How many goals do you have in the back of your head that you could accomplish if you worked on them 20 minutes a day or less, but you never do? A new time-management and scheduling app called Timeful (free; for iOS only) helps you make the most of your time. After speaking with the developers, a small team of experts in behavioral economics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and game theory, I can say that the backend of the app does some pretty impressive work. The result is an app that helps you not only find time to do the things you want to do, but also keeps track of how often you do them, and when. The idea is that Timeful can suggest times and dates in the future when you're most likely to accomplish your tasks.
The app connects to other calendars you already use, such as your iCloud Calendars and Google Calendars, to know when you're already booked. You can write down habits (tasks done perpetually, such as "exercise" or "meditate") that you want to do frequently and give Timeful some hints as to how often. The app suggests dates and times to fit all this extra stuff into your life, and, as mentioned, it learns based on your past successes when to slot in different activities.
Timeful is different than straight task-managers, like Awesome Note (+ToDo) or Clear, because it works with you to determine when to schedule not just tasks, but also habits. It has an excellent drag and drop interface, so if you don't like the suggested time of a task or habit, you can change it very quickly, and within the context of all your other tasks.
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The settings are superb. For any task or habit, you can indicate how long it will take, assign a color to differentiate work, personal, fun, important, and other kinds of tasks. You can also set your sleep hours, so Timeful doesn't try to get you to do 50 pushups when you'd normally be in bed. And you indicate what time of day you are at your most productive. The reason for that last setting is to help you make the most of those periods in your day when your focus is high and you can get important work done.
All your Timeful tasks and habits sync to your primary calendar, which you can set in the app. They appear as to-dos with a checkbox next to them, and an indication that they're coming from Timeful.
In practice, I've had a mixed results with Timeful. I like writing down the habits toward larger goals I would like to accomplish, but I feel all the more terrible when I see them go unmarked. Part of the problem may be that I've ambitiously tried to pick up three new 20-minute habits at once: read more, study Spanish, and stretch. For me, three has turned out to be too many. I've only been able to successfully get to one new habit per day.
As a result, I end up dismissing Timeful notifications throughout my day, rescheduling tasks for later, only to dismiss them again at night. By default, there's always a notification, and if you sync with multiple calendars, that may mean multiple alarms ringing and buzzing.
I'm only about three weeks deep with Timeful, so I'll stick with it a bit longer before deciding whether it really works for me. Seeing as it's a free app, and it delivers on its promise to help you find time in your day to accomplish things, I do recommend others try it. It doesn't make any changes to your other calendars, except to add Timeful habits and tasks, so there's no harm to your existing system. As to whether it can make you the person you want to be—that's a much more personal matter.
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