Digital calendar is essential tool in my toolset. Digital calendars exist for so many years. They do a great job to show an overview of events in my life and let me easily manage those events.
But I feel a lack of support from calendar apps when it’s time to actually handle the event.
I have three pain points and despite there are many calendar services out there I don’t see any addressing them 😟
Reminders are too gentle
One of the major differentiators of an event from a task is having a specific start time.
Then why do calendar apps are so gentle when telling me about it?
When we use our devices everything looks fine. We get a notification which is shown on top of whatever we’re currently doing. That’s great.
Why in the world, event doesn’t get enough of exposure when devices are sleeping? I don’t know how about you, but I constantly have an issue when event time approaches and I’m not using any of my devices. That gentle reminder on the phone doesn’t grab my attention at all while the phone is parked at my desk.
One way around could be wearing a smartwatch. Not to mention this is expensive workaround, I specifically don’t want to have apps and notifications on my wrist.
What I do is setting an alarm duplicating calendar notification. There are obvious downsides like forgetting to set an alarm and extra effort. At least I don’t miss start time of event.
No signs of event ending
Everything has its start and its end. Event’s end time is as important as start time.
I would greatly benefit from some kind of reminder that it’s time to wrap up an event. When I have a call or a meeting, before it ends we need to summarize decisions and next actions. When I have a block dedicated to focused work, event end is my constraint, but unfortunately calendar doesn’t help me to acknowledge it.
Nowadays I have to follow the time by myself checking it several times during an event. At times this can be super annoying. Alternatively I set a timer.
Travel time is half done
Travel time is super important for offline events. Doctor appointments, school events, appointments in state institutions, client meetings, etc. There are many offline events in our lives.
Calendars do have some goodies to handle travel time when it comes to time communing to the event. In Apple Calendar I can set travel time manually. Google calendar lets us do this with a help of Google Maps.
But I question myself why there is only time to travel to event. In real life there is also time to travel from event. Most typical offline event during the day is basically pausing work day, commuting to another place, doing whatever is needed, and come back to work. It doesn’t matter if you work in the office or from home.
I would greatly appreciate having an option to set time to travel back in calendar events.
Meanwhile I either have to keep time to travel back in mind or actually create a dummy event “Way back”.
Am I the only one having these issues? Do you know different ways to handle them?