Google calendar event type "goals" going away

[Don Osborne]

Hi D - As you probably know, Google calendar is removing the "goals" event type from Google calendar.

A "goal" could only be set from the iOS G Calendar app, but it was an amazing feature. This event type would "float," meaning it would automatically find time for itself throughout the day. The user could select preferences for "AM," "Early Afternoon," "Afternoon" or "Evening." Over time, the goal would learn the user's preferences and attempt to schedule the goal at or near the user's preferred time.

It's an awesome and clever piece of planning. Is there anything close in CalenGoo? I believe the 'float' feature in CalenGoo does something very different -- if I don't complete an event that is set to float, then it migrates to the same time on the next day. Please correct me if I have that wrong.

To give you a sense of what behavior "goals" does: You want to go for a 30 minute walk, prefer to do it before noon, but other than that, you're flexible. The calendar app schedules your walk for an open 30 minute timeslot that it finds available, say 10 am. Later, you schedule a normal appointment for 10 am. The calendar recognizes the conflict, and moves your walk to an open spot in your calendar -- 9 am, or 11 am as available. If it can't find a morning slot, it will find a slot sometime during the day and plug in your walk. Such a great function.

Goals can be set to repeat -- so each day the user has goals set up, yet they are designed to move around any appointments with specific times.

Some goals will change their status to 'complete' based on other apps. For example, the 'walk' goal in my example receives data from the fitness app. When a walk is completed in the fitness app, the calendar marks the 'walk' goal as complete. Very nice integration, but not critical.

I would welcome any suggestions you have to reproduce this capability. Thanks very much!

Don

ps. Goals did not sync from my calendar to CalenGoo (not surprised).

[Don Osborne]

Oops - turns out the migration set itself to Mac only, so the Google calendar stuff didn't migrate. Disregard my ps; haven't tested that aspect yet.

[Don Osborne]

Adding a thought that may help: Another way to think about what Google Calendar event type called "goals" is that this event type supports habit creation & tracking, or "X effect," or "streaks." In other words, by establishing a task that fills in around otherwise unscheduled time, you get:

* habit creation: Time that looks unscheduled ("free" time) is now better utilized for things like (you pick) exercise, meal planning, etc.

* X effect aka streaks: A report or summary of this event type would show percentage of successful completion of your goals, thus creating momentum and a feeling of "I don't want to break this streak." For sum, this is a powerful internal motivator.

D

[CalenGoo Support]

Hi Don,

thank you for this suggestion! It sounds interesting but I don't know if many people would use it. Maybe Google removed it because it wasn't used anyway? 🤔 However automatic planning of events might be nevertheless an interesting feature. If you like you can add it to my suggestion website: https://calengoo.de/features/calengoodesktop . Then we can see how many people would like to have it. 🙂

Please don't hesitate to contact me again if you have further questions!

Kind regards

Dominique