Technology has done a lot of wonderful things for the human race: cars, medicine, the Slinky. But I would argue that one of the biggest technological impacts in the last 25 years has been the good old-fashioned digital calendar.

I don’t know about you, but if it’s not on my calendar, it doesn’t happen. For so many of us, our lives have become increasingly busy and complex, and calendar applications are our crutch. Whether you’re a Google user, Outlook fan, or dedicated to Apple Calendar, they all provide traditional calendar functions along with digital benefits that can elevate your organizational skills.

• Accessibility: Your digital calendar is available anytime, from a multitude of devices.
• Long-term planning: You can copy important dates from one year’s calendar to another so you’ll never forget something important. Two words: repeating events.
• Improved coordination: If you have a partner, kids, and/or other family and friends to coordinate with, the ability to share events and calendars is vital.
• Data retention: The term sounds boring, but a record of how you’ve spent your time is immensely valuable. Your calendar knows how many hours you spend in meetings, where you went for that great dinner on your last birthday, and the details of your first date with your partner.

Beyond these core functions, there are plenty of tools that can further enhance and extend your calendar capabilities. Whether you’re working with just one calendar, or juggling many, these tools can take your time management to the next level.

Meeting Schedulers

Everyone needs to schedule meetings. Tools like Calendly.com and SimplyMeet.me streamline this process. Both offer the ability to connect to your calendar(s), then display your available times via a public link. You determine the preferred times, meeting length, and other parameters. And with the ability to connect multiple calendars (included in the free tier for SimplyMeet) you can show times for yourself, you + your partner, you + partner + kids, or any other combination you need to work around.

Smart Calendars

Next-level scheduling is possible with tools like Reclaim.ai and Notion Calendar (notion.so/calendar). With Reclaim, you can schedule recurring tasks or meetings and the tool can “float” those around other priorities. Notion Calendar, which integrates with the popular Notion tool, can schedule the tasks and deadlines from other Notion Workspaces into your calendar. However you prefer to stay organized, these tools help with the details.

AI Scheduling

More and more tools (including some of those above) are taking advantage of AI to simplify tasks. The ultimate in calendar AI is Clara (claralabs.com), a “virtual employee” trained to facilitate meeting scheduling. Simply give Clara the list of attendees and the tool will generate natural-language emails to collect the available times, schedule the meeting, and notify the participants.

Clara is currently in Beta, and the pricing is in flux so this may not be right for your calendar arsenal just yet. But give it a few years (or less) and AI may be doing all our scheduling.

Technology has undoubtedly increased the frenetic pace of our work and personal lives. Digital calendars offer resources to be more confident in our daily lives and help us to own that most incredible gift: time.