Do you Need an AI Calendar App? A Deep Dive!

You may have heard people mention “Motion” recently. If you are like me, my first response was, “do you mean Notion?”

Nope, there’s a new rising trend in the productivity space. AI-enabled “calendar optimization”.

At TheDigitalMerchant.com, we’ve started looking at some of these tools. I’ve personally tried them out.

It’s still early, but there’s two MAIN heavyweights already:

First up, we have Motion (UseMotion.com)

Motion was named the fastest growing product in 2022 by Amplitude and isn’t showing signs of slowing down.

What I like about Motion:

• Auto-scheduling features, Motion fills in the gaps and builds a schedule based on your standing to-do list.

• Automatically reschedules missed or undone work for the next best available time, given your initial input preferences (and based on AI learning over time).

• Guardrails for uninterrupted work, preventing those “busy” weeks where no big picture thinking or focused work gets done.

• Deadline enforcing, helping you meet critical deadlines by prioritizing your calendar (procrastination killer!).

• Integrated meeting scheduler, no need for Calendly and similar booking tools.

• Built-in project management, what get’s seen, get’s done, making the calendar dashboard the primary “dashboard”.

You can read my full review for the entire picture.

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Next, we’ve got the challenger, Reclaim.ai

What I like about Reclaim.ai:

• Completely free (free forever) tier for a single user account

• More focused on TEAMS specifically, with team analytics stats and synchronization

• Includes calendar scheduling links (no need for separate app)

• Integrates closely with Gsuite

• Paid plans offer integrations like Todoist, Asana, Jira, ClickUp, doesn’t try to encroach on the project management space like Motion

• Built-in Slack status sync

While Motion and Reclaim.ai are more squarely aimed at the business productivity crowd (they offer team calendar management, synchronization - although can also be used as just a personal app), there’s a few apps that are still developing their competitive edge, but are starting on the personal management side.

1. Sunsama.com: Sunsama is the most user friendly PERSONAL calendar management system, with guided daily planning, better unified calendar views, timeboxing, and daily goals. Sunsama stands out for me because it integrates widely, including with my Notion dashboards and systems.

2. Routine.co: Another Sunsama competitor that actually does have enterprise and business tiers, but the tooling and workflow is more of a personal view.

3. Structured.app: More of a simple personal calendar management optimizer, focused on aesthetic calendar design (great for visual, color-coded scheduling).

4. Akiflow.com: A fairly new entrant, backed by YCombinator so one to watch, currently personal around time blocking.

5. TickTick.com: More of a time management app, with pomodoro timers, productivity tracking, most popular in Asia right now but adoption is growing.

6. Todoist.com: Not a NEW app, but they are the original smart to-do list that offers a similar planner optimization approach (already as teams, enterprise support).

My Bottom Line: I’m personally excited about this new evolution of PERSONAL project and productivity management.

Both Motion (free signup here) and Reclaim.ai (free signup here) are the best in class that I’ve tried. It remains to be seen if the TEAM management features are as useful (every individual is different and conforming group behavior might not be as productive as it sounds). BUT as a business operator, this is one of those emerging martech categories that’s worth trying.

That’s it for this week, I’ll be back for more regular deep dives on product segments like this!