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Show HN: A better way to timeblock your day

taskablehq.com

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Re: Show HN: A better way to timeblock your day

#11

Post by mattcrail »

jeremyis wrote: post #9

Can’t you accomplish this by just making calendar events? What am I missing?

You can, but it requires a lot more admin of copying and pasting tasks/descriptions into your calendar from your task or project manager, and having to maintain/update in two separate tools.

For people not using task or project managers, often the calendar is enough (and indeed becomes their task manager). However, if you have tasks coming from everywhere, we make it super easy to do timeblocking quickly/efficiently.

Re: Show HN: A better way to timeblock your day

#12

Post by egypturnash »

gandalfff wrote: post #6

I've been looking for a tool to reduce the friction of timeblocking. I find that my estimate for how long things take is often wildly incorrect. Does this tool address those scenarios? I will give Taskable a try this week. Congrats!

I've been timeblocking on paper for years with the Pomodoro method. One crucial part of that method that's easy to overlook is the part where you look back at your records when you finish a thing and see how long it took to actually make it, versus your initial estimates; doing this helps you develop a sense of how long this kind of task will actually take!

One major leap in this for me has been developing a habit of also tracking time spent on a project somewhere in the project itself; I'm an artist, and every piece I work on now has a layer called "tracking" with a bunch of little hash-marks representing a half-hour of work, with other annotations like the date and maybe what part of complex pieces I was working on. It's now really easy to look back and say "this drawing with a complicated library background took 7h".

Re: Show HN: A better way to timeblock your day

#13

Post by smhenderson »

mattcrail wrote: post #10
smhenderson wrote: post #8

Looks like it could be helpful but after spending over two minutes looking for pricing and not finding it I'll never know. I refuse to even try a product that won't be upfront about pricing. Don't 1) tell me I can get two months free, 2) offer to let me take a test drive or 3) ask for my email address before you've given me a chance to review your standard price model. I'm sure in the long run I am missing out on som…

Hey thanks for the feedback. We are certainly not trying to hide the pricing - as it happens we created a new landing page specifically for this new feature and I forgot to put the pricing on it (I'll do that now). Our pricing currently has a free tier where you don't get any of the premium integrations, or a $5 tier where you do. However, we are changing it to a flat $10 per month pricing plan next week so you can g…

Thanks for letting me know, that's pricing that tells me I should spend more time looking into your product.

And for the record, I wasn't trying to single you out or pick on your site - I find myself getting more and more impatient with company's not being upfront about their pricing over the years so it's basically the first thing I look for these days.

Re: Show HN: A better way to timeblock your day

#15

Post by mattcrail »

smhenderson wrote: post #13
mattcrail wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey thanks for the feedback. We are certainly not trying to hide the pricing - as it happens we created a new landing page specifically for this new feature and I forgot to put the pricing on it (I'll do that now). Our pricing currently has a free tier where you don't get any of the premium integrations, or a $5 tier where you do. However, we are changing it to a flat $10 per month pricing plan next week so you can g…

Thanks for letting me know, that's pricing that tells me I should spend more time looking into your product. And for the record, I wasn't trying to single you out or pick on your site - I find myself getting more and more impatient with company's not being upfront about their pricing over the years so it's basically the first thing I look for these days.

I agree 100% - this happened to me yesterday in fact when we were looking at Paddle for payment/subscription processing and signing up/finding out the pricing required speaking with sales, so we decided to not keep looking into it.

Re: Show HN: A better way to timeblock your day

#16

Post by NikolaNovak »

Ignorant question - but I assume this is not something that those of us stuck in "Enterprise IT / Big Corpo" can easily benefit from?

* I don't see Outlook/Exchange as part of Integrations (let alone more fun stuff like Lotus Notes etc :P)

* I assume it'd be essentially impossible to open ports, gain permission, pass security task list, bribe system administrators and security control officers etc for individual to integrate this into their enterprise email system

Re: Show HN: A better way to timeblock your day

#17

Post by mattcrail »

augustwollter wrote: post #14

I really like the look of this, and just played around with it. Thanks for listening to my feedback as well Matt, looking forward to see how Taskable evolves.

Thanks for trying it out and sharing feedback! We love to hear from users, particularly about things we can improve on so appreciate you taking the time.

Re: Show HN: A better way to timeblock your day

#18

Post by nefitty »

I haven't used this app. I had to make my own similar tool.

Anyways, timeblocking changed my life. It was a slog at first. I started off by logging what I actually did.

"Sit on couch - 12:15 - 4:30" "Walk dog - 4:30 - 4:45" "Sit on couch - 4:45 - 7:00"

Seeing the patterns I had fallen into was like looking into some sort of chronographic mirror. My fourth dimensional beer belly had gotten pretty big.

Put my ballot in the "What gets measured gets managed" box.

Re: Show HN: A better way to timeblock your day

#19

Post by krono »

Time Blocking is a terrible name for the concept. Of the two ways you could interpret it, one makes you feel like Kronos the Lord of Time, and the other will make you hate your calendar/agenda and everything you put on there.

What does not work: Blocking time. The world will not adapt to how you planned it last Sunday, and no amount of wanting, asking, or even demanding will make it so. Time is fluid, people are selfish, your dog is colourblind and can't read.

What can work: Blocks of time. An estimation of how the day will go but probably won't. A suggestion to yourself. It is wrong from the outset, but still good enough for you to estimate what tasks could be taken on, maybe discover some efficiency opportunities, and it indicates visually that yes, that thing is due in two days.

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