Unlock Google Calendar | Essential Tool for Assisted Living Investing
Dec 24, 2024
In the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship, staying productive is key to keeping everything on track. As the owner of two assisted living facilities, I’ve learned that strong organization is essential for managing my day-to-day responsibilities. While bullet journaling and Notion are both important tools in my toolkit, Google Calendar has become a third, must-have productivity tool for me.
In this post, I’m excited to share why Google Calendar is a game-changer for anyone in the assisted living industry.
Check out the video too:
Why Google Calendar?
Google Calendar isn’t just a planner—it’s a powerful tool for simplifying my day. Accessible, easy to use, and free, Google Calendar is great for staying on top of a busy schedule without adding any extra costs. For business owners juggling meetings, coordinating team schedules, and managing their own time, this tool helps ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
Protecting Your Time with Time Blocking
One of the biggest reasons I rely on Google Calendar is its time-blocking capability. Time blocking is a technique that lets you set aside dedicated chunks of time for specific tasks throughout your day. By blocking time for important tasks, you’re making a commitment to focus on what really matters.
I find time blocking is a great way to protect my time from distractions or unexpected meetings. Whether I’m developing a new business strategy or dedicating time for personal growth, scheduling it on my calendar makes it far more likely that I’ll follow through.
Combining time blocking in Google Calendar with my Notion task lists has made a huge impact on my productivity. Having a to-do list is important, but assigning specific times to each task makes all the difference.
Getting Started with Google Calendar
If you’re new to Google Calendar, getting started is simple—especially if you already have a Gmail account. Google Calendar integrates seamlessly with Gmail, so you can start using it right away.
If you’re part of another ecosystem, like Microsoft or Apple, you might prefer Outlook or Apple Calendar. Choose the calendar app that works best with your workflow because, ultimately, your calendar is a tool for managing your time. Use it to its fullest potential.
Flexibility is Key
While time blocking and scheduling are great for staying organized, flexibility is just as important. Life happens—meetings get rescheduled, priorities shift, and new tasks pop up. Digital calendars like Google Calendar make it easy to adjust on the fly.
The drag-and-drop feature on Google Calendar allows you to move blocks of time without needing to erase or rewrite anything. If an emergency pops up, simply shift your blocks to later in the day, helping you stay on top of tasks without losing momentum.
Your Productivity, Your Way
At the end of the day, the goal is to find a system that works for you. Whether you use Google Calendar, another digital planner, or a good old paper planner, what matters most is that it helps you stay productive and meet your goals.
For me, my productivity system is built on three pillars: bullet journaling, Notion, and Google Calendar. These tools may not be a perfect fit for everyone, but they work for me—and that’s the point. I encourage you to explore and experiment until you find a routine that clicks.
Ready To Take The Next Step?
Don’t forget to download our Business Plan Checklist—a valuable tool to help you craft a successful business plan for your assisted living facility.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
the last several videos i've been talking a lot about bullet journaling and notion and in today's video i'm going to get into the third pillar of my daily planning that allows me to be successful google calendar hey everybody i'm brandon gustafson i own and operate two assisted living facilities and i created this channel to help people just like you learn the ins and outs of investing in assisted living welcome to assisted living investing [Music] hey everybody welcome back to the
00:00:37
channel in our last video we talked about where you can find free resources for notion to get you started now that you have a base understanding and you're like i love notion i want to get started with it give you a few resources for you to get started there and really start creating something that is going to work for you i am happy to jump on calls with you go to assistedlivinginvesting.net and you can set up a call with me and we could chat about it there but i'd love to help you get started and
00:01:05
creating something that is is productive and that works for you in today's video though we're going to get into what is google calendar um this is my third pillar um as in a previous video i outlined and i'll link that up above i outlined that there are um three things that i do to stay organized with everything that i've got going on so peeler pillar number one for me is bullet journaling journaling specifically matrix planning and i'll link that up above here as well so you
00:01:36
can go and watch my video on matrix planning and then number two is notion um specifically using those advanced to-do lists um in motion and how i do that and i'll link that video up above as well and my third pillar is google calendars so i've used a lot of different calendars in the past but what i've found through using a bunch of different calendar applications is google google calendar is the one that actually just works best to meet my needs and you might be different from me and that's
00:02:04
totally fine but for me using google calendar really helps me solidify my process and it is that third pillar that really holds me up as i plan my day and work to get things done and what i'm hoping you can do as i go through why i use google calendar and how i use it is take some of that information and just apply it to your own situation maybe you want to use a different type of calendar and and that's fine but just use the the information i'm giving you and apply it to your own situation to create
00:02:35
something that works for you that i've said this before if i've said it once i've said a thousand times it doesn't matter what you do there's no right or wrong answer to how you organize things you have to find something that works for you that's gonna allow you to be productive and then just get started um it doesn't don't worry about thinking oh my gosh brandon does it this way and if he ever found out how i do it he would be so disappointed i'm gonna be honest with
00:03:02
you i don't care um do it works for you and make it work so that you can be productive that's what i'm hoping you can do that's that's part of the purpose of this channel in addition to helping you learn how to do investing in assisted living is to help you be productive and help you to to be a good business owner and how to stay on top of things and how to juggle a bunch of balls that you have in the air and just be more effective whether that's in your personal life in your family life
00:03:27
um in work whatever it is to help you get things done so that you can be productive that's what i want for you and these are some of the tools that i'm that i use to help me do that and i want you to to use those tools as well to your own advantage so with that said what is google calendar google calendar is the calendar feature that was created by google so if you have a gmail account then you automatically have access to a google calendar and google calendar is really quite robust and has a huge perk with it it's free um
00:04:01
so that part is really nice it lets you really work with those those tools that are there um and get in and use them and you don't have to pay for them which is always a nice thing especially when you're getting started you're a new entrepreneur you you need to find those free resources and take advantage of them so that's one of the awesome things about google calendar really good tool doesn't cost you any money some of the competitors that are out there and this is all kind of depending
00:04:27
on which ecosystem you live in so if you're in google or microsoft or apple um there's going to be a calendar that works for you so for microsoft that's going to be outlook for apple users apple calendar there are also several different third-party calendar apps out there that you could use what i would suggest is find the app that works for you that you're comfortable with and start using it that's how you're going to stay effective there's a lot out there just find the one that works and and go with
00:04:56
it so why would you use a calendar the the biggest reason is to protect your time but you want to block out time on your calendar even if it's just for you to see and give you that time on an assignment and this is what they call time blocking and comment down below if you'd like me to do a video on what time blocking is and how you can use it effectively i'd love to kind of go over that i'm not going to get into it in this video and don't have any plans to do it but i'd
00:05:23
love to do it if it's something that's going to be helpful for you so comment down below if learning about time blocking is is something you'd like to learn about but blocking this time off on your calendar signals to your brain that you've got something scheduled and now you've got to get it done this is kind of my method of doing things with matrix planning uh doing things in motion and then throwing it into a calendar it signals to my brain i've put this in three different spots i got to get it
00:05:50
done like this is important brandon's got to do this and and it has helped me be very productive with things so i've been using this method method now for years i actually started doing in a full-time job before i even knew what bullet journaling was before i knew about notion i was blocking time off in my calendar when i was at work and it helped me you know do things like meetings or work on different projects or or do planning or different things like that it really helps you get things done training for
00:06:21
example you need to protect your time and put it on your calendar because otherwise people will schedule over it and so you need to have it actually there and if you're in a work environment make sure you put it on there so that people can see that chunk of time is blocked off they don't need to know what it is but you need to protect that time to help you get things done and be productive so that's what's important about working with a calendar and why you want to put it in there in chunks of
00:06:48
time do some time blocking and and make sure it's on there you can always still be flexible um but you still need to have that in there and you know if somebody wants to meet with you you got your manager comes up there's emergency that comes up and you had to set aside an hour or two to do some training be flexible flex it around a little bit so you can meet their needs but put it on your calendar and people will be less likely to schedule over you and you're going to be more likely to get your work
00:07:15
done now the most important thing for you to remember is you just need to find something that works for you i talked about this earlier in the video what you need to do though is just find a process that works for you it doesn't matter what it is feel free to use anything that i give you um whether it's bullet journaling to google calendar as a resource um and get on assistedlivinginvesting.net and schedule time for me and we can chat about how i could help you be a little more organized in the things that you're
00:07:43
doing but just remember nobody's sitting there looking over your shoulder making sure you've done it correctly it doesn't matter don't worry about what they think do what works for you because that's the only person that matters is you're trying to get things done and be productive this is for you um you need to create that platform that system that works for you that makes sense in your mind and it will help you be productive i have three pillars you might only need one do what
00:08:08
works for you and you're going to be fine just got to get started and make sure you have that system in place and everything is going to be fine now in our next video i'm going to get into how to add new calendars to google calendar to stay organized so i really wanted to get into this because this is how i use google calendar there's a lot of features in there in google calendar i just want to give you an overview of how i use this so that you can then just kind of get a feel for how to create these different
00:08:37
types of calendars how to block things off on your time and what it looks like and just help you be productive so we're going to get into that in our next video if you'd like to learn more about investing in assisted living make sure you visit me on assistedlivinginvesting.net i have free resources over there and would love to set up a call with you and just chat about how i can help you in your journey as you're getting started in assisted living or even just in in small businesses in general and make
00:09:04
sure you follow me on my other social media platforms that are linked down below and remember it doesn't take a lot just just a little bit keep going keep making progress step by step by step if you are consistent you're going to be productive you're going to make it everything's going to work out for you i promise just keep going you can do this thanks for watching and have a great day [Music]
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