Use case
Start the day by looking at it, not by remembering it
Most mornings start with your head, not a list: what's on today, what's overdue from yesterday, what you promised somebody by Friday. All of that lives in your memory until something forces it into view, usually the moment you've already missed one of them.
A morning pass over the day, not a mental one
Planning a day out of memory has a specific failure mode: you remember the things that are already loud in your head, and you miss the things that are quiet but overdue. Yesterday's task that didn't get done doesn't announce itself the next morning. It just sits there, one day later, no different from how it felt yesterday, until it's three days later and genuinely urgent.
A dashboard that buckets your day by when things are due changes what you notice first. Overdue at the top, not buried in a long undated list. Today, clearly separate from Tomorrow. Later This Week, so you can see what's coming without it crowding today's view.
None of this needs to take long. Five minutes with coffee, looking at five buckets instead of trying to hold the shape of the day in your head, is the actual habit this page is about.
You don't need to remember what's overdue if the app can just show you.
That's the whole argument for a morning pass over a mental one.
What the morning pass actually looks at
Three views of the same list, for three different questions.
Overdue, Today, Completed
Three counts at the top of the dashboard, so the size of the day is visible before you open anything.
Five day buckets
Overdue, Today, Tomorrow, Later This Week and Later, each with a live count that updates as you filter.
The priority view
Switch from the time view and the same reminders regroup into First, Then and Later, for the mornings where what matters isn't strictly about when.
Look at it in the morning, clear it during the day
The morning pass is for deciding what matters. Focus mode is for actually doing it. Once you know what's on today, Focus shows one reminder at a time from your filtered list — Enter to finish it, S to skip, Esc to stop — so the fifteen minutes you have between meetings turns into cleared items instead of a scroll through a long list deciding what to start.
It's keyboard-driven on purpose. The point of Focus is removing the friction of choosing the next thing, not adding another interface to navigate.
Between the morning pass and a Focus run later in the day, the day-bucket dashboard stops being something you check anxiously and becomes something you glance at and act on.
- One reminder at a time, keyboard-driven
- Enter to finish, S to skip, Esc to stop
- Counts what you cleared when the run ends
A five-minute morning routine
Do this with coffee, before the day's messages start arriving.
Check Overdue first
Not Today. Overdue, because that's what got skipped and needs deciding: do it now, reschedule it honestly, or drop it.
Scan Today and set the delivery on anything critical
Most reminders should already sit on a plain alarm. If today has a genuinely critical item, that's the moment to raise it, not after it's been missed once.
Glance at Later This Week
Not to act on it, just to notice what's coming, so nothing on Thursday is a surprise on Thursday.
Run Focus mode for fifteen minutes
Pick a point in the day, not necessarily the morning, and clear as many items from Today as you can in one keyboard-driven run.
Why bucketing beats a flat list
- Overdue is visible on its own, not mixed into a long undated pile
- Today and Tomorrow are separated, so tomorrow doesn't crowd today's decisions
- Later This Week gives visibility without demanding action yet
- The priority view exists for mornings when urgency matters more than the date
- Category filters recalculate every count live, so a filtered view stays honest
- Completed items move to History, which closes the loop on what actually happened
This routine lives on the web
The day-bucket dashboard, the priority view and Focus mode are web dashboard features, built for a morning at a desk with a keyboard. The reminders you set there still ring on your phone through the day; the planning pass itself is a web habit.
Questions about daily planning in Timelee
What are the five day buckets?
Overdue, Today, Tomorrow, Later This Week and Later, each with a live count. Filtering to a category recalculates all five.
Can I plan by priority instead of by date?
Yes. Switch to the priority view and the same list regroups into First, Then and Later.
What does Focus mode actually do?
It shows one reminder at a time from whatever list you're currently looking at. Enter marks it done, S skips it, Esc leaves, and it counts what you cleared.
Is the dashboard available on the phone apps too?
Android and iOS have their own list views. The day-bucket dashboard with the three top counts and Focus mode are on the web.
Start tomorrow with a five-minute pass instead of a mental list
Sign in with Google, check Overdue first, and run Focus mode for fifteen minutes once you know what today actually holds.