TIP: set alert AFTER the calendar event start time

Cool Workflows
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(macOS only, for now, but I’m filing a Feedback to have this extended to iOS/iPadOS shortly)
Discovered a very very cool feature in Calendar on macOS today!

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You can set an alert for AFTER your event start time (minutes/hours/days). Here’s how:

  1. click on the date/time area of your new event to expand it
  2. click on the alert dropdown menu and choose “Custom…”
  3. click on “minutes before” and change it to your desired “minutes after”/“hours after”/“days after”.
  4. set the number and OK as usual.
    VOILA!
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I may be missing something here, but why would you want the alert to be after the calendar scheduled time?

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few examples for me:

  • alert 45 minutes after the start of a 50-minute meeting. reminds me to wrap it up so we don’t go over
  • alert several hours after a meeting to be sure I have the minutes from the note-taker, and to check that i have all the promised materials
  • alert next day after an important annual event to be sure it went well, and to do follow-ups.

others:

  • 30 minutes after my kid’s soccer practice starts, get my keys and get out the door to pick them up (no need for separate appointments with separate notifications, especially when a main event gets moved)
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Some power moves there, thanks!

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I was a little sceptical too at first, but those are indeed some excellent use cases! Thanks for the tip :+1:t3:

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Can’t believe I’ve never thought of alerts for that kind of thing, thank you!

It reminds me of the trick from the Getting Things Done system where you look over your prior calendar each week to make sure you didn’t “leave anything hanging” after events. Because of course when an event is over, you’re often automatically moving on to the next thing without fully processing the event.

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This reminds of the day I, as a small child, learned i could use a hammer to take out a nail as well as hammer a nail in.

Thanks for the examples!

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Excellent use cases. Thank you very much

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I used to set an alarm for ten minutes after a meeting started. When it went off, I said: “Sorry, [important client of the moment], I have to take this.” Then I went to my desk to get some work done.

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+1 :grinning:

In the ‘90s I had my pc dial my pager, to get me out of the weekly staff meeting. I did vary the the time of the call from week to week.

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I need an app or setting that automatically does this for every meeting that involves a (configurable) list of certain people in my company :joy:

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