This time blocking planner turns a to-do list into a day you can see. You give each piece of work a start time, an end time and a category, and the grid shows where your hours are going before the day begins. It is built for the time blocking method: decide in advance what each hour is for, then protect those hours.
What you can do with it
- Lay out a single day from 06:00 to 22:00 on a 30-minute or 15-minute grid.
- Sort blocks by type: deep work, shallow work, meetings, breaks and personal time each get their own color, so an overloaded afternoon is easy to spot.
- Catch double-booking: the planner refuses a block that overlaps another one and tells you which block is in the way.
- Print the day or save it as a PDF from the print dialog, for a paper copy next to the keyboard.
- Export to your calendar as an .ics file that Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and Outlook can import.
How to plan a day in five steps
- Pick the day and the grid. Set the date at the top. Keep the 30-minute grid unless you really schedule in quarter hours; a coarser grid is easier to stick to.
- Place the fixed points first. Add meetings and anything else you cannot move. These are the walls the rest of the day has to fit around.
- Put your most demanding work in the largest open gap. Use the “Deep work” category and give it a label that names the output, such as “Draft section 2 of the proposal”, not just “Project”.
- Batch the small stuff. Email, messages and quick admin go into one or two “Shallow work” blocks instead of being sprinkled through the day. The guide to task batching explains why grouping similar tasks makes switching less costly.
- Leave breaks on the grid. Lunch and a short pause in the afternoon are blocks too. A plan with no slack breaks the first time a call runs long.
Use the arrow buttons in “Your blocks” to nudge a block earlier or later by one grid step. Edit opens the block in the form above the grid, and Delete removes it. Everything saves automatically in your browser, so you can close the tab and come back to the same plan.
Example: a day with two deep work blocks
The “Load example day” button fills the grid with an illustrative schedule. It starts with a two-hour deep work block from 09:00, follows it with thirty minutes of email, keeps a full hour for lunch, fits a team meeting at 14:00 and ends with a second, shorter deep work block from 15:30 to 17:00. It is a starting point to edit, not a recommended routine. If your energy peaks later in the day, move the long block there; the deep work schedule templates show several other shapes a day can take.
Getting the plan into your calendar
“Download .ics” creates a calendar file with one event per block. In Google Calendar on a computer, open Settings, then Import & export, and import the file into the calendar you want. Apple Calendar and Outlook open .ics files directly. The events have no fixed time zone, so a 09:00 block lands at 09:00 in the time zone of the calendar you import it into. Re-importing can create duplicates or leave the old version in place, depending on the calendar app, so delete the old events before importing an edited plan.
When a blocked-out day is the wrong tool
Time blocking assumes you control a good share of your day. If most of your work arrives as interruptions, such as on-call support, reception duty or caring for young children at home, a fully blocked plan will be wrong by mid-morning. In that case block only one protected hour and treat the rest as open time. The planner also covers one day at a time; it is not a project manager and does not track tasks across weeks.
Your data stays on this device
Your blocks are stored in your browser’s local storage and are never sent to Deep Focus Daily or anyone else. That also means they do not sync between devices, and clearing this site’s data in your browser deletes the plan. Export the .ics file if you want a copy that lasts.