
Google Calendar now uses machine learning to help you accomplish your goals - gils
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/12/google-calendar-goals/
======
buro9
I wish they'd just fix search.

I use Google Calendar heavily, averaging ~10 entries per day for the last 5+
years, and then some entries per day all the way back to when it was launched.

I can put information in easily enough, and with a few IFTTT recipes I'm able
to treat Google Calendar not just as a schedule for upcoming events,
appointments and reminders, but as a historical log of everything I've done.
It is a time based database of my life... a diary.

I've automated my diary taking into Google Calendar. The what, where and when
of everything ends up in one of 12 calendars (each calendar is effectively a
label to categorise a whole group of events that have occurred).

And it's brilliant.

Except for the search.

It's really difficult to get the information back out. If I search for
something I know that has happened, or has happened frequently, Google will
delightfully tell me that I have matched 200 results, and then show me a list
of 9 or 10 of them, with no way to paginate the remainder or search the old
ones (it only finds upcoming, not past).

Search is broken on Google Calendar, to the point of being almost totally
useless.

Far better to rely on time as a search dimension and jump around dates until
one manually finds whatever you were looking for. It's that broken.

Compare to search on a product that has some love: Google Photos. Where now
the miraculous occurs, I can search things like "Felicity skiing" and what
will return are photos of my wife skiing, and an option to look at all other
photos on those days. A simple search and all the results you want, and a
single click to expand to view it in the wider context that makes sense.

Google Calendar really needs a decent search. It feels far too much like
writing to /dev/null at the moment. Your information went in there, but the
chances of you finding it when you wish to reference it are pretty non-
existent.

~~~
id122015
Quote "It is a time based database of my life"

Exactly that's the reason I want to drop all Google products. Until now I
found an alternative to Gmail. Google Reader went bust and I live happily
without it. Google Calendar is the last bit I need to find an alternative for.
I thought that all you hackers here are more independent than me. Why don't
you create your own local "Google Calendar"? no one will judge you for the
quality.

~~~
afarrell
> Why don't you create your own local "Google Calendar"?

1) Because it would take months.

2) Because it would probably be hard to make it integrate with other things
like Calendly.

~~~
JoBrad
Also, to be as effective as Google Calendar, you'd have to end up integrating
it with as many external sources as Google Calendar, decreasing any privacy
you might have gained by making your own product.

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armaansarkar
Is this the Timeful acquisition playing out?
[http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/google-acquires-timeful-
to-...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/google-acquires-timeful-to-bring-
smart-scheduling-to-google-apps/)

~~~
ahel
[https://www.facebook.com/dan.ariely/posts/10100833467156938](https://www.facebook.com/dan.ariely/posts/10100833467156938)
yeah

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danieldk
This is one of those things that only the GooglePlex bubble can come up with.

As a busy person (my wife and I both work, we have a child, and hard time
constraints due to teaching obligations, etc.), free time is exactly what I
want to schedule as little as possible. I want to spontaneously decide to do a
hike with my family, or when my daughter wants to play, I want to be there.
There's enough obligations already, free time should be spontaneous and
available to family.

It is also a bit annoying that they focus on these features without solving
real problems first. Someone already mentioned search, which is (ironically)
indeed quite bad. Also, appointment suggestions based on e-mails has very low
recall. I especially noticed this since I switched back to Mail.app, which
picks up a lot more dates in e-mails.

~~~
noobie
>This is one of those things that only the GooglePlex bubble can come up with.

Actually they acquired the company that came up with it.

 _The Timeful team has built an impressive system that helps you organize your
life by understanding your schedule, habits and needs.

You can tell Timeful you want to exercise three times a week or that you need
to call the bank by next Tuesday, and their system will make sure you get it
done based on an understanding of both your schedule and your priorities._

[https://gmail.googleblog.com/2015/05/time-is-on-your-
sidewel...](https://gmail.googleblog.com/2015/05/time-is-on-your-
sidewelcoming-timeful.html)

~~~
danieldk
Good point. I was originally going to say 'the SF tech bubble', but I do not
want to offend too many people ;).

I still think the point stands, between missing features, adding questionable
features, and failed April 1 jokes, I sometimes wonder how much 'market
research' there is.

~~~
nxzero
"Tech bubble" sounds like something completely different anyway...

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pluma
If it works as well as the reminders in Google Now, I'd rather avoid it.

I spent about five minutes saying "Remind me to buy paper towels"[0], Google
Now suggested it should remind me the next time I'm near a grocery store. I
wasn't reminded ever again and the reminder didn't show up anywhere in Google
Now because it had no date or time associated with it. I actually only found
the reminder when it showed up on Google Calendar in my desktop browser --
this was about two months in.

[0]: It felt very much like a re-enactment of the infamous "eleventh floor"
sketch:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avp9aUkM5g0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avp9aUkM5g0)

~~~
jvolkman
Works for me. The location-based reminder shows as "upcoming" in Now's
reminder list.

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manmal
I'll definitely try that out, though it is in conflict with the GTD method I'm
currently practicing. In GTD, only things that HAVE to be done on a certain
day or time, go in the calendar. Because else you will be constantly re-
scheduling and reprioritizing.

If Google gets it right though, and your goals are perfectly prioritized, AND
the algorithm makes use of contexts (e.g. I cannot fulfill goal "spend time
with family" when I'm not home), then this might actually work for me. Not
sure though whether I want a machine telling me what to do right now :)

~~~
renaudg
I can't find a good reference for it right now, but GTD is starting to show
its age and the latest research/consensus in productivity circles now seems to
be "if you never commit to a time for doing it (i.e. put it in your calendar),
it ain't gonna happen"

~~~
blowski
For me, the only real consensus is that there isn't one todo methodology that
fits every personality type in every job type for every task type at all
times.

Anyone suggesting there is, probably has a book for sale.

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flavor8
Why does it take an acquihire for google to add meaningful new features to a
product that hasn't changed substantially in years?

Also, the implementation of the "appointments" feature that they just rolled
out in google calendar is broken; it doesn't respect existing events in the
same calendar, which is just half assed.

~~~
JoBrad
Also, I wish they would make adding invites to your calendar consistently work
before making some other products. If your a calendar app, you need to work
well at being a damn calendar, and then do other stuff.

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fsiefken
The updated Google Calender version doesn't seem to be in the Play Store yet -
version 5.3.8-117343094 updated 20160317 doesn't have the Goals feature
(20160413 13:30 CET). Does anyone have access and if so how?

The play store webpage in the browser says something else (Updated: April 6,
2016 Current Version: Varies with device), but if I install that one remotely
through the web, it ends up being the same version. Perhaps it's because I'm
still running Android 5

~~~
ahel
I'm using android 6 and still it won't show up. (I'm in Europe)

~~~
fsiefken
I'm in Europe as well, perhaps the stores are different. I know this is the
case with Amazon, iTunes and Playstation. Well I'm not going to go through all
the trouble of VPN'ing into the US to check for this new version. It might
come to us eventually.

~~~
ahel
[https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-
inc/calendar/calendar-5...](https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-
inc/calendar/calendar-5-4-119043132-release-release/google-
calendar-5-4-119043132-release-android-apk-download/) enjoy :)

~~~
fsiefken
wow thanks, that one works, very useful site. my play store version still
isn't updated over here...

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karmapolice
I wonder how intelligent it is, since I do not feed that much data to Google
Calendar, just the things I know I'm going to forget. Almost all of those
empty hours in my Calendar are actually busy.

~~~
wsinks
Garbage in, garbage out. There's other people out there that put in too much
data (can't remember the link, but a guy put in literally _everything_,
including nutrient consumption)

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ulber
Seems like the Timeful app's features are finally being integrated.

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throwaway6497
Any machine learning experts here? How is the problem of finding empty slots
in your calendar formulated as an ML problem? This is an honest question to
learn.

~~~
ionforce
Not an expert. My guess is that it is about ranking available slots. Like
given a wealth of available times for you to do X task, what makes some block
X more "optimal" than block Y?

Also there's some constraint satisfaction. You probably don't want to do your
thing twice in one day. You probably don't want to do it during established
office hours. Maybe you want your framework to learn what office hours are (to
implicitly support people without that office lifestyle). And you want to aim
for having something be done N times a week.

Also, you can use the times that tasks are actually completed as feedback into
new suggestions. I.e. if historically you've committed to your hobby every
Tuesday night, then we should be that you will continue to do that, ergo, keep
scheduling for Tuesday night. Similarly, Defer actions for the same times of
day could be taken as an anti-signal (i.e. office hours).

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studentrob
I wish Google Calendar on Android would let me use a keypad to enter the time
rather than an analog clock.

And I'm curious to know what benefit analog provides to some people.

~~~
smileysteve
The analog clock is much better for touch, context, relativity, and tangible
processing.

Keyboard entry is a reasonable alternative.

I much prefer the analog clock over the scrolling numbers.

~~~
studentrob
> I much prefer the analog clock over the scrolling numbers

I'd rather have a keypad like my alarm clock. I wonder why we can't choose.

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b0t
Do we know yet if there will be a way to actually "log" those goals? The
scheduling is great but it's no guarantee I'll get off my butt. On Timeful I
can get my goals scheduled in, log them, and see how many days in the week I
actually did something rather than just scheduled it. Would be nice to have.

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noja
Google, please could you:

1\. Fix search in the web client for Calendar, without the funky paging.

2\. Add search to Hangouts on Android

~~~
flavor8
... Add search to hangouts in inbox

... Add search to hangouts.google.com

(it's almost as if lack of search in hangouts is by design, which is
infuriating)

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foolinaround
Now, if only it could cure my procrastination...

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wolframarnold
I wonder what they used as training data?

~~~
erickj
[https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/#infouse](https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/#infouse)

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executesorder66
> a new feature called Goals that uses machine learning to help you figure out
> when you have time to pencil in stuff like spending time with your family or
> exercise.

Spending time with your family is a goal/something you need help finding the
time for?

What the fuck Google? How busy do you think the average person is?

~~~
niels_olson
Spending time with family and exercise are definitely huge goals for me that I
frequently feel like I've failed at.

~~~
kuschku
But that shouldn’t be any goal, that should be the default. Work and tasks
should be the exception from that.

Work to live, not live to work.

~~~
niels_olson
Ah, but do you also remember that if you do something you enjoy, you'll never
work a day in your life?

I enjoy what I do. But accomplishing all the awesome still requires a
balancing act.

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gear54rus
I can't help but wonder what will come out of all of these attempts to feed
million's people's data (they'll spy on everyone, but that seems inevitable in
this age) to some kind of machine learning contraption.

I have strong feeling that if there comes a revolution in AI, google will be
leading it with their unprecedented access to human behavior.

In that perspective, feeding data to google seems more profitable for us as
humans than feeding it to some state's agency furthering their own goals. Not
that I'm advising for enabling every user-tracking option out there, but
still.

