Most calendar events happen somewhere. The dentist appointment is across town. The client meeting is at their office. The coffee chat is at that place near the park. Your calendar knows the when, but it treats the where as an afterthought, a line of text you have to copy and paste into a maps app when you're already running late.
This disconnect between time and space creates friction. You schedule back-to-back meetings without realizing one is downtown and the other is in the suburbs. You book a lunch near your morning appointment, forgetting that your afternoon commitment is thirty minutes in the opposite direction. The calendar looks fine until you try to actually live it.
The Hidden Geography of Your Schedule
Open your calendar for next week. Look at each event and think about where it happens. Some are at home or your regular office. Others are scattered across the city. A few might require real travel.
Now imagine those same events as pins on a map. Suddenly the logistics become visible. You can see which days involve a lot of driving and which keep you in one area. You notice that Tuesday's schedule has you zigzagging across town while Wednesday clusters everything within walking distance.
This is information your calendar has but doesn't show you. The addresses are there, buried in location fields, but the spatial relationships remain invisible until you're stuck in traffic wondering why you planned your day this way.
Building a Location-Aware System
If you're already managing your schedule in Notion, you have the foundation for something better. A Notion database can hold both dates and places as first-class properties. The calendar view shows you time. A map view shows you space. The same data, two perspectives.
For events with specific locations, add a Place property alongside your Date property. Client meetings, appointments, site visits, anything that happens at a physical address. Your regular recurring events might not need locations, but anything that requires you to be somewhere specific benefits from being mappable.
The shift in perspective is subtle but valuable. When you're planning your week, you can switch between views. Calendar view for the timeline. Map view for the geography. Table view for the details. Each angle reveals something the others hide.
Visualizing Your Commitments
Once your Notion database has locations, you can export it to a map using Notion to Maps. Every event with a place becomes a pin. Your week becomes a visual route through the city.
This is particularly useful when you're planning, not just reviewing. Before you confirm that Thursday afternoon meeting, check the map. See where it falls relative to your other commitments that day. Maybe it makes more sense to suggest Friday instead, when you're already in that part of town.
The map also helps when you're scheduling for others. If you're coordinating a team's field visits or booking appointments for clients, seeing the geography prevents the kind of inefficient routing that wastes everyone's time.
The Calendar Still Matters
None of this replaces your calendar. You still need reminders. You still need notifications. You still need your schedule to sync with whatever apps and devices you use throughout the day.
The map is a planning tool, a way to see the spatial dimension of your time commitments before you commit. Once the schedule is set, your calendar takes over. It tells you when to leave, sends you alerts, and keeps your day on track.
The two systems complement each other. Plan with geography in mind, then execute with time-based reminders. Your calendar makes sure you're never late. Your map makes sure you're never inefficient.
Starting Simple
You don't need to overhaul your entire scheduling system. Start with next week. For each event that happens at a specific place, make sure the location is captured somewhere you can map it. If you're using Notion, that means a Place property. If you're using something else, at minimum make sure addresses are complete and consistent.
Then look at the map. See what your week actually looks like in space. Notice the patterns. Identify the inefficiencies. Make one or two adjustments that save you time or stress.
Most people who try this once keep doing it. The spatial perspective reveals something that pure calendar thinking misses. Your time exists in space, and planning for one without considering the other leaves value on the table.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I add locations to Notion calendar events?
Add a Place property to your database. When creating events, use the Place field to search for and select the location. This stores structured location data that can be exported to mapping tools.
Does this work with recurring events?
For recurring events that always happen in the same place, you only need to set the location once. For recurring events at varying locations, each instance would need its own place specified.
Can I see my calendar and map at the same time in Notion?
Notion doesn't display both views simultaneously, but you can switch between them quickly. Some people create a dashboard page with linked views of the same database showing both calendar and a filtered list of upcoming located events.
What if some of my events don't have locations?
That's fine. Events without Place properties simply don't appear on the map. Your calendar still shows everything, and the map shows the subset that has geographic relevance.