Use calendar colors to audit recurring meetings

Color makes standing invites visible

Your week view is a wall of recurring blocks. Google Calendar now lets you color one occurrence of a recurring meeting without changing the color of the remaining occurrences in that series. Use that ability for a one-week audit: mark a standing invite with a type color without turning the whole calendar into a design project.

The audit has four moves:

• Label status, 1:1, decision, and all-hands meetings.
• Count hours by type.
• Flag any recurring invite with no clear decision or owner.
• Cancel with a one-line script.

Google Calendar's event color palette grew from 11 preset choices to as many as 200 custom choices for individual events. The default set now includes 24 preset event colors, while web and Calendar API users can create additional colors through an RGB picker. The custom event color update began rolling out to rapid release domains, and Google said an extended rollout would start on June 29. It is enabled by default for Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and personal Google account users.

Start with the four types a manager actually runs: status, 1:1, decision, and all-hands. Pick a different color for each type. If a meeting does not fit, leave it uncolored for now. Your week view should show recurring blocks with a reason for their color.

A meeting that is only a block of time can stay hidden inside a busy week. A meeting that has a color has a job. If you cannot name the job, the color will show you where the calendar is full of meetings that no one owns.

A person viewing a shared Google Calendar sees events using the calendar's assigned color rather than the owner's individual event color choices. Your audit stays private, so you can be blunt with your own view without making the calendar a shared display.

Count hours before you cut

Before you cut anything, open the week view and add the time for each recurring meeting in its color group. The calendar already knows the answer, so skip the memory estimate. The count becomes a short list of recurring types and the hours each takes.

Google Calendar lacks a native in-app filter for viewing events by color. The audit is a manual pass. Pick a week that feels normal, not a week with a launch or a holiday. Use the normal week as the baseline for the hours, and keep exceptions out of the count.

Look for the meetings that consume time without producing a decision. A status update can be useful when it keeps a project moving. It becomes debt when the same update repeats, the same people attend, and no one owns the next step. A direct report meeting can be essential. It turns into debt when it is the only place a decision happens, or when it has no agenda at all.

Review standing meetings as if they were new requests. Ask what the meeting is for, who needs to be there, and what would happen if it stopped. If the answer is a habit, the habit is the problem. If the answer is a decision, keep the meeting and make the decision visible.

One line ends a recurring invite

Flag any recurring invite with no clear decision or owner. Give those meetings a color you will not use for normal work. The flag list becomes a short list of invites that need a decision, an owner, or removal. Start with the meetings you attend but do not lead if the list is long.

Cancel the flagged meetings with a short, direct message. Do not apologize for protecting your calendar. The message should name the change, give a reason, and leave a way to resync if the meeting truly matters.

Send: I am removing this recurring invite because it no longer has a clear owner or decision; we can resync if needed.

Put a recurring reminder to review the colors before a heavy week. The reminder should be small, not another meeting. When someone objects to a canceled invite, ask what decision the meeting should produce. If the answer is vague, delete the series.