DayDesigner gives your day a shape — block your time the way a school timetable does, and take in your whole day at a glance. It works alongside your to-do list and timer, not above them and not instead of them.
* Sleep needs differ from person to person — 16 hours is just the example here. You set your own blocks.
Why it exists
I built this for myself. A few years ago I had one make-or-break goal and a hard deadline — six months to pass the language exam that decided whether I'd get into university. Nothing on my calendar held me in place: just a pile of unstructured free hours I could either waste or aim at the one thing that mattered. So every morning I drew the day as a circle on paper, blocked what was fixed — sleep, meals, the few set commitments — and deliberately gave the free hours to the goal. I passed. DayDesigner is that circle, made into a tool.
— The maker
The method
Everyone gets the same 24 hours — fixed, and identical for all of us. The only thing you choose is how to spend them. A school timetable makes a week legible by showing it whole — what's taken, what's free, how much room is really left. But an open grid always has space for one more row, so it lets you pretend the day can stretch. A closed circle can't: 24 hours, no more. That's the honest shape a single day gets here:
Twenty-four hours as one closed ring — not an endless list that scrolls. The day can't grow, so every hour you give away is one you can see is gone. The shape makes you count honestly.
Sleep, meals, commute, the meetings you can't move — lay them down like rows on a timetable. As the circle fills with what's already non-negotiable, you see exactly how little is really left — and what you might cut to win time back.
The gaps that remain are your real capacity — labelled, in hours. That's the time you actually get for the goal.
Put the study, the training, the deep work into the free hours you can see — and protect them. Keep your list and your timer; use them inside the blocks.
DayDesigner doesn't replace your to-do list or your Pomodoro timer — it sits alongside them,
giving you the one thing they can't: your whole day grasped in a single glance.
Two things it gives you: simplicity, and focus. The shape of the day,
nothing else to manage.
The circle closes when the day is full — no silent over-scheduling. Fixed blocks repeat,
so the daily redraw takes seconds, not minutes. Your whole week's real capacity is one
tap away.
One-time purchase. Yours forever, on your Mac, offline.
Get DayDesigner for Mac — €12 →Not ready? Get an email when there's an update:
€12 · one-time · yours forever · runs offline · Mac (Apple Silicon or Intel) · macOS 10.13+