I may even use it to balance weeks and days. It works like this:

Graphite: Comes with my job. Blueberry: Project related. Basil: Organization, stuff. Peacock: Relationship building. Tomato: should not do. Banana: Something to look forward to.

PS: I'm color blind. Be kind.

Diagnostic: Agency

You can color events blue (meetings you are somehow responsible for, or time you blocked) and green (meetings where you got to help out, team meetings etc.). Do those meetings make sense, should you be in all of those meetings? Should you delegate more?

Diagnostic: Repeating/one-off

It's like putting on a different lens (nerds will feel like the Predator switching to infrared). This is less about my schedule than about stimulating questions you may have: Are there days that leave you drained - which this explains? Is there some overlap between the agency diagram above and this one (are you responsible for creating all of those repeating meetings)? Could you drop out of some of those meetings, or could they be spread more evenly?

Per area, project, overhead

You could analyze your calendar by the big clients you serve. Are you putting your time where the money is? Are there opportunities? Are you complaining too much?

Energizing/draining

Some meetings, days leave you drained. What could that be? Perhaps by coloring them you can find out. Is it the topic? The people in them? Your role? The time of day?

Which goal?

FY21 is starting and you are about to get handed new stretch goals. How about coloring your meetings according to what goal each serves?

How about using that as a measure to judge if that meeting is worth it?

Short/medium/long term

Is this meeting about something a short-term outcome? Medium, long term?

Two tips before you start ...

... and for when you are done.

Look at more than one week

in order to catch outliers.

Fill in the blanks

if you remember, go back and create time blocks to say what you did.

Find your true colors

While doing this, you will no doubt have found what adds most value.

Revert the configuration

Remember to enable "Reduce brightness of past events" again!

Like icons, colors are not only a fun feature, but also something that makes you tremendously productive. You can absolutely use it on autopilot - but why not stop and take a rainy Friday afternoon to investigate how to move things forward at work. Thank you for reading!

#calendarPublished 2020-08-11 by Holger Matthies.Modified 2022-02-08 by Holger Matthies.

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