Let's be honest. Right now, your phone is full of a manic group message discussing dinner plans. One of them is asking whether you have soccer practice; another complains about awful Wi-Fi; and Dad sent a grainy picture of the dog. It seems like endless digital torture. And here, it is high time to introduce a digital intervention.

What should you do? The way to solve this problem lies in front of you. All you need is to introduce a family calendar. Yes, we know how weird it may sound; but believe us, such calendar will give you much more free time than before. With the help of a family calendar, you can tell your parents your current location and your list of plans, which means that they will not bug you with "where are you?" texts every five minutes.

For our purposes, we will use Google Calendar, as it is free, works on any smartphone, and is pretty easy to use. It is not rocket science; you will figure out how to work with it in ten minutes. If you can post a TikTok, it is a piece of cake for you. Plus, it is syncable, which means that there is no excuse for missing notifications.

First of all, you need to download this application. If you are an iPhone user, open App Store. If you are an Android user, open Play Store. Find Google Calendar there and install it. To work with it, you need a Google account; you have it for sure as it is the basic requirement for using Gmail and YouTube. Log in using your email and password.

Now, when you are in the application, find the three horizontal lines in the top-left corner. Press them and find "Create new calendar." Create a new calendar specifically for your house. Do not use your personal calendar; otherwise, the mess will be created pretty fast. You can name your new calendar anything that comes to your mind: "The [Insert Your Last Name] Clan," "House HQ," etc.

It is time to add other members of your family to this calendar. Go to the settings of your new calendar and press "Share with specific people." After pressing "Add people," type in the email addresses of your mother, father, and siblings. It is crucial to choose "Make changes and manage sharing"; otherwise, they will not be able to add new events.

And here, you actually start using it. For example, let us suppose that you have a dentist appointment next Tuesday at 4 PM. Open the application and press a big plus in the bottom-right corner. Then, press "Event," type the title ("Dentist – Teeth Cleaning"), specify the date and time. Remember, that below the time settings, you should see the calendar dropdown menu, which allows you to specify which calendar you are currently working with. Save it and it is done.

Color coding is an awesome feature of this calendar, and even if it may seem nerdish, you will benefit from it. You can assign a different color for each family member. For example, you are blue, your sister is green, and your mom is red. In this case, you will immediately understand who creates chaos by glancing at the calendar without even reading any messages.

Sports practice. It is one of the most complicated aspects that you may face while building a family calendar. Usually, it means that you have some kind of recurring schedule. For example, it can be football every Tuesday and Thursday. In this case, you do not need to manually add it every week; it is waste of time. When you add an event, you should see the "Does not repeat" option. Press it and change it to "Weekly" and the app will automatically fill the rest of the season for you.

Notifications are also very important. By default, the calendar usually gives you a reminder 30 minutes before the event. It is not enough for a family calendar. Go to the details of the event and add a second notification for one day before. This will allow your parents to arrange transportation and food without any problems.

What about privacy issues? You might not want your parents to know everything about your social life. That is fine. You can keep your personal life on your personal calendar and put the events about your family obligations on the shared one. However, if you need them to drive you somewhere or to give you some money, you should put your location on the board.

If you are ready for something fancier, then it is possible to integrate this app with Google Assistant and Siri. You can simply say "Hey Siri, add soccer practice to my family calendar at 4 PM," and it will do everything for you. It feels like a life in the future and you do not need to type anything using your thumb. It makes voice commands a huge thing if you need to be fast.

Another thing that people usually forget about is updating of events if they change. If the practice is canceled due to rain, then you should delete or edit it. Otherwise, your family will stop trusting the board, and the information about it becomes useless. It is only as good as the data inside it.

Think about such things as holidays and birthdays. You can create an all-day event that will stand on the top of the screen. It will save you from such awkward situations as forgetting the birthday lunch of your grandmother. Moreover, it will help you to plan your gifts and trips in advance.

You might think that it does not reduce the amount of messages that you receive. The answer is yes, of course. After you train your family to check the board first, questions like "what time is dinner?" become unnecessary. Group chat becomes the place of memes and normal conversations, not logistics. It makes the chat more interesting to be a part of it.

It takes about two weeks to make everyone used to the calendar. There will be some growing pains. Some of them will forget to check it and will miss the ride. It is fine; do not give up. After that, you will understand how you managed to survive without it.

So, stop living in the dark age of messages. Spend ten minutes tonight installing it. Your future self will thank you for this action because you will not need to dig through 200 messages to find out what time Thanksgiving dinner starts.