Google Calendar is going to tell you how much time you lose in meetings

“Survived another meeting that could have been an email.” It is now a well-known statement, because where we already found pre-corona that we often had empty meetings, that has only become more since the pandemic. Do you want to make a point with your colleagues, or do you just like statistics? Google Calendar now lets you know how much time you lose in meetings.

Time Insights

Google Calendar already offered a way to see how much time you spend on something, but now you can also categorize certain events with colored labels. Adding color to your agenda is useful in any case to keep work and private life separate, but in the future you will also be able to label specific meetings to see at the end of the week, month or year how much time you spent on that period.

Within ‘Time Insights’ you can now see for specific events how much time you have been in a meeting, how often you have attended a certain meeting and who you have spoken to. This can also be very useful, for example, for freelancers to determine how many hours they have spent on a particular client. Or project managers: how time is distributed within a particular project.

Google Calendar

Google writes, “We hope this customizable breakdown feature will make it easier for you to track time spent on specific activities or strategic areas, such as project work, staff meetings, or meetings with specific colleagues and stakeholders.” This new feature is enabled by default. If you want to use it actively, you can go to the ‘Time insights’ and then select per color. It is possible to add a label and then paste that label on all kinds of meetings for insight.

Very useful, but unfortunately not for everyone. You can only use it with a Workspace account that falls within: Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Nonprofits.

Do you often use the time insights in Google Calendar? Leave it in the comments to this article.