When changing a weekly planning routine, preserve evidence of the old system and a short baseline of how it actually worked. The goal is not to archive every thought. Keep enough calendar, task, completion, recurrence, carryover, and outcome information to determine whether the new routine reduces missed commitments and planning effort without hiding overload.
Record the routine before changing it
Describe when planning happens, who participates, how long it takes, which calendars and task lists are reviewed, how priorities are chosen, where waiting items live, how recurring work is handled, and what marks the week complete. Record exceptions for travel, caregiving, shift work, holidays, and shared responsibilities.
Keep four to eight representative weeks if privacy and policy allow. Capture planned commitments, completed work, carryover, cancellations, urgent additions, blocked items, focus blocks, and review duration. Use aggregate counts or invented examples when sharing the evidence outside the household or team.
Export calendars and tasks
Google Calendar's export guidance says calendars can be exported as ICS files on a computer, either together or individually, subject to sharing permissions and possible administrator restrictions. Preserve calendar names, owners, time zones, sharing settings, and export date alongside the files.
Google Tasks' export documentation lists fields such as IDs, list and parent relationships, descriptions, due dates, recurrence, creation and completion timestamps, sort order, links, and status. Those fields can show how the routine handled recurring work, nested tasks, completion, and list structure rather than preserving only current unfinished titles.
Do not assume an export contains deleted items, reminders from another product, meeting attachments, private notes, or every collaboration field. Verify the actual archive and keep a field inventory.
Preserve decision rules and context
Write down the rules that are not visible in data: what qualifies as a weekly priority, how many focus blocks are realistic, when a task is deferred, when a commitment is renegotiated, how shared work is assigned, and where follow-up evidence lives. Record notification settings, working hours, calendar colors only if they carry defined meaning, and accessibility preferences.
Keep a small sample showing why items were selected or postponed. Avoid converting private medical, family, or employee circumstances into a broadly shared planning ledger. The evidence should support learning without becoming surveillance.
Test transfer limits before cutover
Google Calendar's import guidance supports ICS and CSV imports but notes that imported events do not remain synchronized and that guest, conference, and recurrence behavior can differ. Import a copy into a test calendar, not the live primary calendar. Compare time zones, recurring events, all-day events, descriptions, locations, privacy, attendees, and conference links.
Import a representative task list into the new tool if supported. Compare due dates, completion, recurrence, hierarchy, notes, links, and ordering. If the destination cannot import history, keep the old export as evidence and document the gap rather than recreating false timestamps.
Measure the new routine fairly
Define a trial period and success measures before starting: review completion, missed commitments, unplanned urgent work, task carryover, planning time, focus-block completion, and subjective workload. Use the same definitions as the baseline. Seasonal events and one unusual week should not be treated as proof that the routine succeeds or fails.
Record changes made during the trial. Preserve a rollback version of templates, calendar sharing, recurring tasks, and review checklist. Do not delete old calendars or close accounts until the new process has survived at least one complete cycle and the owner approves cleanup.
The evidence set is sufficient when an authorized person can explain the old decision process, reconstruct representative commitments, verify exported dates and relationships, identify transfer gaps, and compare the new routine using consistent measures. Keep what supports continuity and evaluation; discard or restrict private detail that serves no ongoing purpose.
Sources
- Export events from your Google Calendar — Google Calendar Help
- Export your data from Google Tasks — Google Tasks Help
- Import events into Google Calendar — Google Calendar Help