Timeful is a virtue

Part 1

I keep on trying calendar apps, like iOS Calendar, Cal, etc. But they are only calendars, cold, do what you tell them, that’s all.

This time when I try Timeful, it didn’t let me down. It sparks my interest with the thing I dreamed of, A.I.

In short, Timeful automatically arrange your day, especially when its in a mess.

People used to put everything interesting into their to-do list but don’t have time to execute them. The result is to do list through away.

To-do lists app are nothing but toys with beautiful UI, like Wunderlist, Clearly, and a bunch of their friends, or with way too complicated interface, like OmniFocus.

Admit or not, we use to-do list in a hope that they can help us to improve productivity. But most of the time, the user sank into the sea of to-dos and the App never been opened again.

Timeful’s way is

automate time management to overcome the computational complexity and the biases inherent in figuring out what is the right thing to do at any point — Timeful.com

It works till now. Except when the most urgent things happens, like meet friend or answer email from boss, those time I will not listen to the suggestion at all, Timeful arranges time efficiently when I was alone.

Part 2

The second day after used Timeful, I was delightful with the feeling of U.I. So I send Timeful an Email to congratulate and asked a question of Timeful suggestion.

The reply was not even a robot : ) but a real person named Jacob Bank.

Me:

Dear Timeful,

I really love suggestions.
What settings can I get most suggestions, except set its frequency to the highest.
(I only add to-dos to Personal list, by the way)

And, great job. This is the calendar I dreamed of. Wish Timeful smarter even more.

Wen.

Timeful:

Hi Wen,

Thanks for the kind words. The best way to improve suggestions is to use the app for todos and habits! We’ll learn from you over time. When something’s not right, make sure to correct it by dragging it to the correct time or rejecting it completely.

Also as a side note, our suggestions only work well for English text at the moment. We’ve had a few users get bad suggestions because they wrote todos in other languages and our algorithms couldn’t interpret them

Best,
Jacob

p.s. If you don’t mind sharing, we’d really appreciate a review and rating in the App Store.

I was grateful to their humility and replied them that Timeful feels like Samantha of the film Her, when I combine iOS dictation with Timeful suggestion.

And Jocob replied with humour.

Me:

Thanks.

Noticed that Timeful refuse to spell my Chinese input right.

Never mind, I’d rather see it polished well in one language then another.

It’s magic when combine dictation and Timeful suggestion together. Feels kind of Samantha of the film Her.

Timeful:

Thanks for the compliment! I promise we won’t run off and betray you like Samantha did to poor Joaquin Phoenix!

Best,
Jacob

Honestly, I didn’t expect a startup would reply to user in such a familiar way. We are always busy to reply to strangers email.

Wish Timeful goes further on the way of time arrangement automation.

Part 3

The first Timeful blog was posted at March 5, 2014 talked deeply about the philosophy of Timeful.

Reason:

‘how easy it is to manage time poorly, and how crucial it is to the quality of our lives to manage it well.’

‘how bad we all are at creating productive schedules and executing on them, and how ineffective, and sometimes damaging, the current tools are for this task.’

‘sank long and mindless hours’
‘checking off easy to-do’s, and are too drained to slay the dragons’

Reference:

Tom Gilovich’s research on what people regret in life

Albom’s book Tuesdays with Morrie

Way:

‘automate time management’

Timeful’s blog is not superficial daily log of the team and product update. It talks deeper. And with a Time Teasers section.

All these three parts are reasons Timeful delights me. Smart, humble, elegant.

There will be more and more products take advantage of big data, cloud and A.I. They will give us a world like film Her. Everybody can have a personal assistant, no matter her name is Samantha, Siri or Cortana.