One of Google’s thrusts now is to use technology to manage users’ Digital Wellbeing. Companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc are realizing that they have to help their users keep a healthy online life by using digital tools and devices to remind them to go offline and live a life beyond devices. Okay, it is kind of ironic, but hey, it can actually work if used right. Google Calendar is the latest product that is introducing features to help people improve their work-life balance and digital well-being.
You can now create an “event” on your calendar that will tell everyone that you will be off the grid and should not be disturbed. When you create an event, choose the “Out of office” Calendar entry and if you share your Google Calendar, then other people will see that you’re not available during those dates, whether you’ll go on vacation or a sabbatical or you simply should not be disturbed. Calendar will automatically decline meeting invites during this time period. Later on, it will also be able to detect when you’re creating the “out of office” event and change the type automatically. You can customize the decline message and also the visibility of your title.
You can also now restrict your working hours, at least as seen on your Google Calendar. Just set it up that you can’t be disturbed after 8PM or whatever time it is that you set for yourself and it will inform those trying to schedule meetings that you are not available at this time. Actually, you can already do this previously but now you can customize work hours for each day of the week separately. Calendar can also infer your working hours based on your timezone and your previous calendar entries and it will prompt you to set them as your official working hours where people can send you calendar invites.
The Google Calendar update is now available and rolling out to G Suite users. If you don’t see it yet, expect it to arrive at your account over the next few days.
SOURCE: Google
