How2 Set Up a Digital Calendar

Digital calendars have enormous advantages for enhancing your productivity:

• Accessibility. You can access a digital calendar from any internet-connected device, including your phone, so you can make changes any time you can get access to the internet.

• Universality. You have one calendar, in one place, so you don’t end up missing appointments that were on one calendar but not another.

• Sharing. When you have a digital calendar, you can easily share that entire calendar with a partner or spouse, and can also share individual events with colleagues (such as emailing a showing appointment to a client so they can easily add it to their own calendar).

There are any number of providers for digital calendars, but overall we recommend that you use the Google Calendar service. It’s simple and easy to use, it’s a universal standard, and it’s easy to sync with any smartphone. Here’s how to set up a Google Calendar:

• Go to http://www.google.com/calendar.
• Create an account on google if you don’t already have one (you should definitely have one). While you’re there, set up a gmail email address for the account.
• Once you create the account, you should go directly to the calendar page. If not, go to that link again.
• You’ll see the calendar set up for you. That’s it! Just click on a date or time and you’ll quickly figure out how to create an event for the calendar.

So how do you sync up your Google Calendar with your smartphone? If you have an Android phone, whose operating system was created by Google, the phone should automatically pick up your calendar if you’re logged into the phone with the same account that you used for the online calendar. And if you have an iPhone, just follow these steps:

• Go to “Settings,” then “Mail, Contacts, Calendars,” then “Add Account.”
• Choose the “Gmail” icon.
• Enter the information on your Google account.
• When you have the options for which services to sync up, turn the “Calendars” section to “On.”
• Now, open up “Calendars” from the main platform, and click on the “Calendars” button on the top left. Make sure that the Google account calendar is checked off as being linked up to your calendar.
If you have problems, or want to learn more, just go to google and search for “Google Calendar Help.”