[ziggus]

I've seen a lot of these kinds of tools come and go, and this one looks as good if not better than most of the others. However, they're all missing out on a huge market: people in delegate or what's normally known as "Executive Assistant" roles, who are managing someone else's calendar and need a way to control what calendar items, invitations, responses, etc. their executives are seeing.

I have yet to see any tool that serves that market at all. If there was a tool that could help people in those kinds of roles, particularly if there was functionality to 'automatically' setup meetings a la Doodle (which is garbage), it would sell like hotcakes.

[onion2k]

they're all missing out on a huge market

That doesn't sound like a huge market. Very few people have an assistant these days. That sounds like a few tens of thousands of potential customers, although admittedly ones able to afford a high premium.

[openknot]

I agree with the individual points of your comment, but speculate that the market could still be big enough to be profitable. This is mainly due to a popular HN thread about executive assistants from this November: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29336234

I don't think I would ever get an executive assistant, even if I were to someday be in a place to afford one. Hypothetically speaking, I get the idea that frugality can be a burden, and it sometimes makes sense to spend money to save time.

However, I personally value making the time and practicing the skill of prioritizing tasks for myself. I just generally like to be self-reliant when I have the option.

[CharlesW]

> That doesn't sound like a huge market.

"Huge" is NaN, so I did a Google and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says the TAM is half a million Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants in the United States alone.

[ziggus]

"Very few people have an assistant these days."

Uh, frankly, you don't know what you're talking about. Just because the people you work with don't, doesn't mean that your experience is universal.

Most execs or C-level employees are going to have at least one exec assistant, if not more.

[mattcrail]

That's an interesting space. Our current users tend to be working at earlier stage startups so we don't hear a lot about EAs but certainly for enterprise clients I could see how this would be a killer feature.

[ziggus]

It's a very common complaint amongst EAs; there's a LOT of time management tools, but they're all geared towards an individual managing their own time.

Imagine the work you have to do to manage a busy calendar, then multiply it by 10. Then add in responsibility for booking travel, managing events, managing multiple email accounts, etc. for a number of people, and you can start to imagine how amazing it would be to have better tools to do something like managing an exec's calendar.

I speak from (limited) experience: my wife is an EA and sometimes I show her tools like this and she always asks 'can it handle delegate roles?', and every time I have to concede that, no, they don't.

[azeirah]

As someone with ADHD who was never taught how to handle time.. I think something like this would be very valuable.

I don't need _better_ ways to timeblock my day, I need _any_ way to timeblock my days that actually works...

[unethical_ban]

Hm, just today I did something I don't normally do, which is timeblock my day! As in not just the meetings I have, but wrote down my plan for all the time in between.

Now, I haven't gotten to all of them and some things slipped. I have the luxury of that not being a huge issue. Still, it felt good knowing that whenever I thought to myself "I should be doing something" I already had one and only one thing on deck at a given time, literally.

[jbjbjbjb]

What do you mean by “works”? You could do it with pencil and a piece of paper.

[openknot]

A pen and paper is what I typically use, especially when stuck on a task. But to think about how to timeblock in a way that "works" (I interpret this means, "is effective at keeping one spent on worthwhile tasks), I think the behaviours matter more than the tool (paper/software/or otherwise).

The biggest habits to make time blocking work I see would be:

i) Checking the system (paper/software) regularly)

ii) Capturing all the to-dos, and making sure none are just floating in the mind

iii) Having clear reminders for deadlines and prompts to review tasks that aren't working in a while

When I use a time blocking system well, I'm good at getting lots of tasks done. The biggest obstacles are when a task takes a lot longer than anticipated due to complexity; if I fall behind and don't check the manager; or if I schedule some tasks for someday/far-in-the-future, then forget to review them regularly.

So in short, I think most systems work (with cloud sync and organizational features for software systems as an added luxury), but the biggest obstacle to effectiveness is not checking it enough, often caused by feeling overwhelmed with tasks. Solutions to this include: committing to less, taking breaks, and staying healthy with exercise & sleep for the basics.

[jbjbjbjb]

I see that in the GTD approach with the emphasis it has on the weekly review and trusting the inbox. But I don’t think there are any easy solutions for that, you just have to dedicate the time.