You may not realize it but you could be wasting the most productive hours of each day on trivial tasks that don't take advantage of your human capabilities first thing each morning.
So of course there's an app for that.
It's one of the newest apps for the iPhone and it's called Timeful. It features the traditional time management tools, such as a calendar and to-do list. But it also reveals your progress on tasks and illuminates just how you're spending those hours at work, at home and at play.
Its tagline at the App Store is short and concise: "Timeful is the first Intelligent Time Assistant that gets things scheduled so you'll get them done," states the app description.
The app can also figure out how much time you'll need to get specific to-do list items done and even recommend what time of day to do such tasks based on first determining if you're more productive in the morning, afternoon or evening.
"Time is by far the most precious resource we have and by far the most poorly managed. One reason is time is extremely abstract -- we don't have a money bill that we look at, for time. And also, it's inherently complex," said one of three co-founders, Yoav Shoham, a Stanford computer science professor.
"We were dragged into creating a calendar and to-do app kicking and screaming," says Shoham. "The last thing the world needs is another calendar app. What you really need is help managing your time. We are getting people to do what's in their self-interest with slight nudges."
Timeful, which is free at this point in the iOS App store, uses algorithms tied to behavioral science data and helps you set up new tasks needing to be done and estimates how much time they should take so that you're eking out productivity to the max.
Early customer reviews are mixed at this point. One user noted that it crashed, but apparently sees the potential value.
"The app crashes during the third panel of the demo screen for me. Can't use it at all so far. Too bad, seems like a great app. Will keep it in hopes of seeing this issue be fixed. iPhone 5 iOS 7.1.2," writes the user.
Another noted that it seems like a potential app a government agency may like.
"NSA program?" asks the user.
The app has a 4+ rating which, as a rating site explains, "This is the rating for an application with no objectionable material. You can think of it like a G-rated movie."
