Is today useful for people who already feel overwhelmed?

Especially so. The single-outcome model is explicitly designed for overwhelmed days: pick one thing, protect time for it, let everything else be secondary. That constraint is a relief, not an addition.

Does today support team or manager visibility into my day?

No. All planning data is private. today is a personal tool, not a work reporting system.

Is today suitable for part-time workers or non-standard schedules?

Yes. The daily model adapts to any schedule — you plan the days you work and skip the days you don't. The weekly rollup adjusts to show only days where planning activity was logged.

Does today help with work-life balance?

The shutdown ritual (friction log + reflection) is specifically designed to create a clear end to the workday. Many users report that having an explicit closing routine reduces after-hours work anxiety.

Productivity without the hustle: a mindful daily planning app

today is a mindful productivity app for knowledge workers who want to do their best work without burning out. Calm interface, intentional planning, honest reflection.

What mindful productivity actually means

Mindful productivity isn't productivity with meditation built in — it's productivity that treats your attention and energy as finite, non-renewable daily resources. It means planning with awareness of your actual capacity rather than an idealized version of it, naming friction honestly rather than pushing through it indefinitely, and measuring output quality rather than hours logged. today is built around these principles: the daily check-in surfaces energy and headspace before you plan, the reflection surfaces what actually happened rather than what you intended, and the single-outcome model forces prioritization over maximization.

Why calm design matters for a productivity tool

Most productivity apps are designed to keep you inside them — notifications, social features, streaks with visual rewards, dashboards that reward complexity. today was designed to get you out of it as quickly as possible. The interface is quiet by default: neutral colors, no pulsing indicators, no gamified reward animations. The absence of engagement mechanics is a feature, not a limitation. When your planning tool competes with the work itself for attention, productivity suffers. today's design aspiration is to be forgotten for most of the day and remembered only when you need to log a session or update a block.

Rest and recovery as productivity inputs

Mindful productivity acknowledges what hustle culture ignores: rest is a productivity input, not an indulgence. Your energy check-in data will show this directly — high-energy days almost always follow recovery. Low-energy days cluster after sleep-deficit or high-intensity stretches. today doesn't tell you to rest; it gives you data that makes the cost of not resting visible. When you see three consecutive low-energy days following a 60-hour week, you're not being lectured. You're reading your own numbers. That's the kind of mirror that leads to sustained behavior change rather than short-term resolve.

Building a sustainable daily practice

The daily planning habit, like any habit, requires a trigger, a routine, and a reward. In today, the trigger is starting your workday; the routine is a 5-minute planning session (energy check-in → outcome → blocks) plus a 2-minute evening close (friction log → reflection); the reward is the feeling of a day that had shape rather than just passing. Sustained daily planning — not perfect daily planning — is the goal. today tracks streaks for commitments, not for planning itself, which is a deliberate choice: the planning session should feel like a tool, not an obligation with social consequences.

Frequently asked questions