Google Calendar Time Insights

#1 View in the left-side navigation

As some of you may know, I'm a fanatic about Google Calendar and have been for many years. I started really getting into using it back in 2010. At the time, I was working as an EdTech Coach full-time and it was an excellent way to organize my time. It also became a way to "justify" my job, because some segments of the school community were wondering why positions like mine exist. My calendar became a form of evidence that I could share to explain how my time was being used. As I moved to my next role as a Head of School, it was a form of accountability for the Board, faculty, and parents. During the next several jobs that I held, I continued to use Google Calendar to organize my time and also as a method of explaining my work to others. Which brings us to my current role as Director of Technology at St. Johnsbury Academy Jeju, where I am actually starting to use the color coding in calendar to track how and where my time is being used. If you haven't gotten this granular with Google Calendar, I am going to recommend that you do. The
visual quality of the data alone is helpful. As you can see in screenshot #1, this is what you see in Google Calendar on your left-side navigation. Using the "More insights" button will provide a new view, which is the "Time breakdown" panel. I find the "By color" option to be more useful for me, but you should

definitely experiment and find a system that works for you. One thing that I found was that I need to be careful with the different colors so that each one actually has a true meaning and allows me an opportunity to really document where my time is being used. For example, rather than specifically mentioning something like PowerSchool, I have the division of the school ES, MS, HS. When I do something, regardless of the program or tool used, I'm tracking which division I was doing it for, not that tool was used. This is a decision based on who I'm showing this data to later. Based on the population of each division, I want principals to be able to see how much of my time their division is getting. When it comes to my regular view in Google Calendar, I find the weekly view (screenshot #3) is more helpful to my job overall. Again, you should play around with different options to find the view that works best for your situation.

#3 Week view in Google Calendar

After using Google Calendar for over 15 years, I really can't imagine my work life without it. I have shared my calendar to my IT Department and Leadership Team, so they can all completely see it. The rest of the faculty and staff have access to see the "Tech Bytes" which are appointment slots for them to request direct support. As Gemini begins to rollout across the various Workspace tools, I'm excited what new possibilities will become available for organizing and documenting data about my schedule.