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Comment by eloisant | Hacker News Reader

There is a way - use different calendars for work and home. Preferably with different accounts (work account vs personal account).

You can then blend the 2 calendars either in the mobile app, or by importing one to the other account.

I'm a bit surprised to hear some people would use their work calendar for personal activities, I don't see why you would do that.

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I sometimes put personal appointments into a work calendar to avoid getting people scheduling meetings for that time (as a manager, I get a lot of people scheduling meetings on my behalf).

Usually the personal details are pretty sparse -- just containing the minimum I'd normally share in person eg "dentist", "doctors", "kids school performance" / "parents evening". These would be days where I'm technically working but organising my work hours around a personal appointment (otherwise I'd just put "annual leave" if I'm taking a full or half day off).

This would be enough to fall in line with Google's statement even though I'm technically not using work's calendar for personal appointments.

I meant, there is no way for subscribers to a calendar to do that automatically. There are possible heuristics that could filter out clearly personal entries (keywords, etc.), but that feature would need to be implemented by (cough) Google.

There are obvious ways for calendar owners to separate the information (which was not done in the instances that Google refer to).

Because you have one life and busy days and personal and professional merge with a lunchtime meeting then an afternoon doctor's appointment etc.

When you are back to back most days (common at Google) you can't be juggling multiple calendar accounts all the time, not least because a personal event doesn't show on your professional cal meaning someone can try to double book that slot.

Idk, I use Google Calendar (browser, android app) and currently run work calendar, private calendar, and facebook events seamlessly. Don't think I've spent much time at all setting it up, either.

Other people can't see the other calendars though.

Right, but there's no way to separate out personal events when you subscribe to someone else's work calendar if they put personal events on their work calendar.

But if you subcribe to such (edit: you colleague's) calendars for work purposes then why set up notifications for family activities ?

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