The daily planner app test: five things it has to do

A list holds tasks. A day holds more than that: a time to be somewhere, a thought that isn’t a job yet, and one thing that matters more than the rest. Put them all on one list and the dentist sits between the phone bill and the tomatoes, with nothing to say which one counts.

A structured daily planner app gives each of those its own place. The focus has a box. The tasks have an order. The appointments have a schedule. The notes have a page. So the day can be read at a glance, instead of searched.

Here is the test. A daily planner app earns its place when it does all five:

• It holds one focus, where it is seen every time the planner opens.
• It keeps a short list, in priority order.
• It shows the fixed times.
• It leaves room for notes.
• It carries forward whatever didn’t get done.

The rest of this post takes them one at a time, using one morning’s planning from the film. There is more on how daily planning works in VoiceFirstPlanner on its own page.

The film opens on a line plenty of days could have written: “By ten o’clock the day had already decided what I was doing.”

So the day gets said first, before it starts. Six short sentences, each said once:

• “My focus today is the client proposal.”
• “Add review the proposal as an A priority.”
• “Add pay the phone bill as a B priority.”
• “Add water the tomatoes as a C priority.”
• “Dentist at 2 p.m.”
• “Note: ask Sam about Saturday.”

Each one is a tap and a sentence. After each, the planner shows what it heard and where it put it. That’s the day planned, in the time it took to say it.

The first sentence sets the day’s focus: the client proposal. It sits in the daily focus box at the top of the day, so it is in view every time the planner is opened.

One focus, not five. The rest of the day can move around it, and often will, but the one thing that matters most stays where it can’t be missed.

Three tasks went in, each with its letter: A for must, B for should, C for nice. The planner keeps them in one list, in letter order, so “review the proposal” sits at the top and “water the tomatoes” sits at the bottom. A task said with no letter lands as a C.

And if too many tasks end up marked A, the planner says so, in its own words: “When everything is the top priority, nothing is. Which one or two truly matter most? The rest can be B’s.”

“Dentist at 2 p.m.” goes straight onto the schedule, at two, from 2:00 to 3:00. Say the time, and it books. The appointments sit on the schedule in time order, so the shape of the day is there before the first task is started.

“Note: ask Sam about Saturday” doesn’t become a task. Starting with the word note keeps it as a note, saved to Notes in the words that were said. Not everything that turns up in a day is a job yet, and a planner that turns every thought into a task soon has a list nobody trusts.

This is the job paper never did. In the film, a call put off the day before, “call the insurance company”, is on today’s list without being written out again, marked “carried · day 1”. Put it off again and the tag counts on, so the planner keeps an honest record of how long it has waited.

When the call is made, it is ticked off, and the tag goes with it. Nothing falls off the end of the day.

VoiceFirstPlanner runs in the browser, so it is a daily planner online: the same day on a phone, an iPad or a computer, with nothing to install. It is a web app, not something downloaded from a store.

On an iPad held sideways, or on a computer, Planner view lays the day out as a two-page spread: the day on the left, and the notes and the hour-by-hour schedule on the right. Planner view is part of the free plan.

And the day can still be typed. Voice is the quick way in, and typing works too: a task can be typed in and ticked off, as in any planner.

VoiceFirstPlanner is free to start, with no card. The free plan is a working planner with limits, not a trial, and everything in the film is on it, with five tasks a day. Premium takes every limit off, at $3.99 a month billed annually at $47.88, or $7.99 month to month.