Google Calendar will let you schedule ‘Focus time’ to work uninterrupted

Abner Li | Oct 20 2021 - 12:31 pm PT

Following a Material You redesign and new homescreen widgets on Android, Google Calendar is getting a new “Focus time” event type.

This is part of Google’s digital wellbeing push and offering tools that help manage your work life. “Focus time” joins the standard “Event,” “Out of office,” “Task,” and (on Workspace Individual) “Appointment slots.”

Similar to the Out of office event type, focus time has a different appearance on your calendar and includes the option to automatically decline conflicting events.

It’s meant to “block out and protect your time for heads-down individual work.” On calendars, it will feature a headphone icon and you can assign a different color to “have a different visibility from your events and other meetings.” Meanwhile, scheduled Focus time will be logged in Time Insights.

With the changes to our working environments in the past year, having more chats and meetings make it more difficult for people to carve out time for their core individual work. With the new focus time feature, we hope to make it easier to create dedicated time for thinking and core work.

Focus time is rolling out starting today in Google Calendar and will be fully available in the coming weeks:

Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Teaching & Learning Upgrade, Education Standard, Education Plus, and Nonprofits customers.
Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Enterprise Essentials, and Frontline and as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers.