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"Timeful\u00A0has launched as an iOS app that\u00A0draws on academic research from Stanford and Duke to add artificial intelligence to your mobile calendar.\r\nThe startup is the creation of Stanford Computer Science professor Yoav Shoham, Duke Psychology and Behavioral Economics professor Dan Ariely, and Stanford PhD candidate Jacob Bank. After collaborating on a research project, the three decided to use their findings to build a product.\r\nThe app combines a to-do list with your calendar. As it learns your schedule, it can automatically prioritize and allocate\u00A0tasks in your free time. Timeful has created an \u201CIntention Genome\u201D that classifies the types of activities you have on your list. It then ranks them using a behavioral science-inspired algorithm.\r\n\r\n\u00A0 \u00A0\u00A0 \u00A0 \u00A0\r\n\u201CTimeful\u2019s job is to take things you said you want to do and find time to do it,\u201D Bank said in an interview.\r\nMore so than money, time is a limited resource, so the field of economics has plenty of advice to offer on how to manage it better. To that end, Timeful is designed to help you make less mistakes with your schedule.\r\nFor instance, Ariely has found that a lot of people spend their most productive time of the day doing wasteful activities, such as checking Facebook. Timeful lets you specify when you\u2019re most productive so that it can schedule high priority tasks then.\r\n\u201CTime is all about opportunity cost,\u201D Ariely said. \u201CEvery time you do something you\u2019re not doing something else. What is it you\u2019re giving up?\u201D\r\nOne nice feature in the app is the ability to have it schedule time for building good habits. You can add repeat activities, such as going to the gym, and have Timeful periodically add them to your schedule.\r\nWhile I can understand the temptation to achieve maximum efficiency, you may need to dial it back a bit to keep from cramming your day too much. You can specify how aggressive you want the automatic scheduler to be with your free time.\r\nPart of the rationale behind Timeful is to reduce the amount of decisions you have to make, as that\u2019s often that toughest part.\r\n\u201CWe want to create a system that takes a lot of this burden off of people,\u201D Ariely said.\r\nIn order to get the most out of Timeful, I\u2019d have to dramatically change the way I use my calendar. While I usually drop meetings into my work calendar and the occasional important personal event for my personal account, it\u2019s rare that I manually input my whole day into an app. If I leave blocks of time open on my schedule when I\u2019m actually busy, Timeful won\u2019t know when to set aside time for my to-do list. But, if you\u2019re someone who stays organized with a packed to-do list and calendar, Timeful could combine them in a powerful way.\r\nWhen I asked Shoham, Ariely and Bank how they managed to translate their\u00A0academic research into something more practical, the team noted that they don't just come strictly from the Ivory Tower. Shoham founded a couple of companies (TradingDynamics, which sold to Arriba, and Katango, which sold to Google) during his career as a professor. Ariely has served as an advisor to Intuit and Google, and Bank worked as an intern at Google and LinkedIn on the Gmail app and a data science team.\r\nTimeful clearly benefits from very smart people who put a lot of thought into how to help us make better scheduling choices. You\u2019ll have to decide on your own whether the app works for your routine, but I\u2019m guessing that giving it a try won\u2019t be a waste of your time.\r\n\u27A4\u00A0Timeful for iOS"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/07/31/timeful-iphone-uses-behavioral-science-make-calendar-list-smart/>