Ask HN: I Think I Need a New Calendar App

Why aren't you just using a time tracker app for work? That sounds so much easier than trying to record everything else you did and reverse engineer your hours from that?

I can speak for Toggl (toggl.com) for having great visualizations and making it easy to view your time in different ways, generate charts/invoices, manage multiple clients, and more.

However, the UI/entry side leaves something to be desired. They used to let you do this via a browser extension which was open source, but they recently close sourced it.

I do use a time tracker (tracker.toptal.com <= the UI/entry is pretty good). What I am having a hard time doing is planning the next days (can I mow the lawn and go to the hairdresser and still have time to put in x amount of work).

Motion (YC W20) is what you are looking for.

https://usemotion.com

    - Connect multiple calendars which have fixed events ("Pick up Hana at 7PM")
    - Add tasks which are automatically rescheduled and rearranged around this fixed events ("Call mom and check in")
    - Create booking links to let others schedule time.  The interface for this is way better than Calendly

Disclaimer: I worked there for a bit.

From their privacy page:

  > How we use your information [...]
  > - Training and developing machine learning algorithms, and identification of industry trends and developments, and anonymous benchmarking
  > We may aggregate, de-deidentify, and/or anonymize any information collected through the Service so that such information is no longer reasonably capable of being associated with you.
  > We may use aggregated or anonymized information for any purpose, including research and marketing purposes, and we may also share such information for any purpose with any third parties, at our discretion.

I think I'll pass.

Huh... I know about deidentifying, but what does it mean to de-deidentify?

it means there was a typo

It makes you think, how much effort have they really put into this policy?

Yeah - if you didn't have a lawyer take a look at the policy, what was the point of even putting the policy up there? and if you did have a lawyer look at it and they didn't catch it - get rid of that lawyer lol

I don't think you'll find a service like this without similar terms/policies, unfortunately.

To make the backend work with the auto-scheduling requires that the system knows some personalized heuristics on how to move tasks around. And for that to work means that it'll need to aggregate that data.

I’m wondering, is on-device processing not in the realm of possibility for this space?

Looks very interesting but I would not try something without standard email + password sign up

I went one step further but "enter your card number to start your 7-day free trial period" did it...

Others already mentioned the calendar part, but:

> and end up getting confused about how much work I did

There's lots of apps for just that purpose. Clock-in/out every time you start/stop. Especially if you're working on multiple projects the same day. I don't even have one to recommend specifically - there are many good options.

Just do a manual calendar with lot of spaces to write on for notes and a timer app on your computer to turn on or off when your working. Someone even made a physical device to turn on or off the timer via bluetooth so he wont forget to turn it off when something suddenly interrupts him. The timer also needs to turn off by itself in a predetermined time and you need to manually turn it on so it wont run when you suddenly fall asleep.

Thanks. Yeah I have a timer I use mostly for billing. It's good to keep track of past time, but doesn't help much with planning. I tried doing the manual calendar, but one of the things that I find really hard is constantly doing math with time in my head. Moving stuff around is just a pain.

> constantly doing math with time in my head.

What, exactly, are you calculating? Would it help you to see the total of the non-scheduled hours for each day, inside a specific range (e.g. 07:00 until 22:00)?

I use the Nextcloud calendar app and sync with my Android devices using the CalDav protocol. I have one calendar for work, another for personal. They all display on the same monthly or daily view, just with a different background colour.

It is really hard to separate work from personal life as freelancer. Maybe OP could start there, because this calculating problems starts there. Setting working hours can help and IMO can't be that hard even with kids - I did it for some time. And when you're looking for flexible calendar - you won't find anything better than small paper calendar, pen and cheap casio watch.

I get you, to be honest, I think other people are a lot better than I am at keeping their organization in their heads. I just suck at it real bad.

> And when you're looking for flexible calendar - you won't find anything better than small paper calendar, pen and cheap casio watch.

Yeah I was thinking I should give that a shot first...

Good luck! :) I survived college with leuchtturm1917 - maybe it's some good staring point.

Thanks! just bought an hobonichi techo. It's ridiculously expensive, but I am thinking that if it's expensive, I'll feel bad if I don't use it :-D

I use the following system 1. a normal calendar (webDav synced to my devices) with all my recurring tasks set up. I also include blocks for work as weekly recurring events. In that way my week is set beforehand and if something comes up I can edit the scheduled events and compensate for lost hours

2. time tracker - I need to track my projects automatically and not log them manually. This gives me 2 benefits - I don't waste time (and don't forget to) log the time - I know exactly what I've spent time on

The best time tracker for Mac is timingapp.com, but expensive. However it's integrated with my IDE and I can map a certain project (directory/filename) to a certain client once and it'll be added to this project automatically in the future. I think they have some reports you can use for your monthly billing.

Another one not that good but still wokring is rescuetime.com, they don't automate the path/filename part and thus you can track per app, but not per filepath in that app.

It sounds like you are looking for a combination calendar and time tracker.

I am in a similar situation as you. My solution is to use a separate calendar app and a separate time tracker app. I did not feel a need to combine them in a single tool.

For calendar I use Google calendar. I add repeating appointments with just myself for things like driving kids to school. They repeat weekly, forever. I block off time for my clients and for other ad-hoc things as I figure the week out.

When I sit down to work for a client, I clock in. I don't send these time logs to anyone. It's just for me to know how much time I've put in. It's too easy to loose track of work when you're having fun.

I think it's still possible to program the calendar app in macOS (might need some permissions) with AppleScript.

At the end of each year, I run a Python script which through AppleScript creates an event at the beginning of each month that reminds me to send some papers to my accountant. Instead of just setting the event on the 1st of each month, the script chooses the first working day of the month, taking into account weekends and bank holidays.

Considering you can create multiple calendars, the script (with a cron job) could read the events in the "Exceptional" calendar and update the "Work" calendar.

Something similar might be possible with Google Calendar through the API.

Perhaps try looking at a combination of TickTick and Apple Calendar app (if you are on Apple). I have a couple of different calendars within Apple - home, work and Toastmasters (but could be family).

Within TickTick, you can add in tasks to appear on the calendar so your tasks can be moved around your appointments. You can set up repeating/recurring tasks.

Also, consider using Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology- gets everything out of the brain so it can be used for thinking.

The TickTick free app is awful - premium is MILES better.

I really like Tick Tick but I wish the streak tracking feature was better it's kinda crap right now. Everything else is very good.

For me: the GTD tracks app can help manage all the stuff that needs to get done - for work & home; while a custom timer/billing app keeps tracks of hours worked - a glorified timer app that summarises billable hours and generates invoices http://www.getontracks.org/

I use Google Keep and Calendar.

For regularly recurring things, I just create a reminder in Calendar. It's got repeating reminders. They stay in your active reminders list till you mark them Done.

For one offs, I make reminders or events.

For things not connected to time, I make a Keep list.

I use a Calendar home screen widget, and Keep pinned notes widget, plus three single note tiles on my watch.

I'm the cofounder so obviously biased, but come check out https://reclaim.ai and let us know how it goes. We have a lot of folks in your situation happily using the service.

I use a whiteboard for this, I use it as a calendar and TODO list.

On one part I have my regular weekly schedule, on another a list of sporadic tasks, and then a list of things I want to accomplish.

maybe a gantt project management tool?

it's usually more for a daily planning tool (where as you want a hourly planning) of resources where people are working. You can usually define a time a project requires and the "end of project date" will be extended to a later date if some blocker is added (such as holidays).

maybe one of the gantt project tools could be used for your case.

https://markwhen.com maybe? Might be too manual for their use case though

You might find ToDoist useful:

https://todoist.com/home

Can recommend Noteplan on iOS and MacOS.

build something on top of cal.com if you are developer.

or ask in the cal.com community, if you are ready to sponsor someone should be able to build it.

hey hey, cofounder of cal.com here. @tarunmuvvala let me know if you wanna chat about your use case! peer@cal.com

have you seen skedpal.com?

org mode