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Prioritize your people

? Gift planner: Facebook may do the job of tracking kapan your friends have their birthdays, but I am still waiting for the Facebook-Amazon-Etsy integration that orders the right gadgets for my techie friends, and the right pieces of hand-painted pottery for my artsy friends, and ships them out to arrive in time for the big day.

That’s where Google Sheets comes in: Just set up a Sheet with the names and birthdays (and graduations, and anniversaries) of the most important people in your life. When you spot something that you think would be a great gift for someone you love, jot the idea down in a gift ideas column next to their name. Then use Zapier to connect the sheet to your calendar so you get a reminder two or three weeks before the big day, or manually set up alerts, and pop into your gift planner to see the gift ideas you’d already marked down. Gosh, you’re so thoughtful!

⚒️ Click sini for a sample gift planner to get you started.

☝️ Level up: Zapier is a tool that lets you connect different web services, such as Slack, Dropbox, and of course Google’s suite of services. I use it to link Google Sheets to my calendar and other parts of my online life.

? Friends and enemies list: On Menempa, Lauren Larson details an unusual but kind of brilliant quarantine project: organizing every single person she knows.

Categorizing your friends and family in a spreadsheet might sound rather cold-blooded, but it can actually be a way to ensure thoughtfulness, Larson explains:

The need to prioritize the people in your life who matter most has never been greater than in quarantine: Everyone is going through something, and your friends and family need your unfettered support. Besides which, one can only do so many Zoom happy hours. So I started a Google Sheet and called it “Friends and Lovers.” I began with five tiers, but over the coming weeks, as I added people who popped into my head, I found it necessary to create micro-tiers. I ended up with 15 categories.

The categories run from close family and friends in the upper tiers to exes and enemies (professional and personal) at the bottom.

It’s an exercise that’s helped Larson feel closer than ever to the people that matter most. And, she observes, “The really lovely revelation of nursing my Google Doc during a pandemic: People have only moved up.”

(This kind of categorizing can also improve your social media experience: Create Facebook lists that parallel your categories, and use them to focus your attention on different groups of people, depending on the day and your mood.)

⚒️ ️You can use or adapt Larson’s tiering system sini.

Mourn

? Logistics of death: After her mother’s death, Siobhan Adcock writes on Forge, she and her sister used Google Sheets to clean out her house and distribute her belongings to friends and relatives:

We went through the house and took photos of things on our phones. Then we uploaded and organized the photos into shared Google Photo folders, sorted by room and by type. Kami juga membuat Google Sheet yang dapat dibagikan yang mencantumkan semua objek dan potongan, dan menautkan ke foto masing-masing di folder bersama. Then we sent emails with links to everything… The shareability of the spreadsheet made it possible for people to see what others had already claimed, and to leave notes for us and for each other in the cells. “I remember when she got this. Saya menyukai gambar ini. I would love to have it, if that’s all right with you.”

Because Adcock, like her mother, has always been a spreadsheet person, using one in this context “felt like a relief,” she writes. “It felt like something about this whole horrible experience that I could organize and make some sense of. The one island, in an ocean of sadness, that made sense.”

? A voice from beyond: As Kate Morgan writes, Drive can be a place to store memories and even the actual voice of a loved one — and a way to keep the memories of that people close:

My grandmother Irene, who I called Nanny, died in 2017, but she’s still alive in my Google Drive. Her voice is, anyway. She was one of the most singular people I’ve ever met, and she left the best voicemails.

“Katie Lady,” they often begin, “It’s Nanny, will you please give me a call? But if it’s after 11, I’ll be at mass. And then I’m going to Rose’s — so you can call me there. Or try me here, after, oh, 5? Ok, love you, bye bye.”

I have dozens of these voicemails, most of which I still haven’t listened to. At first the repository formed by accident — I’m bad at listening to voicemails and have a tendency to let them pile up — but once I knew she was dying, I decided to leave them unheard, and to move them somewhere safe. Accidentally deleting one from my phone suddenly felt like an unbearable risk.

So now Irene’s voicemail archive lives in its own folder on Google Drive, alongside a folder full of photos of her over the decades. One by one, I clicked into each voicemail, then hit the “share” button to export it to Drive, which I’d installed as an app on my phone. Every once in a while, when I really miss her, I dip into the vault and listen to a new one. Eventually, I know, I’ll have heard them all. But even then, that folder will be a place I can visit from anywhere, anytime, to hear her voice — there’s something about it talking directly to me that makes her presence feel fully alive.

? Grief processing: Using Drive can also help you work through more complicated forms of grief. On Menempa, Farahnaz Mohammed explains how keeping a Google Drive folder with memories of her ex, who passed away months after their breakup, helped her manage her emotions in the wake of his death:

I gathered everything I thought I would someday want to see or hear again, memories of Greg at his worst as well as at his best — photos, text messages copied into a Google Doc, copies of voicemails — and dropped them in a Google folder.

I named it something deliberately innocuous: ‘2014’, the year we’d been together….For a while, I opened the 2014 folder a lot. Then, a few months in, I deleted the first thing for good — a copy of an email he’d written. It wasn’t a particularly momentous occasion, but seeing it gone felt strangely good. And that’s how it started. Little by little, I chipped away at the folder as some memories faded or others solidified, or I became less angry at fights never resolved, or more accepting of the fact that there was no good ending to this story.

Eventually, Mohamed got to a place where she could delete the folder altogether, she wrote: “Within the framework of Google Drive, alongside shared documents and photos, there was also space for healing.”

Improve your dating life

? Exes spreadsheet: Kapan Kyla Marshell was newly single, she writes in Menempa, she took to Google Sheets to better understand her own dating history, creating a spreadsheet of former flames with the goal of learning more about her own preferences. “I was looking for patterns in the data,” she explains, “clusters of like qualities or flaws that would help me in my future romantic endeavors”:

The format was simple enough: I made one column each for name, age, how we met, and profession. I also added columns for positives, negatives, and “lessons learned.” I included anyone I’d ever gone out or had a significant “thing” with….[It] led to some interesting conclusions. The phrase “lacked the confidence to pursue his dreams,” or some variation of it, appeared a whopping seven times in the Negatives column.

This was the first major revelation The Sheet yielded, something I never could have grasped through journaling or regular self-reflection. I had to see it, all sorted out: I like doers, not talkers.

Your own clarifying moment may be waiting in a spreadsheet, too. “Treat the Sheet like an oracle,” Marshall writes. “Perhaps, with the data right in front of you, you just might learn what you like, what you love, and where to go next.”

Spice up your sex life

? Sext-o-matic spreadsheet: Nothing keeps the relationship fires stoked like the occasional sexy text message. The thing is, between work, and the kids, and your CrossFit schedule….well, who has time for sexting a partner, let alone an original idea of what to send?

Enter a creation I’ve named the Sext-o-matic: a Google Sheet I set up to automatically generate sexy text messages to send to my husband. I created columns for our respective body parts, sexy adjectives to describe them, and verbs that capture what we want to do (or have done). Then I use the CONCATENATE dan RAND functions in Google to combine the different columns in random, creative ways. To send the results, I can either copy and paste or send outbound SMS messages from Sheets via Zapier.

At one point, I wondered if I’d be better off using a tool like the Slutbot, a virtual sexting coach, to get better at writing dirty messages myself — but when I saw him dive into the Sext-o-matic and replace all the naughty bits with references to Star Trek starship parts, I realized that this is one guy who’s probably happier with a sexy spreadsheet.

(I only use the Sext-o-matic with my husband, with his enthusiastic participation. It shouldn’t need to be said, but affirmative consent is necessary for any such communication, which should only happen between adults.)

? Sexual wishlist: Pore over Cosmo all you like, but those sex tips will go a lot further if your partner knows about them, too. If you’re too shy to pass along the how-tos and gotta-try-its that you come across in the course of your reading (or viewing), consider setting up a wishlist in Google Docs.

Anytime you read about a position or activity you’d like to try, copy and paste it into your Doc, along with the source link or title. Share the Doc with your partner, and encourage them to paste in their own finds, too. (Just be sure to discuss anything new in real time before trying — again, affirmative consent is a must.)

? Collaborative erotica: Trying to make it work long distance — or to find a new way to pass the time in quarantine together? Consider a collaborative erotica project in Google Docs. Start a sexy story, then invite your partner into the Doc, and keep writing together. Bonus points if you decide to re-enact your literary creation once you’re done.

Try new activities

? Group writing project: The same idea as collaborative erotica, minus all the sex. Create a Doc, set the purpose — do you want to create oral history of a favorite college memory with old friends? Write a fairy tale with your kid? — and then take turns imagining or reminiscing on the page.

? Game inventory: If you’re a board-game enthusiast, use Google Sheets to make an inventory of all the games on your shelves — here’s mine — and then treat it as a to-do list, so that Trivial Pursuit Classic Edition you bought on a whim doesn’t gather dust.

If you really want to get detailed, include a tab for optimal number of players and age-appropriateness, so you can find just the right game for the right occasion (a wine-fueled hang with friends probably calls for something different from, say, your third-grader’s group playdate).

⚒️ Click sini for a sample game inventory.

Sheets can also be useful for role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons: Set up a sheet with all your characters, with columns for each character’s stats. Use another tab as a placeholder at the end of each gaming session, writing down exactly what each player and non-player character is up to when you suspend play, so you know where to pick up the story when you resume.

Make hosting effortless

?? Event organizing: A Google Form plus Sheet is a great starting point for a party or event. If you want outside input, set up a simple form asking crucial people for their thoughts on key details, like what days or times work best, who you should invite, or what dishes people will bring to a potluck. Use the answers you collect to map out the basic parameters of your event in a Sheet (or just map them out on your own if you skipped the form) and then turn those parameters into a task list of all the things that need to get organized.

Once you have your tasks, add deadlines and details: when you’ll send out your invitations, when you’ll buy and prepare food, when and how you’ll take care of any special requirements like a celebratory video or balloon drop. If you are going to rent specialized gear like A/V equipment or a chocolate fountain (yes, I have rented a chocolate fountain), compile your list of potential vendors and prices in a separate tab. You can also create a tab for your guest list to track RSVPs, or move it into an invitations app like Evite.

Here’s an example of a form I made for a party I hosted, back when parties were still a thing: