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Shishir's Color-What-Matters Calendar Guide
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Assign Categories to Colors

Get started by renaming the category for each calendar color. You'll use these to categorize all your calendar events.
Time for the key step. Remember:
We should use names as proxies for colors, not the other way around.
So it’s time to break the habit ー what does tomato really represent? This exercise will help you identify a Category for every color.
The table below has a row for each of the Google Calendar colors. Remember, because Google Calendar only
10
colors (well, 11, if you count the
@Default
color), you’ll need to limit your list to that number of unique categories.
Pro-tip: You can change the default color in Google Calendar
See instructions
. Note: if you changed your default color from Peacock, you can update the hex code below, and change conditional formats to match.
Now time for your key step: Change the category name to be something meaningful to you. A few tips:
You could “derive” the name you’re currently using for colors. The table below shows a sampling of
000
3
of your current events with that color. How would you describe that group?
Or you can just start from scratch. Make a list of the (up to 10) key Categories you’d like to use. I personally use the same colors from my . In the next step, you can use this doc to recategorize events to match.
I avoid treating “Default” as a category. I aim to have no meetings with that color ー that way I know when I have finished coloring my calendar. So just leave "Default” as is - no need to rename it.

Rename the categories below to something meaningful to you

Color
Category Name
GCal Color Name
GCal Hex Code
Google Calendar Events List [subset]
1
Work time
Banana
#f6bf26
Deep work block
2
Hiring, managing, and growing talent
Sage
#33b679
All hands meeting
Virtual lunch with mobile team
3
Managing the product
Grape
#8d24aa
Weekly product kickoff
Infra review
4
1-1 meetings
Flamingo
#e67b73
Lola <> Maria 1-1
Adam <> Lola 1-1
5
Board of directors
Lavender
#7986cb
Board meeting prep
6
Personal
Graphite
#606060
Meditation & reading
Gym
7
Misc 1
Tomato
#d50000
8
Misc 2
Tangerine
#f4511e
9
Misc 3
Basil
#0c7f42
10
Misc 4
Blueberry
#3f50b5
11
Default
Peacock
#049be5
There are no rows in this table

Finished mapping colors to categories? You're ready to .


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