> If you have tentative plans like “lunch with a friend sometime next week” there is no obvious way to add this to your calendar in a way that differentiates it from an important appointment that can’t be missed.

Does Google Calendar not let you mark events as tentative? Outlook does and I’ve always taken that for granted.

Speaking of Outlook, they used to have a board view that I think was conceptually quite close to achieving the large free form canvas experience of a paper calendar. Retired years ago though. https://www.computerworld.com/article/1616186/how-to-use-out...

You can events as tentative in Google Calendar by responding with "Maybe".

I often put tentative plans in a separate "Calendar" and reassign it to the category if necessary.

Then I can turn "off" the other calendars and see only the tentative plans to zero in on stuff I have yet to deal with.

If I have a shared calendar, I will title it with (tentative) and promote it by removing the tag.