This is a guest post by Lawrence He
Back when I started my video production business during college, I was a typical unorganized, aloof college student. Like many, I repeatedly missed meetings and engagements. It didn’t take long for me to see the the importance of not forgetting to take scheduled calls and being punctual.
Because the main reason for not planning meetings was because it was too much of a hassle to actually write down my scheduled events. So after a bit of research, using the my Android, I’ve developed a system to never miss another appointment.
So using an Android app called QuickEvent, I made it super easy for me to add events to my Google calendar. Typing an event out is fast or I can simply create an event by typing (or speaking) “meeting next Thursday at 8am”.
I have three different calendars (two for business and one for personal — all synced) and quick event lets me choose which calendar to add my event to.
Now that it’s really easy to add events, I want it to be super easy for me to set alarm notifications to remind me of my meetings an hour before my meetings.
Google Calendar automatically sets push notifications for you, but push notifications just doesn’t cut it since I have my phone on silent for most of the day. I need a loud alarm to really warn me.
So I use Alarmpad Pro to set alarms for me.
When I download this, I go into settings –> enable advanced mode (check the box)
Then I tap the plus sign to add an alarm and I get this screen
Personally, I’ve set an alarm with “#3” for an hour before the event, “#2” for 30 minutes before the event, and “#1” for 15 minutes.
Now all I have to do is add a hashtag into the event name using quick event and I have added to my Google calendar, and it will remind me an hour before your meeting.
Its very reliable and hasn’t failed to ring. And don’t worry if you have a lot of meetings all with the same hashtag (#3), Alarmpad will not confuse them, it will just ring in correct order like you expect it to.
Lawrence He is Creative Director at Polygon Visuals (polygonvisuals.com), a boutique video production agency based in San Francisco, CA.
He also writes about automation, marketing, advertising, project management, and creativity on his personal site: LawrenceHe.com