Time feels more scarce than ever in today‘s world. With so many priorities competing for our attention, days slip by without accomplishing what we set out to do. This leads to frustration and a constant feeling of "catching up".
Time blocking presents a fix – it essentially means proactively planning how you will spend every hour in your workday. As productivity expert Christina Scalera puts it: "It transforms time from something that controls you into something you control."
Having used dozens of apps in my decade long journey towards better productivity, I‘ve distilled my learnings into this comprehensive guide on the best time blocking software available today.
Read on to understand what makes an effective time blocking app and which one suits your specific needs and style.
What Makes an Effective Time Blocking App
An ideal time blocking application would have these key qualities:
Intuitive calendar interface: It must be easy to visually map out blocks of time for tasks and meetings on a daily, weekly or monthly view calendar. Bonus if it offers different calendar layouts.
Integration with mainstream calendars: Seamlessly syncs all scheduled time blocks with your calendar app of choice (e.g. Google Calendar, Outlook etc.)
CENTRALIZED tasks/to-dos: Allows you to see all tasks in one place and easily drag-drop them into calendar time slots.
Recurrence & Batch scheduling: Makes it simple to schedule repeating meetings/tasks. Easily copy schedules from one day to the next.
Focus Time mode: Gives you granular controls to set Sanctuary Hours when you cannot be interrupted or distracted.
Customization & Tags/Folders: Provides enough flexibility to tailor views, color code projects, categorize tasks and build schedules that align with your style of working.
Robust Platform Support: Is available across Web, Mobile (iOS & Android) and Desktop apps.
Armed with these selection criteria, I extensively tested over 25 of the top-rated time blocking tools. I carefully evaluated each one based on parameters like Usability, Unique Features, Mobile Experience, Support & Customer Feedback.
The Top 10 Time Blocking Apps of 2023
Here are my recommendations of time blocking software that deliver on all aspects excellently:
1. Sunsama – Best for Daily Planning
Sunsama has the most well-designed interface for visually mapping out your day. Unlike most other apps that take a calendar-first approach, Sunsama puts your task list front and center.
It makes planning painless through features like:
- ✅ Morning Briefing based on upcoming tasks
- ✅ Evening Review of what you achieved and outstanding items
- ✅ Natural Language Input like "Meet Sam next Monday at 3 PM"
- ✅ Custom tag-based Contexts to segment personal vs. work tasks
Whether you like starting top-down from a calendar or bottoms-up from your task list, Sunsama has you covered.
The free version is quite limiting. But the paid plans bring unlimited integrations with project tools like Asana, Trello, Jira etc. Sunsama feels like it was custom-built to simplify daily planning through time blocking.
Standout Features: Morning Briefing, Evening Review, Contemporary UI
Pricing: From $8/month
2. TickTick – Great for Pomodoro Technique
TickTick positions itself as more of a full-featured task manager. But the Premium version offers excellent time blocking capabilities bundled with useful productivity features.
For instance, TickTick has an inbuilt Pomodoro timer – so you can seamlessly switch between time blocking mode and intense 25-minute focus sprints.
Other highlights include:
- ✅ Natural Language Input for Quick Capture e.g. "Team Lunch on Tuesday at 1 PM"
- ✅ Tasks can be organized via the Eisenhower Matrix
- ✅ Integrates with 3000+ apps via Zapier
- ✅ Available as mobile, desktop and browser extensions
With affordable pricing and regular updates, TickTick provides a lot of bang for buck. If you like mixing time blocking with Pomodoro bursts, TickTick is a top choice.
Standout Features: Pomodoro Timer, Eisenhower Matrix Prioritization
Pricing: From $2.79/month
3. HourStack – Excellent for Consultants
HourStack is purpose-built as a time blocking solution for consultants and agencies who bill by the hour.
It offers fine-tuned control over tracking billable hours across projects and clients through capabilities like:
- ✅ Budget Time vs Billable Time per project
- ✅ Both Timeline & Calendar views with color-coding
- ✅ Rounding elapsed time to configured billing duration
- ✅ Reports on utilization and budget versus actuals
The ability to do batch scheduling and copy time blocks across days boosts productivity further. With seamless Google/Office calendar integration, HourStack is a specialist tool tailored for consultancies.
Standout Feature: Billable Time Tracking
Pricing: From $7/month
4. Time Hero – Best Free Option
Time Hero offers the most feature-packed free plan compared to other time blocking tools. It brings essential features like:
- ✅ Calendar View with color-coded tags
- ✅ Batch Scheduling & Block Copying
- ✅ Desktop & Mobile App Support
- ✅ Integrates with Evernote, Toggl, Asana + others
The easy-to-use interface lets you break down goals into actionable tasks and map them cleanly to calendar slots based on priority and estimated effort.
While the free version is good enough for personal use, Time Hero‘s Business plan unlocks team management capabilities, custom fields, configurable dashboards and priority support.
Standout Feature: Generous and full-featured Free version
Pricing: Free & paid plans starting at $7/month
5. SkedPal – Top for Automated Scheduling
While most time blocking tools rely exclusively on manual scheduling, SkedPal brings in automatic scheduling based on pre-configured rules.
For instance, you can set rules like:
- ✅ Max 2 meetings/day
- ✅ 60 minutes for documentation every Monday
- ✅ 2 check-in meetings/week with Sam
As new meetings and tasks come in, SkedPal will intelligently assign the best time slots based on your pre-defined availability rules. This prevents last minute double-bookings and saves time spent manually shuffling blocks.
You can fine-tune configurations to account for preparation/wrap-up buffers, travel time between meetings etc. If you seek a smart assistant for scheduling rather than a purely manual tool, SkedPal excels.
Standout Feature: Rules-based Automated Scheduling
Pricing: From $9.95/month
6. Clockify – Great Free Team Alternative
Clockify is better known as a feature-rich time tracking platform for agencies and remote teams. The free plan for up to 5 users packs an excellent built-in calendar with time blocking functionality.
Team-oriented capabilities make Clockify stand out:
- ✅ Share calendar views with other teammates
- ✅ Manager dashboard to see team schedules/capacity
- ✅ Visual tagging of billable client work
- ✅ Bulk user permissions management
Clockify lets you schedule blocks for Breaks, Focus Time in addition to client projects for greater visibility into team availability. The free offering has unlimited entries which is unrivaled for group time blocking needs.
Standout Feature: Unlimited Team Usage in Free Version
Pricing: Free forever for basic features
7. Timeblock Planner – Top for GSuite Users
If your organization relies heavily on G Suite apps, Timeblock brings deep and seamless integration capabilities lacking in other tools.
For instance, Timeblock lets you:
- ✅ Auto-sync tasks & appointments from Google Calendar
- ✅ Import tasks from Gmail as SubTasks
- ✅ Attach files from Google Drive for richer context
- ✅ Share time blocked calendar views with colleagues
By tapping directly into your existing Google workspace, Timeblock minimizes disruption to your workflow while offering reliable time blocking facilities.
The strategic calendar also shines by allowing you to map out plans 6 months ahead all the way down to your daily schedule.
Standout Feature: Deep Google Workspace Integration
Pricing: From £6/month
8. Focalboard – Great for Notion Users
Focalboard is a new entrant building upon the user-friendly foundations of Notion. It brings Notion‘s versatile tables and cards format to planning mode.
For Notion power users, key advantages are:
- ✅ Directly embed Focalboard blocks within Notion pages
- ✅ Toggle between list, board, calendar and map layouts
- ✅ Familiar tagging, filtering and grouping of blocks
- ✅ Native tasks database and linked calendar integration
Focalboard reduces the context switching many face between tools. With its Notion DNA, the learning curve is gentle too. Early access pricing and maturity make Focalboard a promising contender.
Standout Feature: Tight Notion Integration
Pricing: Free beta version for early access users
9. Plan breaks for balanced scheduling
When time blocking your day, it is vital to account for periodic breaks and "recharge blocks". Our brain needs downtime to rejuvenate between intense tasks.
Without reasonable breaks, you risk reduced efficacy over the course of a workday due to cumulative mental tiredness. It basically means you get diminishing returns from additional hours worked.
Some proven and healthy practices include:
- ✅ Add 15-30 minute breaks every 90 minutes of focused work
- ✅ Take "offline blocks" for personal admin, snack, exercises etc.
- ✅ Avoid scheduling meetings back-to-back. Leave buffer blocks.
- ✅ Every 90-120 minutes, take 5-10 mins for micro-breaks
The goal is to design a sustainable schedule aligned with reasonable energy levels through the day. Without overloading particular hours and allowing intervals to recharge.
Apps like Timeflip, Chronos make it very convenient to inject periodic breaks amidst your time blocking schedule. Try them out for balanced and healthy calendar plans.
10. Make Time Blocking a Habit with Streaks
The best productivity systems fail when used sporadically. The key is to make time blocking a consistent habit.
An excellent way is to leverage streak tracking apps like Streaks that incentivize habit formation through motivation techniques.
The core premise Streaks uses is:
"Never break the chain 👉 Users feel motivated to do the activity daily and not break their continuously growing chain."
You can track practicing time blocking as a repeating daily task in Streaks. It‘ll soon become second nature when you see your visual chain growing longer day after day.
Make time blocking a non-negotiable habit by tracking it in Streaks. You‘ll soon see both your chain and productivity shoot up!
Get Started with Time Blocking Now
With multiple great options spanning a variety of specializations, needs and budgets – you have an app that perfectly matches your style and context among the 10 recommended above.
While the tool capabilities make time blocking easier, success ultimately depends on the discipline to stick with it daily. Start modestly even if with just planning your mornings rigorously. And gradually scale up time blocking scheduling hours as it becomes habit.
The sense of control, organization and accomplishments derived from structured time utilization make the initial hard work so rewarding! As they say, "What gets scheduled, gets done."
I hope this guide served as the right blueprint for you to pick and thoroughly adopt time blocking. Do share your progress or queries via comments below. Happy Scheduling!
