How to Balance Using Google Calendar

After Outlook Office took a dive on me I started to take off my microsoft office blinders and look into other alternatives to run my email and my calendar.  I found that Google Calendar truly fit my life and my needs as a busy mom and as work from home professional.

1.  I can check my calendar from my mobile phone without syncing or anything else just find it and use it.  That is my biggest thrill is one unified calendar.

2.  I love how easy it is to add more than one calendar and use the public calendars as well.  For instance I use my calendar for all of my appointments etc.  Then I created a calendar for each kids schedule.  Now I can easily overlap the calendars and see when we have scheduling conflict or isolate the calendar for printing it in a single sheet to display on the family communication which is the refrigerator.

3.  I adore the ability to add recurring events relatively easily such as birthdays, anniversaries etc.

4.  Public Calendars.  If you want Faith Hills touring schedule or my personal favorite the Nebraska Husker Football schedule you can easily search the public calendars and have them incorporated into your on schedule with just a few clicks.

5.  I took this calendar one step further.  I enjoy providing my family with decent meals and also try to diet on occasion so I created an entirely separate calendar with a weeks worth of meal planning, created a standard shopping list for that week.  The benefit to creating the menu calendar is the ability to rotate the week worth of meals using the recurring feature.  My kids eat the same things tacos, pizza, sub sandwiches etc.   Occasionally I toss in a new menu item but for the most part your standard meals rotate.  A standardized shopping this and a recurring menu saves me time and a ton of engry deciding what to put on the table at night.

I realize this topic is off base for marketing but it does allow me more time for marketing and more time to spend with my kids which is the point of working from home.