How I Use Google Calendar to Combat Time Blindness

Time blindness makes life really difficult. When you’re lost in time, you forget appointments, run late to meetings, and procrastinate on deadlines. When time isn’t all that real to you, your life may become a mess. I have been there! But what to do?

I struggled with being late for the longest time, and I can speak of the immense stress and shame that comes from it. But over the years, I developed some strategies to counter my time blindness. I write about them in my ebook Lost in Time: Lifehacks for a Timeblind Brain. Today, we will have a look at how I use Google Calendar to combat time blindness.

Visual time-blocking is a magical tool

One of the strategies I mention in the ebook is visual time-blocking in Google Calendar. It is one of the primary tools in my time blindness toolbox, along with regular alarms on my phone.

The beautiful thing about Google Calendar is that you can have a separate calendar for every sort of thing, and you can set up notifications for every event you want to remember. Every. Single. Thing. If you check your email regularly, you are all set. Bonus: The different calendars are in different colors for easy visual orientation.

How do I use my Google Calendar?

So, the first thing: every appointment goes into my main Google Calendar as soon as I make it. Without exception. I use Google Calendar as my primary calendar, and it’s super easy to just add events on my phone. I check the calendar app every morning to see what’s on the agenda that day and set the alarm for the time when I need to start preparing and when I need to go (as I talk about in the ebook). This way, I’m not likely to miss an appointment, ever. And if I somehow fail to do this, my phone shows me a reminder half an hour before the event. (This is Android, I’m not sure if iPhone has a similar function.)

Birthdays are made super-easy with Google Calendar! I make an event for the date and set it to repeat after a year and to send me an email on the day itself. Bam, done. Now I never forget a birthday again. As a bonus, I set one reminder a week ahead so that I remember to buy a gift.

Another thing is long-term obligations, like the endocrinologist appointment I have to go to every two years. I add it to my Reminders calendar. Or the day I have to renew my public transport pass. Into the calendar it goes. The same goes for vaccinations and so on.

I also track my Shark week in a separate calendar, set on repeat every 28 days (thank you, hormonal contraception!). This way, when I want to plan a trip abroad, I know which dates to avoid, even if I plan half a year in advance.

Whenever I start a free trial of this or that service, the end of the free trial immediately goes into the calendar with a reminder to cancel it. (This has saved me quite a lot of money!)

Oh, and when I want to travel somewhere, I set up a notification for half a year before the date to look for cheap plane tickets. They are usually the cheapest three to six months in advance, so I know when to start looking for them. For example, this year I want to go to Valencia for the total eclipse of the Sun in August, so I have a reminder set for 12th February. And, of course, the date and time of the eclipse are in my calendar too.

Google Calendar helps me with my blog

I also have a reminder set on repeat every second Thursday when a new blog post comes out here. (I have them planned in WordPress months in advance, and they are published automatically.) It reminds me to add links to the new post to my older posts, and to promote it on Facebook. It is an immense help because I would never remember to do it otherwise.

When I write a post for my Facebook page that advertises a new blog post, but said blog post isn’t published yet, I simply go to the date of publication in my calendar and make an event in my “projects” calendar that says: “New post on Facebook page Helen Olivier.” And now comes the important thing: I link both the Google document with the text of the post and the picture from Pexels I have chosen to go along with it in the note to the Google Calendar event.

And I have an event with a reminder for the first of every month to write down my SEO stats and income from the blog, so that I’m able to keep track of how the blog is growing and evolving.

What Google Calendars do I have

• Main calendar for my day-to-day appointments and long-term obligations
• Other events (for the events I’m not sure if I will attend, but of which I want to keep track)
• Birthdays
• Shark Week
• Projects
• Reminders

Thats it! Super simple, but it covers every single possibility.

A few minutes that save you hours of stress

Those are super easy things that you can set up in minutes, yet they save you hours and hours of stress, and tons and tons of mindspace that you can devote to more pleasant things. I became a much more organized person since I started using Google Calendar, and I have never looked back.

If you already rely on Google Calendar, it’s absolutely worth experimenting with these tweaks. You don’t have to overhaul your whole system or suddenly become a “planner person.” Even one small change can make your days feel easier and more predictable. And if you’re already using Google Calendar in your own way, I’d love to know what little hacks or habits have made the biggest difference for you? Tell me in the comments!

Are you always late?

Grab a copy of my short ebook, Lost in Time: Lifehacks for the Timeblind Mind. It’s ADHD-friendly and filled with actionable tips and advice. Get it here!