Make your “next free 30 minutes” easy for people find (Google calendar)

How often do you look at people’s calendars, finding a total mess, and lack of convention around how they schedule their appointments? How many times do you have people who refuse to look at, or interpret your own calendar?

I personally use Google calendar appointment slots make this pretty easier on other people. Quite a few other calendar options have this (eg, Outlook).

Step 1) Find some actual free time every day

Before I set this up, my calendar was very blocked back to back with appointments. I suggest you look a few weeks ahead where you calendar is more empty, and start carving out some appointment slots.

In Google calendar, you create an Appointment Slot like you would any other meeting — be sure to change the meeting type from “Event” to “Appointment slots” though;

This is a 1 hour blocker, and you can see this defaults to 30 minute meetings (ie, 2 people can book back to back 30 minute in the 1 hour slot)

Best practices recommendation: 1 hour in the morning, 1 hour in the afternoon.

Step 2) Make it recurring

You probably have to go to “more options” in your calendar to make it recurring. I chose to have mine repeat every weekday.

Save the appointment and check that it pops up in your calendar.

Best practices recommendation: The recurring meeting should be the same time (or close to it) each day.

Step 3) That’s all you needed to do!

People inside your company that look at your calendar will now see those slots in your calendar. Clicking on them, will create a 30 minute appointment with you.

However, you can make this even easier, with a special link…

Step 4) Copy your “Find my next 30 minutes” link

In your main calendar view, look at the newly created appointment, and click on it to see that there is a sharing link.

You can paste that link to people. If they click on it, they’ll get a special view like this;

This also works for people outside of your organization too! Without them seeing your private calendar view.

Step 5) Put the link in your email signature

This is a great way to socialize the link and get people using it;