How To: Sync Google Calendar and Toodledo
TL;DR;
One of my biggest goals with this blog is to help others automate their lives and to provide organization tips that include technology. To accomplish this, I will periodically write How To blog posts that walk you through a way to get organized.
This post will show you how to add a connection between a Google Calendar (details in how I use it) and Toodledo (the task management system I use – see blog post) in order to add a to do item to your list whenever you add an event to your calendar.
When I first started using the Toodledo app and a Google calendar, I would often find myself doing double the work. I would add an event to my Google calendar, such as my daughter’s haircut. Then, I would go into Toodledo and add an item to my to do list about the haircut so that I could be reminded a few days before the event in case I needed to do something to prepare or maybe needed to cancel. One of my rules is to find a way to automate anything that involves something I do repeatedly.
To automate this process, I used another application called If This, Then That (IFTTT). IFTTT (https://ifttt.com) works as the middle man, where one application can trigger an action in another application. The configuration of this process is called an “applet”. You can have up to three applets for free in IFTTT or upgrade to their premium subscription. I only have three applets so I haven’t upgraded, but I could see myself utilizing it more as I continue to automate.
In IFTTT, my applet description looks like this:
This applet is saying that when an event is added to my Google Calendar, then a task is added to my task-management system. When I open up the Settings of the applet, I can see these options for the task that is created:
This “action” will create a task that is Top priority, added to my Get Organized folder, has tags of IFTTT and Google Calendar (so I can easily find these tasks later that were automatically added), and has a given Title and Description. In the Description I have added some fields that are merged with the information from the Google Calendar event.
To see this in action, I added an event to our family’s calendar named “New Family Appointment” that will occur on 1/8/22 at 6:30pm.
A few minutes later (the applet should run within an hour or you can manually trigger it in the IFTTT application), I can pull up my Toodledo list and see the following task as been created:
The only issue I currently have with this system is that the Due Date is not set on the new task. To work around this, I pull up a list daily of the tasks with no Due Date or with the word “Reminder” in the task name and I will set the Due Date to however many days ahead of the event that I want. For instance, if the event is a birthday party I might set the reminder to be due two weeks before so I have time to purchase a gift, if needed. However, if the reminder is for my son’s basketball practice, I might set the reminder to only one or two days before since I really only need to make sure he has clean shorts and a water bottle.
My life is full of tasks and events and the management of it all. Whenever I can reduce my “touches” on an item and automate even a small step in my organizational system, I jump at the chance. Even if you don’t use the Toodledo system or you have another calendar app you like, there may be a way to automate in a similar way. Review the trigger and action options from IFTTT to see if it can work with your applications. One less click is one more moment you have for the other priorities in your life!
What task management system and calendar application do you use? Have you added any automation to help add seconds to your day? I’d love to hear from you!