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As soon as someone invents a calendar/to-do app that helps you schedule your next tasks by using AI to reduce context switching (e.g., can tell from a meeting's

by smeej 3y ago

As soon as someone invents a calendar/to-do app that helps you schedule your next tasks by using AI to reduce context switching (e.g., can tell from a meeting's attendees and a project's responsible parties that you're probably thinking about the right type of topic, and this is the optimal break in your calendar to hammer out this task), it'll be worth changing things up. Until then the improvements are too small to be worth the time cost to switch.

jitl 3y ago
Notion Calendar is a Google a calendar client. If you use Google Calendar the “cost” to “switchl to this app is one click + OAuth to log in, and (optional) however much time it takes to pick the keyboard shortcuts. (I work at Notion but not on Calendar)
- smeej 3y ago
  I don't (and won't) use Google Calendar, so there's still a cost to me. In fairness, I don't use Notion either, and wouldn't start for a calendar (I've tried, but I seem to be one of the odd people for whom Notion is radically, deeply unintuitive), so this particular switch wasn't on the table for me in the first place.
marcinzm 3y ago
Isn't that what Clockwise (https://www.getclockwise.com/ https://www.getclockwise.com/) aims to do?
- smeej 3y ago
  I actually wasn't thinking about the team scheduling element, though that seems really useful especially in scrappy teams that have to wear a lot of hats and sync ad hoc a lot. I was thinking more about the task side, where if I had come from a meeting about, say, marketing, and only had half an hour until another meeting, I might be able to knock out a marketing-related task because I was already in that headspace, whereas a similarly complex task about some other topic would require more of a context shift.
lbrunson 3y ago
Working on this over at https://beta.flexibly.ai https://beta.flexibly.ai
- smeej 3y ago
  Do you have a mockup video or docs or something that would help me get a better sense of what this hopes to be? I'm not able to find much info on the linked page or on X about it.
jonny-bravo 3y ago
It's not "AI", but Motion's (not to be confused with Notion) algorithm is pretty good. When you add a task, you specify an urgency, time estimate, and what "schedule" it belongs to (e.g. work, personal, etc). Schedules are different categories with their own "slots" of time that a task can fill. You can also specify whether to use chunking, which lets the algorithm break a task into multiple events based on the "minimum chunk duration" you set for that task. For example, let's say you create a 9-5 "schedule" for work. It's currently 3pm. You add two tasks: - 3h, Task A, low priority, set min chunk duration to 1h - 1h, Task B, high priority Motion will schedule this as follows: - 3-4pm today, Task B - 4-5pm today, Task A - 9-11am tomorrow, Task A If you were to swap the urgencies, it will automatically reschedule those tasks (and any tasks that follow it, assuming they are marked as "auto-schedule") Tbh the only problem is it's price. I use it quite a lot but I'm not sure I'll renew my annual subscription next month. There's also Reclaim.ai, but I found Motion was faster to use and had a better UI
- smeej 3y ago
  These are on the way toward what I mean for sure. They're still missing the element of, "Your last meeting was with Alice and Bob, who are in Marketing. You have half an hour before you have to leave to get to a client meeting, so you can probably knock out this marketing-related task because you're in that headspace, but this equally involved task planning the details of an event in a week might require too much of a context shift to get done right now." Those are the types of little time blocks I lose all the time because I can't switch fast enough, whereas if a tool could figure out my contexts well, it might really be able to surface things when I'm already in the right headspace. It's not going to be perfect. Maybe Alice and Bob are part of the event for the next week too, because they're also on the company softball team with me and the tool wouldn't necessarily know we were actually meeting about the event, but even switching to the task of "review task list to choose a task I might be able to get done now" is one context shift too many when I have a short gap.

by smeej 3y ago

jitl 3y ago

Notion Calendar is a Google a calendar client. If you use Google Calendar the “cost” to “switchl to this app is one click + OAuth to log in, and (optional) however much time it takes to pick the keyboard shortcuts. (I work at Notion but not on Calendar)

smeej 3y ago
I don't (and won't) use Google Calendar, so there's still a cost to me. In fairness, I don't use Notion either, and wouldn't start for a calendar (I've tried, but I seem to be one of the odd people for whom Notion is radically, deeply unintuitive), so this particular switch wasn't on the table for me in the first place.

marcinzm 3y ago

Isn't that what Clockwise (https://www.getclockwise.com/ https://www.getclockwise.com/) aims to do?

smeej 3y ago
I actually wasn't thinking about the team scheduling element, though that seems really useful especially in scrappy teams that have to wear a lot of hats and sync ad hoc a lot. I was thinking more about the task side, where if I had come from a meeting about, say, marketing, and only had half an hour until another meeting, I might be able to knock out a marketing-related task because I was already in that headspace, whereas a similarly complex task about some other topic would require more of a context shift.

lbrunson 3y ago

Working on this over at https://beta.flexibly.ai https://beta.flexibly.ai

smeej 3y ago
Do you have a mockup video or docs or something that would help me get a better sense of what this hopes to be? I'm not able to find much info on the linked page or on X about it.

jonny-bravo 3y ago

It's not "AI", but Motion's (not to be confused with Notion) algorithm is pretty good. When you add a task, you specify an urgency, time estimate, and what "schedule" it belongs to (e.g. work, personal, etc). Schedules are different categories with their own "slots" of time that a task can fill. You can also specify whether to use chunking, which lets the algorithm break a task into multiple events based on the "minimum chunk duration" you set for that task. For example, let's say you create a 9-5 "schedule" for work. It's currently 3pm. You add two tasks: - 3h, Task A, low priority, set min chunk duration to 1h - 1h, Task B, high priority Motion will schedule this as follows: - 3-4pm today, Task B - 4-5pm today, Task A - 9-11am tomorrow, Task A If you were to swap the urgencies, it will automatically reschedule those tasks (and any tasks that follow it, assuming they are marked as "auto-schedule") Tbh the only problem is it's price. I use it quite a lot but I'm not sure I'll renew my annual subscription next month. There's also Reclaim.ai, but I found Motion was faster to use and had a better UI

smeej 3y ago
These are on the way toward what I mean for sure. They're still missing the element of, "Your last meeting was with Alice and Bob, who are in Marketing. You have half an hour before you have to leave to get to a client meeting, so you can probably knock out this marketing-related task because you're in that headspace, but this equally involved task planning the details of an event in a week might require too much of a context shift to get done right now." Those are the types of little time blocks I lose all the time because I can't switch fast enough, whereas if a tool could figure out my contexts well, it might really be able to surface things when I'm already in the right headspace. It's not going to be perfect. Maybe Alice and Bob are part of the event for the next week too, because they're also on the company softball team with me and the tool wouldn't necessarily know we were actually meeting about the event, but even switching to the task of "review task list to choose a task I might be able to get done now" is one context shift too many when I have a short gap.