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Show HN: A better way to timeblock your day

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

#61
post #24

I remember trying out Getting Things Done, really liking the idea, and then finding out I had only crappy ways to reference an email from my "todo list". Enough of my "work" is "respond to this email" that I've never been able to escape my inbox as one of my todo lists. Any ideas on how to build task planning that lets me include link directly to an email?

You can do this in Outlook, just create a task and drop the email in as an attachment. Or just flag the email.

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

#62
post #56
post #52

I've seen a lot of these kinds of tools come and go, and this one looks as good if not better than most of the others. However, they're all missing out on a huge market: people in delegate or what's normally known as "Executive Assistant" roles, who are managing someone else's calendar and need a way to control what calendar items, invitations, responses, etc. their executives are seeing. I have yet to see any tool t…

they're all missing out on a huge market That doesn't sound like a huge market. Very few people have an assistant these days. That sounds like a few tens of thousands of potential customers, although admittedly ones able to afford a high premium.

> That doesn't sound like a huge market.

"Huge" is NaN, so I did a Google and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says the TAM is half a million Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants in the United States alone.

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

#64
post #63

The landing page looks promising but downloaded the Android app and it's terrifyingly bad. In fact mobile support in general just seems terrible, so I guess I'm out.

Yeah we are a small team so haven't been able to properly build out mobile yet. The apps are really to make it easy to add new tasks and view your existing ones. We'd love to grow the team and work on mobile soon.

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

#65
post #24

I remember trying out Getting Things Done, really liking the idea, and then finding out I had only crappy ways to reference an email from my "todo list". Enough of my "work" is "respond to this email" that I've never been able to escape my inbox as one of my todo lists. Any ideas on how to build task planning that lets me include link directly to an email?

Google actually nailed feature this with their Tasks feature in Gmail ("Add Email to Tasks") ... but the rest of the task application is so basic and ridiculously underdeveloped that there's no point even going there.

Google, your Tasks app is cr@p ...

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

#66
post #56
post #52

I've seen a lot of these kinds of tools come and go, and this one looks as good if not better than most of the others. However, they're all missing out on a huge market: people in delegate or what's normally known as "Executive Assistant" roles, who are managing someone else's calendar and need a way to control what calendar items, invitations, responses, etc. their executives are seeing. I have yet to see any tool t…

they're all missing out on a huge market That doesn't sound like a huge market. Very few people have an assistant these days. That sounds like a few tens of thousands of potential customers, although admittedly ones able to afford a high premium.

I agree with the individual points of your comment, but speculate that the market could still be big enough to be profitable. This is mainly due to a popular HN thread about executive assistants from this November: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29336234

I don't think I would ever get an executive assistant, even if I were to someday be in a place to afford one. Hypothetically speaking, I get the idea that frugality can be a burden, and it sometimes makes sense to spend money to save time.

However, I personally value making the time and practicing the skill of prioritizing tasks for myself. I just generally like to be self-reliant when I have the option.

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

#67
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with ADHD who was never taught how to handle time.. I think something like this would be very valuable. I don't need _better_ ways to timeblock my day, I need _any_ way to timeblock my days that actually works...

What do you mean by “works”? You could do it with pencil and a piece of paper.

A pen and paper is what I typically use, especially when stuck on a task. But to think about how to timeblock in a way that "works" (I interpret this means, "is effective at keeping one spent on worthwhile tasks), I think the behaviours matter more than the tool (paper/software/or otherwise).

The biggest habits to make time blocking work I see would be:

i) Checking the system (paper/software) regularly)

ii) Capturing all the to-dos, and making sure none are just floating in the mind

iii) Having clear reminders for deadlines and prompts to review tasks that aren't working in a while

When I use a time blocking system well, I'm good at getting lots of tasks done. The biggest obstacles are when a task takes a lot longer than anticipated due to complexity; if I fall behind and don't check the manager; or if I schedule some tasks for someday/far-in-the-future, then forget to review them regularly.

So in short, I think most systems work (with cloud sync and organizational features for software systems as an added luxury), but the biggest obstacle to effectiveness is not checking it enough, often caused by feeling overwhelmed with tasks. Solutions to this include: committing to less, taking breaks, and staying healthy with exercise & sleep for the basics.

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

#68
post #24

I remember trying out Getting Things Done, really liking the idea, and then finding out I had only crappy ways to reference an email from my "todo list". Enough of my "work" is "respond to this email" that I've never been able to escape my inbox as one of my todo lists. Any ideas on how to build task planning that lets me include link directly to an email?

Common problem, I think. I wrote an Outlook macro that saves the email message to a folder and puts the link to it in the clipboard, then I just paste it into Vimwiki. That way in the mail application I can archive it, delete it, whatever. Works well also for those messages you want to save for some vague reason but have no related action item right now.

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

#69
There was an app called Timeful that got acquihired by Google who promptly shut it down. What that app did that was actually good was you could have a simple todo list and you could drag it to your calendar, just like your app. They went on and on about "AI" and how they were going to blow everyone's minds at Google, but all many of us wanted was just a good old drag and drop. Timeful was only on mobile, and had an extremely simple interface. I think it just had one view, tasks on top, today's agenda below them. Another important thing was that you could kind of set aside events in your calendar, so they would show up as just a line on the left side of the agenda view, for events that don't actually tie you up, so you can still put some todo in.
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