Multi-Layered Calendars

Isn’t it ironic that, of all things, it’s our time machines that are stuck in the past?

My personal workflow looks like this:

• I treat my email inbox as my primary task manager (and note-taking tool).


• Tasks are emails I receive from others or emails I send to myself.


• I snooze emails until the week I want to get them done.


• At the beginning of each week, I go through my email todo list and block time in my calendar for each task.

Sleep is another data layer that would make a lot more sense in my calendar than in a standalone app. I already block time in my calendar for sleep (mostly as a DNS-memo to coworkers in other time zones), so why not add sleep quality data directly to that calendar event?

Treating todos as calendar events is helpful because calendars introduce constraints. A calendar forces you to estimate how long each task will take and then find empty space for it on a 24 hours × 7 days grid, which is already cluttered with other things. It’s like playing Tetris with blocks of time.

We are now looking at three different types of calendar events, each with their own unique set of properties. The problem is that our calendars treat all of these different events equally. They don’t natively differentiate between a task and a meeting even though they are two completely different things.

The email<>todo part of this workflow actually works reasonably well. Most of today’s email clients are built around the concept of Inbox Zero, which effectively turns your email inbox into a todo list with public write access.

My biggest gripe with almost all quantified self tools is that they are input-only devices. They are able to collect data, but unable to return any meaningful output. My Garmin watch can tell my current level of stress based on my heart-rate variability, but not what has caused that stress or how I can prevent it in the future. It lacks context.

Calendars, on the other hand, cover the entire spectrum of time. Past, present and future. They are the closest thing we have to a time machine. Calendars allow us to travel forward in time and see the future. More importantly, they allow us to change the future.