Time blocking scheduling

April 13, 2019 10:29 PM

Is there an app that will help me take some predetermined blocks of time and arrange them on a weekly schedule?

I want to experiment with a type of scheduling where I have some predetermined blocks of time for specific activities (e.g. 1hr study, 30 mins project, etc) and then I can arrange them in a weekly calendar based on anything else I have going on. Here's a rough example of what I mean.

I use Google Calendar for my scheduling, but it doesn't have a stack of predetermined blocks that I can just drag and drop. Trello has cards, but they're all the same size. I guess I could use a spreadsheet and copy & paste, but that gets tedious on mobile (I'm on an Android, but desktop solutions are ok).

posted by divabat to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: I tried to do this. First with post-it-note apps (Sticky let me do different sizes of cards but wasn’t suitable enough to warrant purchase after the one free notebook. iCardSort varies the font size for longer text but not the card size, ok for same-size tasks or pomodoros.) For now I’m using trello with a list for each weekday, cards for each hour with labels of what kind of task I would do at that time in an ideal week, and then I put the card with the concrete task under the hour card of when I plan to do it. That doesn’t address the duration variation directly, though.

Another way occurred to me now: you could create the blocks in google calendar in a past week and then duplicate them onto when you do them. I realize I do this already for irregular but recurring appointments that I don’t want to retype.
posted by meijusa at 11:37 PM on April 13, 2019

Best answer: You could also make recurring events, repeating weekly, of your blocks, but all scheduled during night hours to not clutter up your calendar. Then drag them into the real time slot. You’ll have to confirm “only this event”, but that’s just one click and you don’t have to scroll to a different week and click more for duplicate info.
posted by meijusa at 11:44 PM on April 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Plan (https://getplan.co) does exactly what you want and reads off Google calendar. Desktop and mobile apps.
posted by joycehealy at 6:38 AM on April 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I use Outlook, but there, it's easy to create a recurring event. You could create the event for 9 am Monday, or whenever you'd be planning your schedule for the week, because once thw event exists, it's easy to drag and drop it to another time slot, and you get to select whether you're rescheduling just that occurrence or all future instances of the event.
posted by salvia at 9:04 AM on April 14, 2019

Response by poster: Ooo the Google Calendar recurring events is a good idea - currently the time blocks are on a specific schedule anyway so that makes sense. And it is pretty easy to drag around if needed.

I've also signed up to Plan though it's kind of a mess on mobile (they don't have an Android app).
posted by divabat at 6:30 PM on April 15, 2019