Skip to content
Tech News
← Back to articles

Show HN: OwnTime – a chess clock for your day's priorities

read original more articles
Why This Matters

OwnTime introduces a novel approach to managing daily priorities by using a chess clock-inspired system, allowing users to allocate and track time budgets for different tasks. Its integration with iPhone and Apple Watch ensures seamless, real-time focus management, helping users stay disciplined and aware of their time expenditure. This innovation addresses the need for more effective time management tools in an increasingly busy digital world, benefiting both consumers and the tech industry by promoting productivity and mindful device use.

Key Takeaways

A chess clock for your day.

Define a few priorities and give each a daily time budget. Only one clock runs at a time, so starting one pauses the rest. When a budget is spent, an alarm goes off. iPhone, Apple Watch, or both.

The budgets are not much more than a few mutually exclusive countdown timers. You start one when you begin working on something and stop it when you are done, or start the next one and let it pause the first. At midnight, everything resets. Each device works on its own. Phone and watch keep each other in sync when they are paired, and the watch is usually the quicker place to glance, start, and stop.

Start one and the rest pause. When a budget runs out, the alarm goes off. Sped up.

On your iPhone Your day at a glance Priorities & daily budgets Light or dark

On your Apple Watch The whole day in one ring One priority at a time The list Swipe to log or edit Set up on the watch

What makes it different

Phone and watch. OwnTime works on the iPhone alone, with alarms, a Live Activity, and widgets. The Apple Watch is the natural surface for anything to do with time, and works alone as well.

OwnTime works on the iPhone alone, with alarms, a Live Activity, and widgets. The Apple Watch is the natural surface for anything to do with time, and works alone as well. Budgets, not timesheets. Each priority gets a daily budget. What you neglect shows up as a budget that never drains.

Each priority gets a daily budget. What you neglect shows up as a budget that never drains. An alarm, not a notification. When a budget is spent, a real alarm goes off, through Focus and silent mode. That is the whole point: it kicks you out of what you are doing when its time is up. A notification is too easy to miss when you are absorbed in something.

... continue reading