The Best Time-Blocking Apps Compared: Which One Fits Your Work Style?

You’ve read about time-blocking. You’ve seen the productivity gurus swear by it. You’ve even tried blocking out your calendar manually. But within two days, your carefully planned blocks are shattered by a surprise meeting, an urgent Slack message, or the realization that you grossly underestimated how long anything takes.

The gap between “time-blocking sounds great” and “time-blocking actually works in my chaotic day” is where time-blocking apps live. They’re not magic, but they can bridge that gap if you pick the right one.

The Problem This Solves

Time-blocking on paper or in a basic calendar breaks down the moment reality intervenes. You block out two hours for deep work, then a client calls. You schedule writing time, then realize you forgot about the team standup. You plan your ideal week on Sunday, then by Tuesday it bears no resemblance to what you’re actually doing.

The manual approach has three core problems. First, it’s static—your blocks don’t adapt when things change, so you’re constantly redrawing your day. Second, it lives in isolation from your actual task list, meaning you’re managing two systems that drift apart. Third, it requires perfect estimation skills that humans simply don’t have. You think “email processing: 30 minutes” and it takes ninety, cascading delays through your entire day.

What breaks isn’t the concept of time-blocking. It’s the infrastructure. You need blocks that move when meetings shift. You need your task list and calendar to be the same thing, not two systems you reconcile manually. You need something that learns from how long things actually take, not how long you wish they took.

Time-blocking apps attempt to solve this by making blocks dynamic, integrating tasks with calendar, and in some cases, automatically adjusting your schedule. The question isn’t whether you need this—if you’re reading this, you already know manual time-blocking isn’t scaling. The question is which tool matches how you actually work.

Why knowledge workers struggle with this

Knowledge work is fundamentally unpredictable in a way that undermines traditional scheduling. A developer might block two hours for a feature, only to discover a bug that requires four. A writer might schedule afternoon research, then find the creative energy only shows up in the morning. A consultant might plan client work, then field three urgent questions that each “only take five minutes” but collectively destroy the day’s structure.

The deeper issue is that knowledge work requires different types of focus at different intensities, but most scheduling treats all tasks as equivalent blocks of time. Writing a proposal requires different energy than reviewing a budget. A creative brainstorm can’t follow the same pattern as data entry. When your calendar shows “9-11am: Work,” it’s useless. When it shows “9-10am: Draft client proposal (deep focus)” followed by “10-11am: Review email (low energy OK),” you have something actionable.

The cognitive overhead of managing this manually is substantial. You’re not just scheduling tasks—you’re scheduling cognitive states, estimating energy levels, predicting interruptions, and constantly rebalancing when reality diverges from plan. For people with ADHD or attention regulation challenges, this overhead can be paralyzing. The planning becomes harder than the work.

Time-blocking apps reduce this overhead by handling the mechanical parts: moving blocks when meetings shift, suggesting realistic timeframes based on historical data, protecting focus time automatically. They can’t eliminate unpredictability, but they can make responding to it less exhausting. The question is which tool’s approach to this problem matches your specific workflow chaos.

What Most People Try

Most people start with Google Calendar or Outlook and manually create blocks for different tasks. This works for about three days. You diligently block “9-11am: Deep work on Project X” and “2-3pm: Email processing.” Then a meeting invitation arrives for 10am. You accept it, which splits your deep work block. You tell yourself you’ll manually adjust the other blocks. You don’t. By Wednesday your calendar is half manual blocks that are no longer accurate and half actual commitments, and you’ve stopped trusting either.

The slightly more sophisticated approach is using a task manager like Todoist or Things alongside your calendar. You list tasks in one place, schedule time in another, and spend mental energy keeping them synchronized. “I said I’d do this task today, so I need to block time for it. But I already have blocks for other tasks. Where does this fit?” The constant reconciliation between “what I need to do” and “when I can do it” becomes its own time-consuming task.

Some people try motion planning with physical tools—the Pomodoro Technique with a kitchen timer, time-blocking planners like the Full Focus Planner, or bullet journaling with time blocks drawn by hand. These can work brilliantly if your day has predictable structure and few external interruptions. If you’re a freelancer working alone or a student with fixed class times, this might be all you need. But if you have video calls, team dependencies, or a calendar that other people can write to, the manual approach can’t keep pace with changes.

The productivity enthusiast approach is to chain together multiple tools: calendar for time, Todoist for tasks, RescueTime for tracking, and a habit tracker for consistency. This creates a powerful but fragile system. When it works, you have comprehensive visibility. When it breaks—usually because one integration stops working or you forget to log something—you have four partial views of your day that don’t agree with each other. Debugging why your time tracking doesn’t match your calendar which doesn’t match your task completion becomes its own project.

What all these approaches share is that they place the burden of maintenance on you. When a meeting moves, you move the blocks. When a task takes longer than expected, you recalculate the rest of your day. When priorities shift, you redraw your plan. Time-blocking apps attempt to automate this maintenance. The question isn’t whether automation helps—it clearly does. The question is which automation approach matches your work style and tolerance for giving up control.

Quick Comparison

App	Best For	Price	Platforms	Key Feature
Motion	People with chaotic calendars	$34/mo	Web, iOS, Android	AI auto-scheduling
Sunsama	Intentional daily planning	$20/mo	Web, iOS, Android	Daily ritual workflow
Reclaim	Protecting focus time	Free-$12/mo	Web, Chrome ext	Calendar defense
Timebloc	Visual weekly planning	Free-$6/mo	iOS only	Drag-and-drop interface
Structured	Simple daily structure	Free-$10/mo	iOS only	Timeline view

The real differences aren’t in features—they all do time-blocking. The differences are in philosophy. Motion assumes you want the computer to manage your schedule and will trust AI decisions. Sunsama assumes you want to manually plan each day but with better tools than a blank calendar. Reclaim assumes your main problem is other people stealing your time. Timebloc assumes you think visually and want to see the whole week at once. Structured assumes you want dead-simple execution without configuration overhead.

Price matters less than it appears. Motion’s $34/month is expensive until you realize it’s replacing both a task manager and a scheduling assistant. Sunsama’s $20/month seems reasonable until you realize you’re paying for ritual software that you might outgrow. Reclaim’s free tier is genuinely useful, making it a natural first try. The iOS-only apps (Timebloc and Structured) are cheap, but useless if you work across devices or need team features.

The real cost is switching cost. Once you’ve built a workflow around one of these, moving to another means relearning muscle memory and often losing historical data about how long things actually take. This makes your first choice more important than it should be. The rest of this guide is designed to help you make that choice with eyes open about what you’re committing to.

The Rankings: What Actually Works

1. Motion - Best for people who want a computer to manage their chaos

What it does: Motion uses AI to automatically schedule your tasks around your meetings, deadlines, and stated priorities. You dump tasks into it with deadlines and duration estimates, and it continuously rebuilds your day as things change. When a meeting gets added, Motion shifts your task blocks. When something takes longer than expected, it adjusts the rest of your week. The promise is that you stop manually managing your calendar and let the algorithm do it.

Why users stick with it: The feeling of having a scheduling assistant without paying for a scheduling assistant. Once you trust it, you stop thinking about when things will happen and just do whatever Motion tells you to do next. For people with severe calendar chaos—multiple projects, frequent meeting changes, lots of dependencies—this cognitive offload is worth the high price.

The workflow: Start by connecting your existing calendar (Google or Outlook). Motion needs to see your meetings to schedule around them. Then create projects and add tasks with three key pieces of information: deadline (when must this be done), duration (your best guess at how long), and priority (relative importance). Motion then auto-schedules these tasks into available slots between your meetings.

The daily pattern becomes: check Motion in the morning to see what it scheduled for you today, work on whatever’s next on the list, and mark tasks complete as you finish them. If something takes longer than estimated, Motion notices and automatically pushes other tasks back. If a new meeting appears on your calendar, Motion rebuilds your task schedule around it. If you add an urgent task, Motion finds time for it by shifting lower-priority work.

The key to making this work is honest duration estimates and actually using the priority system. If you mark everything as high priority, Motion can’t make meaningful decisions. If you consistently underestimate task duration, Motion will constantly be pushing your deadlines. The system works best when you feed it realistic data and then trust its scheduling decisions without constantly overriding them.

Real-world use cases:

Morning deep work: You have a standing 9-11am focus block in your ideal world, but meetings often encroach. With Motion, you mark your most important deep work tasks as high priority with a “work on this before noon” deadline. Motion automatically finds the largest uninterrupted chunk of time in your morning—whether that’s 9-11am on a clear day or a 45-minute slot before a 10am meeting on a busy day. You don’t decide when to do deep work; you decide what qualifies as deep work and let Motion find the time.

Afternoon context switching: You have five small tasks—reviewing a document, responding to a client email, updating a spreadsheet, scheduling a follow-up call, and filing expense reports. Each takes 15-30 minutes but requires different mental contexts. You dump all five into Motion with “by end of day” deadlines and medium priority. Motion automatically slots them into gaps between afternoon meetings, often batching similar tasks (email tasks together, administrative tasks together) without you having to think about it. You just work through the list in the order Motion presents it.

Evening side project: You’re trying to build something on the side but never find time because day-job tasks always expand. You create a project in Motion for your side work, mark it as daily recurring with a 90-minute duration, and set priority to “only if other work is done.” Motion won’t schedule this during work hours, but if you finish your day-job tasks early or have an evening free of meetings, Motion automatically blocks time for side project work. This prevents the common pattern of “I’ll work on it if I have time” turning into never having time.

Pro tips:

Use Motion’s “busy hours” feature to define when you’re actually available for scheduled work, preventing it from scheduling tasks at 9pm just because your calendar is technically free
Create separate workspaces for different clients or projects if you need to strictly segregate time, then use Motion’s workspace switching to context shift clearly
Set realistic “chunk size” preferences—if you know you can’t focus for more than 90 minutes at a time, tell Motion to break large tasks into 90-minute blocks rather than scheduling a four-hour marathon session

Common pitfalls: The biggest mistake is fighting Motion’s decisions. You see it scheduled something in what you consider a “bad” time slot and manually move it. Motion interprets this as a constraint and schedules around your override, which cascades into other tasks being squeezed into worse slots. If Motion’s decisions consistently feel wrong, the issue is usually in your task configuration (wrong priorities, unrealistic durations, missing constraints) rather than the algorithm.

The second pitfall is treating Motion like a task manager when it’s really a scheduling system. You can’t have a task that says “someday, maybe” because Motion will try to schedule it. Everything in Motion needs a deadline, even if that deadline is months away. This means Motion isn’t great for capture of random ideas—you need a separate inbox system for those, then only move tasks to Motion when they’re actually committed work.

Real limitation: Motion only works if you’re willing to let an algorithm control your time. Some people find this liberating. Others find it claustrophobic, like having a very insistent manager constantly telling them what to work on next. If you have strong feelings about when certain work should happen or you need the creative freedom to follow your energy, Motion’s rigidity can feel suffocating. There’s no way to say “I want to work on creative stuff when I feel creative”—you can only schedule it or not schedule it.

2. Sunsama - Best for people who want daily planning rituals

What it does: Sunsama builds a daily planning workflow around time-blocking. Every day starts with a planning session where you review yesterday, pull in tasks from various sources (Asana, Trello, Gmail, Slack), assign them to time blocks, and set an intention. Every day ends with a reflection session where you review what happened, archive completed work, and acknowledge what didn’t get done. Between these rituals, you work from a time-blocked schedule that you control.

Why users stick with it: The ritual aspect. Sunsama isn’t trying to be invisible—it’s trying to create a mindful daily practice around work planning. Users who thrive with Sunsama often describe it less like using a tool and more like having a daily meditation practice that happens to organize their work. The forced slowdown of the planning ritual prevents the chaotic “open laptop and react to whatever’s loudest” pattern.

The workflow: Each morning, Sunsama prompts you through a planning workflow. First, review yesterday—what got done, what didn’t, and whether uncompleted tasks still matter. Then import today’s candidates from connected services: pull in emails that need responses, grab assigned tasks from Asana, review Slack threads that became action items. For each imported item, decide: does this need to happen today? If yes, drag it to a time slot. If no, defer it or delete it.

Sunsama shows your calendar on the left and available time on the right. When you drag a task to your schedule, Sunsama creates a calendar block and links it to the original task source. You can see in real-time how your available time is filling up. The planning session ends when you’ve allocated all your must-do items to time slots or acknowledged that they’re not happening today.

During the day, you work from Sunsama’s “focus mode”—a clean view of what’s next, what’s now, and what’s later. Unlike Motion, Sunsama doesn’t move things automatically. If a task takes longer, you manually adjust. If a meeting appears, you manually reorganize. The evening reflection prompts you to mark what’s complete, review what’s incomplete, and write a brief note about how the day went.

Real-world use cases:

Morning deep work: During planning, you identify your one most important task and intentionally schedule it for your best focus time. Sunsama shows you the blank 9-11am slot, you drag “Write quarterly report” into it, and the act of placing it there is a commitment. Unlike a to-do list where “write report” is equal to “file expense report,” the time block forces you to acknowledge that this task will consume two hours of your day. The ritual makes you confront the trade-off: if you’re doing this, you’re not doing something else.

Afternoon context switching: You import six tasks from various sources—three from email, two from Asana, one from Slack. In the planning session, you notice they’re all different types of work. You batch them by type: two emails that require similar responses go in one 30-minute block, the two Asana tasks that are both code reviews go in another 45-minute block. The Slack follow-up goes in a 15-minute gap before a late meeting. The third email task doesn’t actually matter today, so you defer it. This batching happens manually, but Sunsama’s interface makes it visual and deliberate.

Evening side project: During evening reflection, you review that you completed 6 of 8 planned tasks. The two incomplete tasks were both “nice to have” rather than critical. You write a brief note: “Good focus in morning. Afternoon meetings ran long. Tomorrow: start deep work before checking email.” This reflection prevents the common pattern of feeling like you got nothing done when you actually accomplished most of what mattered. You then plan tomorrow, intentionally scheduling side project time in a slot you know will be meeting-free.

Pro tips:

Use Sunsama’s “contexts” feature to label tasks by energy type (deep focus, low energy, social) so you can schedule tasks in slots where you’ll have the right cognitive state
Set up keyboard shortcuts for the planning ritual—you’ll do this every day, so muscle memory matters
Configure the “timebox” feature to set realistic maximum durations for recurring tasks, preventing “email processing” from expanding to fill all available time

Common pitfalls: The planning ritual can become performative. You spend twenty minutes crafting the perfect day, color-coding tasks, writing thoughtful intentions—and then reality intervenes and none of it matters. The ritual is valuable when it forces confrontation with trade-offs, not when it becomes an elaborate way to avoid starting work. If you find yourself spending more time planning than doing, you’re using Sunsama wrong.

The second pitfall is treating Sunsama like a passive task manager. It shines when you actively plan each day and reflect each evening. If you skip the rituals and just use it as a calendar with a task list attached, you’re paying $20/month for what Google Calendar does free. The value is in the workflow, not the features.

Real limitation: Sunsama requires discipline and consistency. If you miss a day’s planning ritual, you’re working from an outdated schedule. If you skip several days, you return to a pile of uncompleted tasks with no clear priority. Unlike Motion which adapts to chaos, Sunsama requires you to actively manage chaos through daily practice. For people with irregular schedules or who travel frequently, maintaining the ritual can be harder than maintaining the actual work.

3. Reclaim - Best for protecting focus time from meeting creep

What it does: Reclaim automatically defends blocks of time on your calendar for focused work, habits, and breaks. You tell it “I need four hours of focus time per week” and it finds those hours, marks them as busy on your calendar, and automatically moves them if meetings get scheduled over them. It integrates with task managers but its core value is calendar defense, not task management.

Why users stick with it: It solves the specific problem of “my calendar is being colonized by other people’s priorities.” For people in meeting-heavy roles—managers, consultants, anyone client-facing—Reclaim prevents the pattern where every day becomes back-to-back meetings with zero time to actually do work. The free tier is genuinely useful, which lowers the barrier to trying it.

The workflow: Connect your calendar and define your “habits”—recurring blocks of time you need. These might be “Deep focus: 2 hours daily” or “Email processing: 30 minutes at 4pm” or “Lunch break: 12-1pm.” For each habit, you set priorities (how aggressively should Reclaim defend this time) and flexibility (can this move within the day or must it be fixed).

Reclaim then auto-schedules these habits into your calendar as “busy” events. When someone tries to schedule a meeting over your focus time, they see you as unavailable. If you accept a meeting that conflicts with a habit, Reclaim automatically finds a new time for that habit elsewhere in your day or week. If no time exists, Reclaim shows you which habits are getting squeezed out, forcing you to either decline meetings or consciously sacrifice focus time.

The key difference from manual blocking: when your 2pm focus block gets bumped by a meeting, you don’t have to remember to reschedule it. Reclaim does it automatically. When Friday fills up with meetings, Reclaim notices and tries to add Saturday focus blocks (if you’ve allowed weekend scheduling) or pushes the time to next week.

Real-world use cases:

Morning deep work: You create a “Deep focus” habit for 2 hours each morning, priority high. Reclaim schedules it for 9-11am on days when that’s free. On days with early meetings, Reclaim moves it to 10:30am-12:30pm or splits it into two one-hour blocks. You don’t think about this—you just check your calendar each morning and work during whatever blocks appear as “Deep focus.” The cognitive load of “when can I do focused work today?” disappears.

Afternoon context switching: You have small recurring tasks—reviewing team updates, processing email, doing expense reports. You create habits for each: “Team review: 30 min Wed/Fri,” “Email: 20 min daily at 4pm,” “Expenses: 30 min Friday.” Reclaim schedules all of these, marking them busy so meetings can’t encroach. When Friday becomes meeting-heavy, Reclaim either finds gaps (scheduling email at 3pm instead of 4pm) or alerts you that some habits are failing, prompting you to either decline meetings or defer habits.

Evening side project: You want to work on a side project but evenings fill with dinner plans and social obligations. You create a “Side project: 90 min” habit with low priority and allow it to schedule in evenings or weekends. Reclaim finds available evening slots and blocks them. When a friend suggests dinner, you can see immediately that you’d planned to work on your project, prompting a conscious choice rather than vague guilt about “never finding time” for side work.

Pro tips:

Use Reclaim’s priority system strategically—make truly important habits high priority so they defend their time aggressively, but set nice-to-have habits to low priority so they yield to meetings rather than creating calendar Tetris
Enable “smart 1:1 scheduling” if you manage people; Reclaim can find time for recurring 1:1s while still protecting both people’s focus time
Connect Reclaim to your task manager (Asana, ClickUp, Jira) so it can auto-schedule tasks during your focus blocks, bridging the gap between “I have focus time” and “what do I work on during it”

Common pitfalls: Over-defining habits. You create habits for every conceivable type of work, and Reclaim’s calendar becomes a Tetris game of tiny blocks that constantly shift. The value is in protecting large chunks of time for important work, not in micromanaging every fifteen minutes. Start with one or two critical habits and add more only if you consistently achieve those.

The second pitfall is treating Reclaim’s blocks as suggestions rather than commitments. If you regularly ignore or override your focus blocks, Reclaim becomes sophisticated calendar clutter. The system only works if you actually use the time it protects. This requires saying no to meetings or at least critically evaluating whether a meeting is worth sacrificing focus time.

Real limitation: Reclaim can’t protect time that doesn’t exist. If your calendar is genuinely 100% meetings, Reclaim will fail to find focus time and alert you to this fact. This is actually valuable information—it forces confrontation with an unsustainable schedule—but it’s not a solution. You still have to make the hard choice to decline meetings or reduce commitments. Reclaim can enforce boundaries, but you have to set them.

4. Timebloc - Best for visual weekly planning

What it does: Timebloc is an iOS app that presents your week as a visual grid where you drag tasks into time slots. Unlike Motion’s AI scheduling or Sunsama’s ritual planning, Timebloc is simply a better interface for manual time-blocking. You see the whole week at once, color-code different types of work, and directly manipulate blocks. It’s digital but feels physical in the way a paper planner does.

Why users stick with it: The visual clarity. You can see in one glance how your week is shaped—where the dense meeting days are, where the open time lives, how balanced work is across the week. The drag-and-drop interface is fast enough that replanning your week (which you’ll do constantly) doesn’t feel like a chore. For people who think visually about time, this interface feels more natural than list-based task managers.

The workflow: Weekly planning happens on Sunday or Monday morning. Open Timebloc, look at your whole week, and start dragging tasks from your backlog into time slots. Meetings (imported from your calendar) appear automatically. Tasks are colored by project or type. As you drag tasks into the week, you see available time shrinking, forcing realistic planning.

During the week, when reality diverges from plan (and it will), you quickly reorganize. A meeting moves? Drag the meeting’s colored block to its new time, then drag the task blocks that were affected. A task took twice as long? Stretch its block and push other tasks back or to different days. The visual interface makes these adjustments faster than text-based replanning.

Unlike apps with AI or smart features, Timebloc doesn’t suggest anything. It’s a blank weekly canvas that you fill. The constraint is what makes it useful—you can’t schedule more than actually fits in a week, and seeing tasks that don’t fit forces you to either defer them or acknowledge you’re overcommitted.

Real-world use cases:

Morning deep work: You color all deep-focus tasks red and see them clustered in morning slots across the week. This visual pattern makes it obvious if you’re protecting your best cognitive hours or squandering them on email. When planning, you actively look for morning slots and reserve them for red tasks. When a morning meeting appears, you immediately see which red tasks get displaced and can consciously choose whether to move the task or decline the meeting.

Afternoon context switching: You have six small tasks that could happen any afternoon this week. You color them all blue and drag them into various afternoon gaps—two on Tuesday, three on Thursday, one on Friday. The visual grouping shows you’ve created two context-switching days (Tuesday and Thursday) and kept other afternoons clear for larger blocks. This batching happens naturally because you can see the week pattern rather than planning day-by-day.

Evening side project: You drag your side project tasks (colored green) into evening slots, but when you look at the whole week, you see you’ve scheduled side project work on five consecutive evenings. This visual makes you realize you’re setting yourself up for burnout. You adjust, keeping side project work to three evenings and leaving two evenings completely clear. The week view prevents the day-by-day planning that leads to overcommitment.

Pro tips:

Use Timebloc’s “templates” feature to create recurring weekly structures (e.g., “Client Work Monday/Wednesday, Internal Projects Tuesday/Thursday, Flex Friday”) so you’re not starting from scratch each week
Color-code by energy type rather than project—red for high focus, yellow for medium, blue for low energy—so you can visually balance cognitive load across the week
Keep a “someday” list in Timebloc separate from your active week; things only graduate from someday to scheduled when you actually have time for them, preventing aspirational over-planning

Common pitfalls: The visual interface can make over-planning feel productive. You spend forty minutes crafting a perfectly balanced week with color-coordinated blocks, beautiful balance across days, ideal task sequencing—and by Tuesday it’s completely outdated. The plan is only valuable if it changes reality. If you’re spending more time planning than doing, the visual appeal is working against you.

The second pitfall is iOS-only limitation. If you work across devices or need desktop access, Timebloc requires either constant phone checking or accepting that you’ll plan on phone and work on computer with different views. For solo workers who do most work on Mac, the iOS app plus occasional desktop browser access works. For teams or heavy computer users, the mobile-first design can feel limiting.

Real limitation: No smart features means no automation. When a meeting moves, Timebloc doesn’t automatically adjust your task blocks—you manually drag everything. When a task takes longer, Timebloc doesn’t suggest new times for affected tasks—you manually reorganize. For people who want this control, it’s a feature. For people drowning in chaos, it’s a liability. Timebloc assumes you can and will maintain the schedule manually, which breaks down when life gets truly chaotic.

5. Structured - Best for simple daily execution

What it does: Structured is a timeline-based daily planner for iOS that shows your tasks and events in chronological order. It’s intentionally simple: add tasks, assign rough times, work through the day following the timeline. No projects, no AI, no recurring tasks, no complex scheduling—just “what am I doing now and what’s next.”

Why users stick with it: It removes every feature that creates complexity. For people overwhelmed by productivity tools with endless configuration options, Structured is refreshing because there’s almost nothing to configure. You can’t overthink it because there aren’t enough features to overthink. This simplicity makes daily execution effortless once you accept the constraints.

The workflow: Each morning, open Structured and see today’s timeline. Your calendar events appear automatically. Add tasks between events by tapping empty time slots—give each task a rough time and brief description. Structured shows these tasks in chronological order: “9am Meeting,” “10am Write report,” “11:30am Email processing,” “12pm Lunch,” and so on.

During the day, work through the timeline. As you complete tasks, check them off. As times shift, tap and drag tasks to new slots. The interface is fast enough that adjusting takes seconds, not minutes. When you fall behind, the timeline makes it visually obvious—you can see uncompleted tasks stacking up in the past, prompting either rapid catch-up or conscious decisions to defer.

There’s no weekly view, no project management, no recurring task templates. Every day is a fresh timeline. Yesterday’s uncompleted tasks don’t automatically carry over—you have to consciously re-add them today, which forces evaluation of whether they still matter.

Real-world use cases:

Morning deep work: You add one task: “9am-11am: Write quarterly report.” Structured shows this as a two-hour block on your timeline. You work through it. If you finish early, you mark it complete and see you have thirty minutes until your next commitment. If it runs long, you see tasks stacking up afterward and can quickly drag “Email processing” from 11:30am to 1pm to give yourself space.

Afternoon context switching: You add six small tasks after lunch: “1pm Call client,” “1:30pm Review document,” “2pm Update spreadsheet,” “2:30pm Email response,” “3pm Team check-in,” “3:30pm File expenses.” The timeline shows these stacked. You work through them in order. When the document review takes forty minutes instead of thirty, you see “Update spreadsheet” has shifted to 2:10pm. You either accept the delay or decide to skip the spreadsheet update today.

Evening side project: You add “7pm: Work on side project” to your timeline. When 7pm arrives, Structured shows this as your current task. You work on it until you’re done, then mark it complete. There’s no pressure to estimate duration accurately or schedule follow-up tasks—you worked on it today, and tomorrow you can add it again if it needs more time. The lack of project tracking is liberating for exploratory side work.

Pro tips:

Use Structured’s “subtask” feature sparingly for tasks that have clear steps, but avoid building complex task trees—the tool’s value is simplicity, and deeply nested subtasks undermine this
Set up Structured’s “inbox” as a capture point during the day for tasks that arise unexpectedly, then schedule them into timeline slots during brief replanning moments
Enable time notifications to get gentle reminders when tasks are scheduled, but don’t treat these as rigid deadlines—they’re suggestions for flow, not commitments

Common pitfalls: Trying to make Structured into a full project management system. People add complex subtasks, try to build recurring task workflows, or attempt to plan multiple days ahead. This fights the tool’s design philosophy. Structured works best for people who can let go of complex planning and just focus on today’s execution.

The second pitfall is the iOS-only limitation combined with lack of long-term task management. If you capture a task that can’t happen today, where does it live until it can be scheduled? Structured’s inbox holds it temporarily, but it’s not designed for long-term task storage. You need a separate capture system (Notes, Todoist, whatever) and only move tasks to Structured when they’re ready to be scheduled today.

Real limitation: No desktop access and no collaboration features make Structured purely personal. If you need to share schedules with a team or access your plan from a computer, Structured doesn’t work. The daily reset can be feature or bug depending on your work style—it prevents carrying over stale tasks, but also means you can’t plan ahead more than a day or two. For people with predictable weekly rhythms, this daily granularity can feel limiting.

Free Alternatives Worth Trying

Google Calendar + Google Tasks

Google Calendar combined with Google Tasks provides basic time-blocking capability without any subscription cost. Create tasks in Google Tasks (built into Gmail and Calendar), then drag them from the task panel onto your calendar to block time. This creates calendar events linked to tasks, so checking off the task removes the calendar block.

The limitation is purely manual—nothing auto-schedules, nothing adapts when things change, and the interface isn’t optimized for time-blocking workflows. But for someone wanting to try time-blocking without commitment, or someone with a stable schedule where manual planning works fine, this covers the basics. It’s particularly viable if you’re already deep in Google’s ecosystem and just need calendar-task integration rather than sophisticated scheduling features. The mobile experience is clunky compared to dedicated apps, but functional.

What breaks down: rapid replanning when meetings shift, realistic duration estimation, protecting focus time from meeting invitations, and any workflow that requires seeing weekly patterns rather than daily lists. If your days are predictable and you don’t mind manual maintenance, this is a solid free option. If your days are chaotic or you’re prone to overcommitting, the lack of visual feedback about overload will undermine you.

Microsoft To Do + Outlook Calendar

Microsoft’s offering works similarly to Google’s: create tasks in To Do, view calendar in Outlook, manually time-block by creating calendar events for tasks. If you’re in a Microsoft 365 environment for work, this is already available and integrates with Teams, OneNote, and other Microsoft tools.

The workflow is slightly more fragmented than Google’s version—To Do and Outlook aren’t as tightly integrated, so moving tasks to calendar requires more manual steps. But the “My Day” feature in To Do provides a daily planning ritual similar to what Sunsama offers in paid form: review all tasks, select what matters today, work from that focused list. You can then manually block time in Outlook for your “My Day” tasks.

The advantage over Google is better desktop integration for Windows users and better handling of shared calendars in team environments. The disadvantage is the mobile experience is even clunkier, and the manual coordination between To Do and Outlook calendar requires more discipline. This works best for people who live in Outlook anyway and just need task-calendar connection, not sophisticated time-blocking features.

Notion Calendar (formerly Cron)

Notion’s calendar app provides a fast, keyboard-driven interface for calendar management with basic time-blocking support. You can create “working sessions” directly on your calendar, color-code different types of work, and see multiple calendars overlaid. It’s free with any Notion account (including free tier).

The strength is the interface speed—keyboard shortcuts make creating and moving blocks very fast. The weakness is it’s still primarily a calendar viewer rather than a scheduling system. You can block time for tasks, but those tasks live in Notion databases, not in the calendar itself. The connection between Notion task databases and calendar blocks is manual, requiring you to create calendar events that reference Notion pages.

This works well for people already using Notion for task/project management who want a better calendar interface than Google or Microsoft provide. It doesn’t work as a standalone time-blocking solution because you still need Notion databases for task management. Think of it as a better calendar UI that can integrate with Notion-based workflows, not as a complete time-blocking system.

How to Combine Tools for Maximum Effect

Setup 1: The Deep Work Stack

Tools: Reclaim + Sunsama Best for: Knowledge workers with meeting-heavy schedules who want to protect focus time while maintaining daily planning rituals

How to use: Reclaim defends large blocks of focus time on your calendar, preventing meetings from consuming all available hours. Sunsama provides the daily ritual for deciding what specific work happens during those protected blocks. The combination means you have guaranteed focus time (from Reclaim) that you fill intentionally with high-value work (from Sunsama).

Morning workflow: Reclaim has already blocked 9-11am for deep focus. During Sunsama’s planning ritual, you review what you’ll work on during that block—import tasks from various sources, prioritize, and drag “Write client proposal” into the 9-11am slot that Reclaim protected. Reclaim prevents meetings from stealing your time; Sunsama ensures you use that time well rather than defaulting to email.

The tools don’t officially integrate, but they work together because Reclaim operates at the calendar layer (protecting time) while Sunsama operates at the task layer (planning work). You see Reclaim’s protected blocks in Sunsama, and schedule tasks into them. If a meeting forces Reclaim to move a focus block, you see the change in Sunsama and adjust which tasks fit the new time.

Cost is $12/month for Reclaim (if using paid features like task auto-scheduling) plus $20/month for Sunsama, total $32/month. This is competitive with Motion at $34/month, but gives you more control—Motion makes scheduling decisions for you, while this combination lets you make decisions within time that’s protected for you.

Setup 2: The ADHD-Friendly Setup

Tools: Structured + Reclaim (free tier) Best for: People with ADHD or attention regulation challenges who need external structure without complex configuration

How to use: Reclaim’s free tier automatically defends breaks and focus time habits on your calendar, creating structure even if you forget to plan. Structured provides the daily execution layer—a simple timeline showing what’s now and what’s next, preventing the “I have free time but no idea what to do with it” paralysis.

Morning workflow: Reclaim has automatically scheduled a “Morning focus: 2 hours” block at 9am and a “Lunch break: 1 hour” at noon. Open Structured, see these blocks imported from your calendar, and add 2-3 specific tasks between them: “9am: Start project report,” “10:30am: Review email,” “12pm: Lunch.” The timeline shows clear progression. Work on whatever’s current, advance to what’s next when complete.

The combination provides external structure (from Reclaim’s automatic scheduling) without requiring complex planning (which can be a barrier for ADHD). Structured’s timeline makes “what should I be doing right now” always obvious. If you get distracted or take longer than planned, Structured’s timeline shows the delay immediately, prompting course correction rather than the time blindness that often accompanies ADHD.

Cost is $0/month (Reclaim free tier) plus $10/year for Structured Pro (optional—free tier works). This is the most affordable setup and still provides meaningful structure. The limitation is iOS-only for Structured, but the simplicity often outweighs the platform constraint for people who primarily work from one device.

Setup 3: The Budget Setup

Tools: Google Calendar + Google Tasks + Reclaim (free tier) Best for: Students, early-career professionals, or anyone wanting time-blocking benefits without monthly subscriptions

How to use: Reclaim’s free tier automatically blocks focus time and breaks. Google Calendar + Tasks provides manual task-to-calendar scheduling for work that falls outside Reclaim’s automatic blocks. The combination is entirely free and covers both automatic protection (Reclaim) and manual scheduling (Google) for different types of work.

Weekly workflow: Define core habits in Reclaim: “Study time: 3 hours Mon/Wed/Fri,” “Exercise: 1 hour daily,” “Meal prep: 2 hours Sunday.” Reclaim automatically schedules these and defends them from calendar conflicts. For one-off tasks or project work, use Google Tasks and manually drag them to calendar slots that Reclaim left available.

This setup requires more manual work than paid tools—you’re doing what Motion or Sunsama would automate—but if time is more available than money, it’s viable. The workflow is: let Reclaim handle recurring structure, use Google for one-off scheduling. When Reclaim shows you have four free hours on Tuesday afternoon, open Google Tasks, pick what’s most important, and block time for it.

Cost is $0/month. The limitation is lack of automation for task scheduling (you do manually what Motion does automatically) and basic mobile experience compared to dedicated apps. But for someone building time-blocking habits before committing to paid tools, or someone with straightforward scheduling needs, this covers the essentials.

Situational Recommendations

Your Situation	Recommended Tool	Why
Work from home, easily distracted	Reclaim + RescueTime	Auto-protects focus blocks, tracks whether you’re actually using protected time productively
ADHD or attention regulation	Structured	Minimal configuration, clear “what’s now” view, daily reset prevents accumulation of incomplete tasks
Student on budget	Google Calendar + Tasks + Reclaim free	Fully free, covers basic needs, Reclaim adds structure for study blocks
Freelancer with variable schedule	Motion	AI scheduling adapts to irregular client meetings, ensures you actually schedule billable work
Team lead managing focus time	Reclaim + Calendly	Protects your focus, auto-finds team 1:1 times, integrates with meeting scheduling
Remote team coordination	Motion (team plan)	Shared visibility into capacity, auto-scheduling respects team members’ focus blocks
Writer with creative process	Sunsama	Daily ritual fits creative workflow, manual control over when you write vs research vs edit
Consultant juggling clients	Timebloc	Visual week view shows client balance, easy to reorganize when client emergencies arise
Developer with deep work needs	Reclaim	Aggressively defends multi-hour focus blocks, integrates with project management tools
Executive with back-to-back meetings	Reclaim + Executive assistant	Reclaim protects critical focus time, assistant schedules around protected blocks

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I use these across multiple devices?

Motion, Sunsama, and Reclaim all work across web, iOS, and Android, with full sync. Changes on one device appear immediately on others. Motion’s mobile apps are functional but clearly designed mobile-second—the web interface is where you do serious planning. Sunsama’s mobile app is better but still encourages planning on desktop and execution on mobile.

Timebloc and Structured are iOS-only with no web or Android versions. Both offer web access through their PWA (progressive web app) features, meaning you can view your schedule in a browser, but the experience is limited—you can check what’s scheduled but serious planning requires the iOS app. This makes them viable for Mac users who occasionally need to check their schedule on desktop, but not for Android users or people who do most work on Windows.

All tools sync with your calendar provider (Google Calendar, Outlook, iCloud), so your actual meetings are visible everywhere regardless of tool. The question is whether the tool’s task management and time-blocking features work across platforms. If you work across devices or platforms frequently, stick with Motion, Sunsama, or Reclaim.

Q: What happens if I need to access a blocked site for work?

This question usually comes up when people confuse time-blocking apps with website blockers. Time-blocking apps don’t block websites—they block calendar time. Motion, Sunsama, Reclaim, Timebloc, and Structured all schedule work and protect time on your calendar, but none of them prevent you from opening any websites or apps.

If you want to combine time-blocking with website blocking, you’d pair these tools with actual blockers like Freedom, Cold Turkey, or SelfControl. The time-blocking app tells you when to do focus work; the website blocker enforces that you’re not distracted during it. They solve different problems and can be used together.

Some tools like Motion do integrate with focus apps (e.g., automatically enabling Do Not Disturb during focus blocks), but that’s about notifications, not website access. If you’re looking for forced distraction blocking, you need a dedicated blocker app alongside your time-blocking system.

Q: Are these compatible with project management tools?

Motion integrates directly with common project management tools but maintains its own task database—you can sync from Asana, Jira, or Linear, and Motion will auto-schedule those tasks, but changes flow one direction (from project tool to Motion). Motion becomes your scheduling layer on top of your project management.

Sunsama takes a different approach: it pulls tasks from multiple sources (Asana, Trello, Jira, ClickUp, GitHub, Gmail) during the daily planning ritual, but you manually select what to work on today. Tasks stay in their original tools; Sunsama just creates links to them when you schedule time. Completed work in Sunsama can mark tasks complete in the source tool.

Reclaim integrates with task managers (Asana, ClickUp, Jira, Linear) to auto-schedule tasks during focus blocks it protects. You mark tasks with deadlines and priorities in your project tool, and Reclaim finds time for them between meetings. The integration is bidirectional—completing work in Reclaim marks tasks done in the source tool.

Timebloc and Structured don’t integrate with project management tools. They’re self-contained—you manually add tasks. For people using heavyweight project management (Asana, Jira, etc.), this means maintaining two systems: project details live in the project tool, daily execution lives in the time-blocker. Some people prefer this separation; others find it friction.

Q: How easy is it to cancel subscriptions?

All five tools make cancellation relatively straightforward—accessible through account settings, no need to email support or jump through hoops. Motion, Sunsama, and Reclaim all offer monthly and annual billing; if you cancel mid-period, you retain access until the period ends but won’t be charged again.

The psychological difficulty isn’t the mechanics of canceling—it’s that these tools become part of your daily workflow. Switching from Motion to Sunsama, for instance, means relearning muscle memory for how you plan your day. Your historical data about task duration (in Motion) doesn’t transfer. Your daily ritual (from Sunsama) needs rebuilding in a new tool.

The real lock-in is workflow lock-in, not technical lock-in. Motion users describe a period of disorientation when they stop using it, because they’ve become dependent on AI scheduling decisions. Sunsama users who cancel often return because other tools lack the ritual framework. If you’re trying a tool, assume a one-month test understates the switching cost—you need at least two months to build real workflow habits before you can meaningfully evaluate if the tool works for you.

Most tools offer free trials (Motion: 7 days, Sunsama: 14 days, Reclaim: free tier with upgrade option). Use trials to test the interface and basic workflow, but expect that the true value becomes clear only after you’ve integrated the tool into your daily practice for several weeks.

Q: Do these tools work offline?

Limited offline functionality varies by tool, but generally time-blocking apps require internet connection for full functionality. Motion and Sunsama both cache recent data for viewing offline, but any changes made offline sync when you reconnect—if you reorganize your day offline and someone books a meeting online, you’ll see conflicts when sync catches up.

Reclaim operates purely at the calendar layer, so offline usage means working from your device’s native calendar app (which does work offline) while Reclaim’s automatic scheduling pauses until you reconnect. Your manually scheduled time-blocks are visible offline; Reclaim’s automatic habit scheduling and adjustments require connection.

Timebloc and Structured as iOS apps have better offline support—you can view and edit your daily schedule offline, and changes sync when connection returns. But calendar import (seeing meetings from Google or Outlook) requires connection, so you’re working from outdated meeting data if offline for extended periods.

If you frequently work in low-connectivity environments (flights, remote locations), time-blocking apps are less useful than traditional task managers with strong offline support (Things, OmniFocus). Time-blocking’s value is dynamic adjustment to changing calendars, which requires live calendar data.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

“The blocker isn’t working / I found a workaround”

This usually stems from confusion between time-blocking apps and website blockers. Time-blocking tools (Motion, Sunsama, Reclaim, etc.) schedule your work time—they don’t prevent you from doing other things during that time. They tell you when to focus; they don’t force focus. If you want enforced blocking, you need a separate tool like Freedom, Cold Turkey, or Focus.

The psychological blocker is different from a technical blocker. Motion showing you “9-11am: Write report” is a social contract with yourself. Breaking it is possible—you just open Twitter—but you’re consciously choosing to break your own plan. For some people this social contract is enough. For others with attention regulation challenges, it’s not.

If you find yourself consistently ignoring time-blocked focus periods, the issue usually isn’t the time-blocking tool—it’s either the tasks you’re scheduling (maybe they’re unpleasant and you’re avoiding them) or your broader attention management (in which case you might benefit from combining time-blocking with website blockers, accountability partners, or working from focus-only locations like libraries).

“The gamification feels childish/annoying”

Structured uses visual rewards and completion animations that some users find motivating and others find patronizing. Motion and Sunsama are relatively game-free—they focus on productivity rituals rather than points and streaks. Reclaim has no gamification at all.

If Structured’s gamification bothers you but you like the timeline interface, you can disable most visual celebrations in settings. But if the fundamental “check off tasks to show progress” model feels childish, time-blocking might work better for you than task completion tracking. Consider Timebloc (visual scheduling without gamification) or Reclaim (pure calendar defense without task tracking).

The deeper question is whether you respond to extrinsic motivation (points, streaks, achievements) or intrinsic motivation (satisfaction from work itself). Task management tools lean toward extrinsic; time-blocking tools lean toward intrinsic. If you find yourself using a tool to chase completion dopamine rather than to actually accomplish meaningful work, you might be using the wrong tool type for your psychology.

“The ambient sound gives me a headache”

Some time-blocking apps (particularly those targeting focus/productivity) include ambient sound features—white noise, nature sounds, lo-fi music. Motion and Structured don’t have this. Sunsama includes optional background sounds. If sounds bother you, disable them in settings or simply don’t use that feature.

If you want ambient sound for focus but built-in options don’t work, use dedicated ambient sound apps (Brain.fm, Endel, mynoise.net) alongside your time-blocking tool. Better to have two specialized tools than one mediocre combination. Time-blocking apps that include everything (tasks + calendar + ambient sound + website blocking) often do each piece worse than dedicated tools.

“I keep uninstalling the app when it blocks me”

This is the classic problem with any productivity tool that creates friction: when you want to avoid work, removing the tool is easier than doing the work. Time-blocking apps can’t solve this—no app can. This is a discipline problem, not a tool problem.

What sometimes helps: recognize the pattern. If you consistently uninstall Motion when it schedules something unpleasant, the issue isn’t Motion’s scheduling algorithm—it’s that you have tasks in your system that you don’t actually want to do. Either delegate them, delete them, or consciously acknowledge you’re procrastinating and need accountability beyond an app.

Some people solve this by making tool removal harder: install on multiple devices so uninstalling requires more steps, share your schedule with an accountability partner who notices when you stop using the tool, or set up financial commitment through Beeminder or StickK that penalizes you for not following through on scheduled work. But these are scaffolding around the real issue: you need to address why you’re avoiding the work, not just make avoiding easier to avoid.

Who This Is (and Isn’t) For

Good fit if you:

Have multiple projects or clients competing for time and struggle to ensure each gets adequate attention
Experience calendar whiplash where meetings constantly displace planned focus work, leaving you working late to catch up
Find yourself chronically overcommitted because you can’t visualize how much time tasks actually require until it’s too late
Work remotely or asynchronously and need to defend focus time against the constant pull of Slack/email/meetings

Skip it if:

Your work is primarily reactive (customer support, emergency response) where time-blocking breaks down because you can’t predict what each hour requires
You have very few meetings and already have long uninterrupted blocks—you don’t need tool assistance to protect what you already have
Your creative process requires following energy and interest rather than predetermined schedules—time-blocking can feel constraining rather than enabling for highly intuitive work
You work in an environment where other people schedule your time (many junior roles, highly managed teams) and you have little autonomy over your calendar anyway

By role/situation:

Remote knowledge workers: Motion or Reclaim provide the most value here. Your calendar is visible to remote colleagues who can book meetings into any white space, and your work requires extended focus blocks. Motion auto-schedules tasks around meeting chaos; Reclaim defends focus time from meeting creep. The cost ($34/month or $12/month) is justified by reclaiming even a few hours of productive work weekly.

Students: Budget solutions (Google Calendar + Reclaim free tier) or Structured work best. Student schedules are irregular but somewhat predictable (class times are fixed, study time is flexible). Structured’s simple timeline helps maintain daily structure without complexity. Reclaim’s free tier can protect study blocks from social commitments. Paid tools are generally overkill unless you’re juggling multiple part-time jobs and heavy course load simultaneously.

Freelancers: Timebloc or Motion, depending on budget and preference for control. Freelancers need to visually see client time balance across the week (Timebloc excels here) or auto-schedule project work around irregular client meetings (Motion’s strength). Sunsama can work but the daily ritual adds overhead that some freelancers find valuable (enforced planning) and others find inefficient (just bill hours, don’t journal about it).

People with ADHD: Structured or Sunsama, for different reasons. Structured provides external structure with minimal configuration—the timeline shows what’s now and what’s next, reducing decision paralysis. Sunsama’s ritual creates consistent daily structure that compensates for executive function challenges. Avoid Motion, which requires sustained interaction with configuration and might create more cognitive overhead than it solves.

Team leads: Reclaim, possibly paired with Calendly or Motion’s team features. You need to protect your focus time while remaining available for team 1:1s and urgent issues. Reclaim can auto-schedule recurring 1:1s while defending your focus blocks. Motion’s team features provide visibility into your team’s capacity. Sunsama is too individually focused for coordinating team schedules.

The Takeaway

Time-blocking apps solve one specific problem: the gap between “I want to do focused work” and “my calendar constantly prevents focused work from happening.” They don’t create discipline, can’t eliminate meetings, and won’t fix procrastination. What they can do is reduce the friction of maintaining time-blocked schedules in the face of changing calendars, competing priorities, and realistic limitations on your own planning ability.

Motion makes sense if you’re drowning in calendar chaos and willing to trust AI to reorganize your life. Sunsama makes sense if you value intentional daily planning rituals and want tools that support reflection, not just execution. Reclaim makes sense if your main problem is meetings colonizing all available time. Timebloc makes sense if you think visually and want manual control with better interface than basic calendars. Structured makes sense if you want dead-simple daily execution without configuration overhead.

Start by trying Reclaim’s free tier for two weeks—it requires minimal setup and works alongside your existing calendar/task system. If auto-protected focus time proves valuable but you want more task management, try Motion’s 7-day trial. If you like manual planning rituals, try Sunsama’s 14-day trial. Don’t commit to annual billing until you’ve used a tool through at least one chaotic week—only then can you evaluate whether its approach to handling disruption matches your work reality.