How to Use Google Calendar for Time Blocking Your Week

Create a Dedicated Time Blocking Calendar

First thing I did when testing time blocking in Google Calendar was panic because I cluttered my personal calendar with so many bright-colored boxes that it looked like my screen was melting 😵‍💫. So do yourself a favor and make a separate calendar just for time blocking.

Here’s how you do it. Open Google Calendar on desktop — mobile doesn’t let you create new calendars, annoyingly. On the left under “My calendars,” hit the little plus sign > “Create new calendar.” Give it a name like Time Blocks or Sanity Plan 2024 or whatever makes you feel mildly in control.

Now you’ll want to make your new calendar color-coded. I made all my time blocks light yellow so they’re easy to see but don’t scream at my eyeballs. You can change the color by hovering over the calendar name on the left, hitting the three dots, and choosing a color. Pro tip: avoid red, unless you want your calendar to constantly yell YOU’RE LATE.

Making a separate calendar for time blocking does a couple things:
– You can toggle it on and off without losing your normal appointments.
– It avoids cluttering your shared team calendar.
– You can export or hide it cleanly if the whole time blocking idea crashes and burns. (No shame. Been there. Multiple times.)

Also, if your brain works like mine, seeing it visually separate relieves some of the anxiety. A blocked calendar isn’t a to-do list. It’s an experiment in turning time into walls 🙃.

Map Realistic Categories Not Just Tasks

Early mistake I made: tried blocking out every specific task. Like “reply to Bob’s email,” “clean inbox,” “check Zendesk for screaming tickets.” Don’t do that. You’ll spend all your time re-blocking when things inevitably take longer than you expected. Instead, block *types* of time.

Here’s what actually worked:
– Focus Work: This was for deep work sessions. Anything 60–90 minutes where I needed to disappear into a doc or spreadsheet abyss.
– Communication: Slotted 30-minute windows for Slack chaos, email replies, bug triage.
– Meetings: Yes, meetings live on their own default calendar, but I blocked buffer time around them. Meeting-Adjacent Time. This is clutch 🧠.
– Admin or Reset: Short 15-minute blocks to clean files, rename things, or figure out why five dashboards are suddenly broken.
– Learning or Research: Stuff like reading docs, skimming changelogs, or scrolling Twitter with the delusion of productivity.

Naming these blocks consistently helped a lot. I used bracketed tags for quick searchability: [Focus], [Comms], [Reset], etc. You can set those as recurring templates that repeat weekly so it’s less of a mess every Monday.

Stick to colors too. For example:
– Yellow: Focus
– Blue: Communication
– Green: Admin

I avoided red or purple because my brain associates those with alarms or mourning 😂.

Actually Use Recurring Events for Skeleton Setup

I used to think recurring events were only for staff meetings or things like “upload timesheet” — but for time blocking, recurring placeholders are the bread and butter. Spend 30–45 minutes up front laying out a weekly structure skeleton. In Google Calendar, create a new event and toggle it to repeat weekly on specific days.

For example, you might:
– Add 9am–11am Focus blocks every weekday
– Reserve Monday 3pm and Friday 11am as [Reset] catch-alls
– Book Wednesday afternoons for Creative time, if that’s your zone

Then, each week, you don’t *have* to follow it strictly — but you always have a backup plan. What I do now is start each Monday morning by dragging blocks around based on meetings or chaos ahead. But that’s way easier than starting from zero every time.

Bonus trick: Want a more flexible setup? Make events repeat weekly but set end dates just a few weeks out. That way, you avoid committing to a structure you might abandon. Temporarily recurring 🙂.

Use Descriptions for Context Not Just Titles

Once I got the hang of setting up time blocks, I pinned another thing — if I don’t write down *what* I’m doing during the block, I lose the thread. Like I’d show up to a [Focus] block and have zero idea what I was supposed to focus on. Blank mind. Clock ticking. Rage building.

So I started putting just-in-time notes into the event description field. Stuff like:

“`
Things to knock out:
– Finalize Q3 priority list draft
– Dash. version 6 testing (open tabs already)
– Backup Zapier routes — see Notion
“`

It’s basic, but it saved me from scrambling. When you’re balancing like ten apps’ worth of work at once (hi fellow tab hoarders 👋), this adds just enough friction to make you pause and reorient. Also, if you use links to docs you need in the event description, Google Calendar lets you click straight into them, so you avoid opening the wrong Notion page for the fifth time.

Also: don’t feel pressured to make these blocks long. If you have a 25-minute task and a quick link to add to the event, that’s totally valid. The whole point is *intentional time*, not 100% optimization.

Drag Time Blocks Around As Needed

Listen — your week will *not* go perfectly. Ever. Tuesday morning clients will cancel. Something will light on fire (often literally, if you’re managing servers). Jira boards will mysteriously reshuffle while you’re asleep 😑.

That’s why dragging time blocks is totally part of the system, not a sign of failure. In Google Calendar, you can click and hold any event and slide it to another time slot — even double-click to edit the duration. But you know what I stumbled into? If you *copy* the block instead of moving it, by holding Option (on Mac) or Ctrl (on Windows) while dragging, you can preserve your original plan and create a new version when things delay.

Copy-dragging lets me do things like:
– Preserve the original Tuesday [Comms] block I missed
– Drop a second one in on Wednesday without deleting the first
– Track how many hours certain work types actually require

Functionally, this helps you compare reality vs planning. I sometimes even nickname moved blocks with “SHIFTED” so I remember when a plan derailed.

Also, don’t forget: right-clicking a block and choosing “Duplicate” gets you a new copy quickly. I wish it came with a dialogue like “Are you sure this wasn’t a fake productivity moment?” but we can’t have everything.

Integrate Calendars Across Devices and Tools

I totally get the appeal of doing this entire system in Google Calendar, but I kept opening something in Notion, or pulling Todoist, or checking Slack events like secret meeting gremlins. So to make it *actually stick*, you have to integrate where your time blocks show up.

Here’s what helped:
– Use calendar sync in apps like Todoist, Trello, or ClickUp (they usually integrate Google Calendar natively)
– Pull your personal calendar into your work Google account as a read-only layer — avoids double-booking
– Enable mobile notifications for specific block types (like [Comms]) so you don’t drift

And if you’re using a Mac, check the native Calendar app’s integration with Google. It won’t perfectly recreate blocks with colored tags, but it’s great when toggling visibility across multiple accounts. I sometimes lose track of which version of myself I’m trying to be, so clear visibility helps.

On an experimental note: I was playing with setting up Zapier automations to create time blocks from starred emails. Works, *sometimes*. The trigger is a little weird — it misfires when stars get removed, or Google randomly resyncs. But worth testing, if you hate retyping calendar events.

Include Buffers Between Blocks You Actually Need

This might be the most important bad habit I had to break. Real humans don’t teleport between different cognitive zones. You can’t go from [Focus] to [Comms] to [Reset] as if you’re switching tabs. Well, you *can*… but the burnout hits fast.

So now, I always build 10-15 minute buffer spaces between major blocks.

– After a long Focus block? Stand up, walk away, eat a cracker.
– Before morning Comms block? Review your inbox, reflag things.
– Before or after meetings? Give yourself a reality ramp.

What I did was insert buffer blocks visually titled like:
“—— transition // get coffee ——” or “—— slow mins ——.” I use grey or transparent colors so they’re visually quiet. I actually tricked myself into respecting them by making them “busy” status, so when people try to randomly slot a call, they hit a thin wall 🙂.

Weirdly enough, buffers made me more likely to actually *do* Focus work because I didn’t dread the slam into the next task.

Mentally Prepare to Ditch or Defragment Weekly

Time blocking works until it doesn’t. Some weeks will be perfect. Some weeks you’ll reschedule everything twice and pretend Thursday never happened. That’s okay.

Once a week, I do a stupid little ritual I now lovingly call “Calendar Triage.”

I:
1. Cancel blocks that never got used
2. Push surviveable ones to next week
3. Reflect (lightly) on why I skipped certain things
4. Add fresh ones if projects changed

Don’t try to analyze it too hard. Sometimes the reason is just “I was too tired” or “The entire app stack failed” or “I fell into a YouTube hole.” That’s also data.

After a few cycles, patterns emerge. For example, I always skip [Comms] on Fridays. So I stopped scheduling it. Now I front-load it Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Week feels healthier already 🙂

Time blocking isn’t magic — but it’s surprisingly good at showing you how weird your day-to-day actually is, once it’s all visible.