Look, we’ve all been there – rushing to that meeting, stressing about traffic, and praying we don’t show up sweaty and flustered. But what if I told you there’s a hidden gem in Google Calendar that can transform your schedule into a time-management masterpiece? Let’s dive into this travel time hack and ditch the last-minute stress for good!
Steps
- Open up your Google Calendar on desktop as sadly this hack is not possible using the mobile app.
- Then either create your meeting or edit an existing one. Make sure you add the address of your meeting or event. In this example I’m going to set the location as the Espy at St Kilda Beach.
- Then click on the ‘Preview in Maps’ icon next to the location field.
- Google Maps will pop right up in the sidebar with your meeting location set as the destination, and the ‘arrive by’ time set for the start of your meeting.
- Click on Directions and enter your starting point like your home or office. Because of privacy reasons I’m not putting either of those locations in today, instead I’m going to be travelling from the State Library of Victoria.
- Choose whether you’ll be travelling by car, public transport, foot, or even cycling. As a good Melbournite I’ll be choosing public transport.
- Once you’ve got your starting point and travel mode set, click the “Add to calendar” button. Click on Details if you want to see the full route information before you select it.
- Google automatically creates a brand new event before your main one, factoring in travel time from your starting point to the meeting spot. And best of all, you’ll be marked as busy for that commute time so you (hopefully) won’t get booked for any meetings!
If you’ve got default notifications set up, then that will be applied to this event as well, but otherwise you might want to add a notification at the time of the event just to remind you to get travelling!
Want more personalised help?
I hope this article was of assistance to you, but if you want more personalised help then why not get in touch?
I specialise in helping small business owners just like you work better with Google Workspace so you can save time and money by streamlining your business processes; increasing your productivity; and improving client and employee comunications.