photo credit: Rab J Brown

I live in Nevada and we are on Pacific Time. A good friend lives in Hawaii and he is 3 hours earlier than us. My husbands employer is in Arizona which is 1 hour ahead of us except during daylight savings time then they are the same time as us. New York is Eastern time which is 3 hours ahead of us. I don’t even know what time it is in Australia where I just shipped an box of antique kitchen knobs. How on earth are we supposed to keep track of time when family, friends and businesses all over the world are using different time zones?

Last night I was entering a few conference calls on my calendar that were in Eastern time but I needed to enter them in Pacific time because otherwise I would be late early late. I Googled time zones but that was such a hassle having to flip back and forth from my calendar page to Google and back again. I found a better way.

I use Google Calendar to keep track of my appointments. It syncs up to my iPhone and gives me the ability to get reminders and make changes whether I am at my desk or on the road. I don’t know if you have played around much with customizing the Google Calendar but like Gmail, Google Calendar has a feature called Labs. Labs is where engineers that work at Google put experimental projects with fun or useful features to add on to some Google products. I’ve heard that the program has been retired but there are still features available. The World Clock for Google Calendar is absolutely perfect for anyone who needs to know the time in different time zones right on the calendar page.

You can change the World Clock to show as many time zones as you need. As you make an appointment the World Clock will change to show what time it is in the time zones you have chosen. On the calendar page the World Clock shows the current time in the time zones you have chosen. This is a real time saver for me and will be a time saver for you too if you need to know what time it is at Grandma’s house.

Adding World Clock to your Google Calendar is easy. Open your calendar and click on the little gear icon in the top right corner of the screen and choose Labs. Find World Clock and click the enable button next to it then Save. There is a settings button on the World Clock that lets you pick the time zones you would like have appear. That’s it.

It’s super easy and a great way to make sure you aren’t calling your friend in the U.K. at 3:00 AM unless you meant to.

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