If you use Gmail and Google Calendar, planning an event over email should be easy, but it can be annoying to jump back and forth between the two apps to check your availability. Now, it looks as though Google finally has a solution to this first-world problem, and you'll find it in a major update coming to Gmail's desktop view.

A few years ago I discovered Trello, and how I organise things hasn't been the same since. If you're not familiar, Trello is a digital tool that essentially allows you to create lists of items, where each item is an individual card. This week I came across another service that caught my attention with a similar look: Sunsama. It's a calendar app built to look and feel like Trello, and I'm pretty stoked on it.

Do you feel as though your social life is out of control? Maybe you (or your kids) have events every evening, when all you want to do is spend a quiet night at home. Maybe you feel like you're spending too much time "touching base" and "picking brains" with people you aren't close to, and not enough time with your friends. Maybe your in-laws want you to spend every Sunday having dinner with them, and you... don't.

In the simplest life hack we'll ever provide, we are proud to inform you that today, it is Friday. As the blog Science of Us pointed out, yesterday was Thursday. More helpfully, they explained why it's so hard to mentally keep track of the days during a short workweek, such as the one we're currently wrapping up.

If there's one reliable truth in this harsh capitalist world, it's this: Everyone loves free stuff. Enjoying the finer (and free-er) things is an innocent enough source of joy, but unfortunately, marketers are onto us all. What, you thought it was a coincidence that every product is now trying to package itself under a "subscription service" model, and is also trying to lure you in with a "free trial" that just so happens to still require you to dole out your credit card info?

Gmail and Google Calendar integration is an embarrassment. Gmail can never recognise all the crucial event info, and to fix it you have to open up Google Calendar in a new tab, defeating the purpose. Thankfully there are third-party fixes, such as Pod for Gmail, which recognises event info and loads it into a full calendar event right inside your Gmail window.

I'm a big fan of year-in-review charts and graphs, like Spotify's 2017 Wrapped, or even designer Nicholas Feltron's personal annual reports. Here's another good one: Analyse your calendar with the Year in Review tool from the makers of iPhone calendar app Pod.

The New York Times just released a calendar even more useful than its astronomical event calendar. The NYT 2018 book events calendar, available for Google or Apple, includes highly anticipated book releases from authors like Zadie Smith and Dave Eggers, plus events, literary anniversaries, and releases of movies based on popular books like Ready Player One and Where'd You Go, Bernadette?.

Ahh, an empty calendar. All that free time and possibility, all the things you're going to get done -- until, that is, your coworkers see that free time and fill it jam-packed with meetings and obligations. Before that happens again, you have to get on the defensive.

While you wait seven years for America's next total solar eclipse, check out the New York Times calendar of astronomical events. Subscribe and never miss another meteor shower, rocket launch, or solstice.

My mirror doesn't come to life and tell me about the rest of my day when I walk in bleary-eyed to the bathroom, as much as I wish it did. An always-on dashboard relaying to me my calendar appointments and the weather would both help me start my day with a better understanding of what I need to get done, and keep me from walking through the city in the rain. Fortunately, with a little tinkering you can turn whatever devices you have lying around into your own DIY status board.

iOS: If This Then That (IFTTT), one of our favourite automation services, introduced support for both the iOS Calendar and App Store today.

iOS: If you're the sort of person that's ditched clunky laptops in favour of a svelte tablet lifestyle, you'll be happy to hear that Google has finally optimised their calendar app just for the iPad.

Your Mac comes packed with a perfectly fine calendar app, but it's lacking advanced features, multiple ways to view your calendar and external service integration. For all that and more, we like Fantastical.

iOS: Calendar apps are usually pretty boring, sticking to the time honoured grid or list view to display data. That's probably the best for anyone with a lot to manage, but Vantage Calendar takes an altogether new approach that's worth a look if your schedule isn't always packed.

iOS/iPad: Fantastical, our favourite calendar app on iPhone, was updated today with new rich notifications and some iMessage stickers.

The famous "Don't Break the Chain" productivity system has many followers. If you want to start a new habit in 2017, Just Use A Pen has a custom calendar made for the habit-building technique.

Chrome: If you're a regular Google Calendar user, you know that it won't win any design points. This Chrome app cleans up and streamlines its interface.

Mac: At $30.99, macOS Server is one of those unsung bits of software that most of us have absolutely no use for, but has a slew of neat little features. Over at Macworld, they dig into the Calendar function, which is easy to set up and use, then keeps your data as private as possible.