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Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

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Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

#33
post #2

A Leuchtturm notebook and the Bullet Journal method!

Another pen and paper method I used for a while was inspired by a previous HN submission (Using Paper for Everyday Tasks) [0]. I used it for a solid couple of months (filling up two notebooks with about 30 sheets/60 pages, one per month).

It was the most enjoyable daily to-do method I used, though I found it lacking in task capture for long-term tasks and scheduling (pocket notebook pages typically weren’t big enough for every hour in one column, and adding a second column felt cramped). I’ve shifted approaches from a daily to-do list to a daily hourly schedule with a table in OneNote, so I no longer handwrite a to-do list (as it’s included in the schedule). However, I still use paper sometimes for breaking big tasks into small steps, and large numbers of miscellaneous one-time tasks.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27639875

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

#36

Google Calendar Time blocking is a game changer.

Was going to say this, it works so well as you can plan your tasks around meetings. For example, you have a 30 mins spare slot between meetings, use it for some minor admin task. The big empty slots for some programming task where you want to get a good amount of focus on coding.

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

#39
Google Calendar lets you create tasks scoped to a specific day. In the morning after doing email, I create 3-5 major tasks for the day.

The next day, I can easily see which tasks did not get completed - an important feedback loop signalling to modify workload or better scope individual tasks.

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

#40
I use Conjure [1] on web and mobile for daily and weekly habits (particularly using the day view, set to show only remaining habits for the day). Disclaimer: I'm building Conjure.

I have a recurring task to create a weekly plan on a Monday (in Notion) and then review my progress on it on Wednesday and Friday, course correcting accordingly.

I do a day plan first thing most mornings. I plan my day in hourly blocks (9am → 10am: Call X, 10am → 11am: Project A, 11am → 12pm: Project A + Laundry, etc). I populate it with items from my calendar, task list, habits list and weekly goals (outcome based or time based, such as spending 10 hours on Project B).

I create the day plan, either line by line in a notebook (1 line per hour), or in the Mac OS Stickies app, or create events in my calendar, depending on how the mood takes me, and keep it visible all day (either open on a secondary monitor or having the notebook open on my desk).

[1] https://conjure.so

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