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It's Friday, and you are asking yourself: Where did your week go? How do you spend your average days at work, and what can you do to make your weeks more effective? Google Calendar will put you in control of your days so you can take back your time.
And is that not the highest purpose of a calendar? Let's dive in!
Time Insights mean your Google Calendar is becoming proactive.
How to find it
How to find it
Time insights is opened from your Calendar's left side panel. A little indicator gives you a first taste of how much time you spent in meetings.
Click "More insights" to see details.
Time insights is a view - data privacy
Time insights is a view - data privacy
Google Calendar had 6 views before: Day, week, month, year, schedule (great for printing!) and the esoteric 5 days, which is always the next 5 days ahead.
All those views are different ways of looking at your data - some more aggregated, some more detailed. And when you share your calendar with someone, they can use the view they prefer, including this one.
Now, it gets a 7th view that shows only totals - grouped by participant size, day or person. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Time analytics can only be viewed by you, or by people you delegate your entire calendar to. Your administrator cannot see it, your boss cannot see it, your coworkers cannot see it. It's also not stored anywhere or exported.
Where are you spending your time?
Where are you spending your time?
Are you ready for the good times?! I will not offend you by reading the screenshot. Instead, let's have a conversation. You're my coach, and I am complaining to you about how the world is unfair and how little time I have and how my calendar has been hijacked (completely without my doing!). Ready?
Holger: Dear reader, the world is unfair. I can't get anything done - look at my calendar. People keep pulling me into meetings ...
You: Whoa, wait. People don't pull you into meetings, you accept invitations. How bad is it really?
Holger: I spend over half my time in meetings - 4.6h to be exact. Fridays are the worst. This week (Oct 11-15) has been SO bad. 26.6 hours of meetings! (1 in the screenshot)
You: That still leaves 28.9h free, doesn't it? (2)
Holger: Ummm I guess. I should probably adjust my working time in Calendar. It's still a lot!
You: I see that week was more or less typical. Who are you meeting with, anyway?
Holger: About 50% of my meetings are recurring, that is interesting. I think I can do get out of some of them - I reviewed them recently. They are related to my role, but as you can see (3), I spend a lot of time with the same people in group meetings. I'm not sure all that overlap is necessary.
You: Good idea. You can probably get updates during your 1:1s. Can you hover this person (3) you spend 5.8 hours with - see how it highlights every meeting you have together?
Holger: Oh wow. People must think we're twins, haha. I'll decline some of that. I'll do more of that, thank you!
Even more tips
Even more tips
Alone or as coaching
Alone or as coaching
Time insights are a private tool. But as you have seen, you can use it in coaching conversations to find out bottlenecks and illustrate behaviors.
Choose your frame of reference
Choose your frame of reference
Time insights react to what you are displaying. If you switch month view, you'll get every statistic by month. If you move back in time, so will Time insights.
Pinning people
Pinning people
People you meet with displays the people you meet most often. You can pin people you want to keep an eye on.
The key to increase productivity is to be mindful of our commitments and to renegotiate them if needed. Google Calendar gives you a very powerful tool to effortlessly know what is going on. What do your Time Insights say about you - besides too many meetings? What can you do to get more time for deep work? Go ahead and open Time Insights, and start making time for what matters in your role. Thanks for reading!
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