The Best Time Blocking Apps for 2024
Time blocking is one of the simplest and most efficient time management techniques that revolutionize the way how you approach and complete tasks.
As a big fan of the time-blocking method, I use time-blocking apps to schedule all the tasks, reduce context switching, and immerse myself in deep work.
Want to get a couple of recommendations of best time blocking apps? Here is a list of my favorite ones.
Get a time-tracking cube that sits on your desk or use the app without the Tracker
What is time blocking?
Time-blocking is a time management technique where you break your day into clearly defined time blocks dedicated to specific tasks or activities. The time blocks make up a structured, concrete work schedule of your day and help you to:
- Stay focused
- Practice deep work
- Organize tasks according to their priority
- Manage tasks with ease
- Group and handle shallow tasks within one time block
- Meet deadlines without stress
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What is a time-blocking app?
Time-blocking apps help you plan and manage time effectively using the time blocking technique. The primary purpose of a time-blocking app is to assist you in creating a time-blocked schedule. You can create time blocks by dividing your day into specific slots and assigning tasks, activities, and events to each block.
These apps also help schedule tasks effectively, often integrating with calendar apps and to-do apps like Todoist to personalize and optimize time blocks.
Usually, a time-blocking app provides features like:
- Time tracking – to track the time of individual time blocks
- A calendar view, including a daily view, a weekly view, and a monthly view
- An overview of all your tasks
- Colorful time blocks
- Tags and notes – to tag important tasks and add notes
- Integrations with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and more to automatically schedule time for calendar events
The best time-blocking apps
1. Timeular: Time blocking & time tracking
Timeular is an extremely user-friendly time tracking tool that also works as time blocking software. This allows you to combine efficient time blocking with time tracking and easily track the time it takes for tasks.
In Timeular, you can schedule tasks by adding colorful time blocks in the calendar view and labeling them with personalized notes and tags. When working within a team, you can share those notes and tags with other team members to streamline task management.
Note: Scheduling time blocks might be challenging if you don’t know how much time specific tasks take. With Timeular, you can easily estimate the time needed to complete tasks and cross them from your to-do list.
Pricing:
- Pricing starts at 6.30€ per month when billed annually or 8€ if billed monthly.
Why Timeular is the best time-blocking app:
- It’s effortless and intuitive to use thanks to the calendar view, notes, tags, drag-and-drop option, and automated time tracking.
- It seamlessly integrates with 3,000 apps and all calendars to automatically save scheduled events.
- It provides multiple time-tracking methods that help you and your team track time without effort.
- It’s a popular team time tracker, which means that teams can track the time of multiple projects together.
- Timeular automatically provides transparent and accurate reports. As one of the top productivity tools, it creates personalized productivity reports.
- It’s a billable hours tracker that assists in tracking billable vs. non-billable hours. With Timeular, you can mark an activity as billable or non-billable and track
- It’s a top-rated Mac time tracker that also works in Android and Linux.
- It’s one of the best AI tools that helps you increase your efficiency and productivity.
Easily block your time with Timeular and improve your time efficiency
Track your time effortless – with or without a physical Tracker
2. Google Calendar
Google Calendar is widely used as a time management and scheduling app, making it a popular calendar app that helps to organize your days. It helps to allocate time for tasks and events and optimize schedules using effective time-blocking techniques.
It stands out for its user-friendly interface, cross-platform accessibility, and synchronization with various devices.
It’s important to note that it primarily focuses on scheduling rather than other activities. You can choose between different views, such as daily, weekly, or monthly, to tailor their experience and better visualize their schedules, as well as attribute different colors to different activities, meetings, or tasks.
Google Calendar is one of the best time-blocking apps because it supports creating events with specific start and end times, which is perfect for implementing time-blocking strategies.
Pricing
Regarding pricing, Google Calendar is a part of Google Workspace that can be used for free in the basic plan, with paid professional plans starting at around 6$ per user per month.
- TIP: Find out the best Google Calendar time tracking integration.
3. Trello
A top Android productivity app, Trello remains a productivity powerhouse due to its intuitive project management capabilities. That’s why it is considered one of the best team productivity apps.
The heart of Trello’s work is a Kanban board-based framework. This system enables the assembly of custom boards, lists, and cards, translating into a personalized task hierarchy that can be effortlessly established, relocated, and prioritized with the intuitive drag-and-drop functionality.
- Read also: What is a Kanban board?
The system, while flexible, is more task-oriented, which could be a drawback for those who require other routes of time organization. Trello can also function as a task manager, allowing you to combine time blocking and task batching to create a streamlined system for organizing and managing different categories of tasks.
Trello integrates with various tools, enabling you to connect their time-blocking system with calendars, project management platforms, and other apps, enhancing overall workflow efficiency.
Its mobile app ensures that everything is accessible wherever you are, allowing you to modify tasks, view schedules, and track progress on the go.
Trello’s plans go from completely free to 5$ per user per month for a standard plan, to 10$ per user per month for a premium plan, and 17.50$ per user per month for the enterprise option.
- How to improve time blocking with Trello time tracking
4. Calendly
Calendly is one of the best scheduling apps designed to simplify setting up meetings and appointments. It offers an intuitive platform that allows you to share their availability and allows others to book time slots without needing back-and-forth communication.
It stands out for its user-friendly interface and seamless integration with various calendars and platforms. Its primary focus is on efficient scheduling, making it an excellent tool for time-blocking.
Calendly can also be used for calendar blocking to optimize scheduling, allowing you to manage their time more effectively.
Calendly eliminates manual scheduling by letting others choose from your available time slots, saving you time and reducing the constant exchange of e-mails or messages needed to set a time.
This is one of the greatest time-blocking tools because it also sends automatic reminders to all parties involved, reducing the likelihood of missed appointments and ensuring better time management.
You can set specific time blocks when available, aligning perfectly with time-blocking strategies for focused work. However, Calendly users might have limited control over the specific order or arrangement of appointments.
The platform offers a free plan with basic features. The paid plans start at 8$ per seat per month.
Interesting: Did you know that Calendly is one of the most used scheduling apps for small businesses?
5. Todoist
Widely used as an app for focus and concentration, Todoist is an excellent blend of user-friendly design and robust functionalities, culminating in an adept tool for refining workflows, fostering collaboration, and tracking commitments and task lists.
It helps you when it comes to optimizing time management through time blocking. Todoist’s interface features boards and task boxes, that can be organized and prioritized. This streamlined approach simplifies adding, updating, and marking tasks as completed, allowing you to tackle their to-do list swiftly.
Todoist also helps reduce context switching by allowing you to batch similar tasks together.
It’s a dynamic tool, with a user-centric design that promotes collaboration, allowing you to share projects and tasks with colleagues and team members seamlessly. It’s one of the best time-blocking apps because it integrates with several calendar and project management apps.
Pricing:
A free Todoist plan allows for maintaining 5 active projects. For more and to integrate more collaborators and tools, prices start at 4€ per month, when billed annually.
- Read also: Todoist time tracking
6. Notion
Notion is one of the best iOS productivity apps and a top-notch Windows productivity tool
In sum, Notion is an all-in-one workspace app designed to empower you to create, manage, and collaborate on diverse projects and tasks.
It’s a versatile platform that can offer a specialized focus on time blocking, enabling you to optimize their time management strategies.
Notion caters to the needs of time blockers, providing them with a dedicated space to structure their schedules. They can craft an array of essential elements – from text documents and tables to task lists and calendars.
You can effortlessly rearrange, resize, and personalize these blocks, turning their workspace into a dynamic being, tailored to their unique requirements. The possibilities for customization include a diverse range of templates, themes, and layout options.
Notion seamlessly integrates with calendars, cloud storage platforms, and project management tools, including Slack, Jira, Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Zapier. This integration with Google or Outlook Calendar allows for seamless scheduling and time management, enhancing productivity through time tracking.
Notion has an attractive free plan available, perfect for an individual worker or freelancer.
Pricing:
The Plus and Business programs, directed at groups of workers and companies, start at $8 and $15 per month, respectively.
- Read also: The guide for time tracking in Notion.
7. Asana
Asana is a powerful project management and collaboration platform that stands out as an excellent productivity tool. Beyond collaboration, Asana offers features that facilitate an effective time management method, such as time-blocking, enabling you to allocate specific blocks of time for tasks and create a structured approach to their schedules. It enables you to create, assign, and track tasks across projects, tailoring the workflows as needed.
Asana, also used as a workload management tool, integrates with calendar tools, allowing you to visualize tasks alongside their schedules.
Asana is an incredibly rich tool and this complexity may be too much for a more straightforward project. However, this tool misses an accurate time tracking system since its in-built features are very limited.
For individuals or teams just getting started with project management, there’s the option of the Basic plan. After that, the Premium plan starts at 10.99€ per user per month and the Business plan at 24.99€ with the same conditions.
Track time in Asana with the Timeular integration
Automatic time tracking in Asana is easier than you think!
8. Clockify
Clockify is a time-tracking app designed to help you monitor and manage their tasks, projects, and time allocation. With a focus on accurate time-tracking, it empowers individuals and teams to implement effective time-blocking strategies.
Clockify helps you track how you spend time on different tasks and projects.
It offers features that facilitate monitoring of time spent on tasks, making it a good tool for those who prioritize time management and time-blocking.
You can allocate specific time blocks for tasks, projects, or activities and generate reports and analytics to gain insights into their time allocation. However, it’s important to note that this tool requires some time to learn how to make the best use of its features.
Pricing for Clockify’s paid plans starts at 3.99$ (Basic) per user per month, including the basic administration features. There is the Standard (5.49$ per user per month), Pro (7.99$ per user per month), and Enterprise (11.99$ per user per month).
9. Week Plan
Week Plan is a productivity app designed to help individuals implement time-blocking strategies. It empowers you to plan, prioritize, and allocate time to tasks and goals, creating a structured approach to their days.
Week Plan excels in its specialized focus on time-blocking, transforming conventional task lists into a dynamic visual representation of time allocation.
The tool was designed with time-blocking at its core, allowing you to allocate time slots for tasks and visualize their entire week’s schedule. It also helps prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance, aligned with long-term goals.
Still, being a straightforward platform means that some advanced features available in more comprehensive project management tools might be missing in the Week Plan.
Week Plan is tailored for individuals who are enthusiastic about time-blocking and seek a dedicated platform to refine their time management skills. It offers a variety of package plans best suited for all your needs, with a monthly plan costing around 10$ and a yearly costing 104$.
- TIP: If you want to become a master in prioritization, read our post and find out the best task prioritization techniques.
10. Things
Things is a comprehensive task management app, exclusive to Apple devices, designed to help you stay organized, manage their to-do lists, and optimize their time through effective time-blocking strategies.
Things’ interface is simple and user friendly, but with powerful features tailored to enhance time management. The app synchronizes tasks and schedules across macOS, iOS, and iPadOS devices but it’s limited when it comes to integrating with more popular platforms.
Things offers a natural integration of time-blocking into its task management process, allowing you to allocate specific time slots for tasks and establish a structured schedule. Important to note that it’s a tool designed for individuals, not the best choice for teams. Things for Mac cost 49.99$, just once.
- Read about: Top productivity apps for Mac.
The benefits of time-blocking apps
Time-blocking apps are valuable tools that offer a range of benefits for individuals seeking to enhance their time management skills and overall productivity. These apps facilitate the allocation of dedicated time for specific tasks, ultimately leading to better focus and reduced distractions.
With just a few clicks, time-blocking apps allow you to create schedules that optimize their daily and weekly routines.
Improved productivity:
- Time-blocking apps enable you to assign dedicated time slots to particular tasks or activities.
- This focused approach reduces the likelihood of multitasking and distractions.
- By concentrating on one task at a time, your productivity receives a significant boost.
Read more about how to increase productivity.
Enhanced time organization:
- These apps provide a visual representation of your daily schedule.
- This visual overview helps you identify gaps, overloads, or inefficient use of time.
- It empowers you to make informed decisions about task prioritization.
Better work-life balance:
- Breaking your day into manageable time blocks makes your schedule appear more approachable.
- This approach helps reduce feelings of overwhelm and stress.
- You can easily adjust time blocks as needed to maintain a healthier work-life balance.
- Read more about work-life balance.
Time-blocking apps offer numerous advantages for effective time management. They enhance productivity by promoting focused work, help you visualize your schedule for improved organization, and contribute to a healthier work-life balance by making tasks feel more manageable. These tools empower you to take control of your time and make informed decisions about how to use it most efficiently.
- Achieve a better work-life balance with this free work schedule template.
How to choose the best time-blocking app
Choosing the best time-blocking app involves considering various factors to ensure the software aligns with your preferences, needs, and workflow. Here’s a guide to help you make an informed decision:
- Features and functionality: Look for apps that offer dedicated time-blocking features, such as the ability to create and manage time blocks, set priorities, and allocate tasks to specific blocks.
- Ease of use: Opt for an app with an intuitive interface and user-friendly design. It should be easy to create, adjust, and manage time blocks without a steep learning curve.
- Customization: Choose apps that allow you to customize time blocks, labels, categories, and visual elements according to your preferences and workflow.
- Notifications and reminders: An effective time-blocking app should offer reminders and notifications for upcoming time blocks and tasks. These alerts can help you stay on track throughout the day.
- Flexibility: The app you choose should accommodate changes to your schedule. Look for apps that allow you to easily move, edit, or delete time blocks as needed.
- Price: Price is always an important factor when choosing an app. You should buy a tool that suits your needs and budget.
Time blocking is more than a mere technique; it’s a mindset shift that empowers you to reclaim your time and prioritize what truly matters.
Each app presented in this article caters to diverse preferences and needs, and you have the power to curate your own personalized approach to time management.
Whether you opt for Timeular’s visual clarity, Asana’s collaborative prowess, Google Calendar’s seamless synchronization, or Things’ simplicity, your choice reflects your commitment to maximizing productivity and achieving balance.
Allocating time blocks for essential tasks, meetings, personal activities, and breaks helps you create rhythm in your day and balance your schedule.
Time blocking has many advantages, one of the most important being that it can relieve the overwhelm of a busy schedule.
FAQ
What is the best time-blocking app for Windows?
Timeular is considered one of the best time-blocking apps for Windows due to its versatile features, customizable workspace, and seamless integration capabilities. It empowers users and teams to effectively track time and manage their schedules in a clean and organized manner.
What is the top time-blocking app for Mac?
One of the best time-blocking apps for Mac is Timeular, a seamless time tracking app that offers time-blocking features to help users manage their schedules and tasks on Mac devices.
What is the greatest time-blocking app for iOS?
Timeular and Google Calendar are considered one of the best time blocking apps for iOS. They complement each other in offering robust scheduling and time management features, allowing users to allocate and track time for tasks, events, and appointments.
What is the top time-blocking app for Android?
Timeular and Google Calendar are considered one of the best time-blocking apps for iOS. Use a Timeular and Google Calendar integration to schedule and track the time of meetings and other planned activities.
What are the best time-blocking app for teams?
For teams, Timeular and Asana are often considered the greatest time-blocking tools. Integrate them together to automatically track the time of tasks scheduled in Asana.
What is the best time-blocking app for employees?
Timeular is considered an excellent time-blocking app for employees as it’s easy to use, helps to build a time tracking habit, and makes time tracking fun.
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