Here’s a confession: I don’t use a planner, diary or a calendar. Never have. My reasoning behind this startling stance is simple and long maintained; a calendar doesn’t prioritise. So, if you’ve got a number of things happening on the same day, or if you have one thing that suddenly takes precedence, your calendar isn’t going to work with you to readjust. You alone have to readjust. Electronic calendars are fiddly things, and to add or remove an item, let alone try and place one above the other or vice versa, just seems to me to be an exercise in frustration. Much better to train yourself to remember the important things, I thought. However, the whip smart developers at Slide Rule Software are out to change my mind with their newest creation Glass Planner, a sleek, fluid new way of getting sh*t done. And I may be converted yet.
Three years of development have resulted in a comprehensive calendar based system that strives to shadow your every move. Instead of the static calendars of yore, Glass is all about living in the moment. Essentially combining a traditional calendar and a to-do-list, the result is a hybrid electronic life planner, which contains all the information about your upcoming appointments in one dynamic place. I don’t much care for to-do-lists either, be they a handwritten post-it or a discarded MSWord document sitting accusingly at the bottom of your desktop. So I found the mission statement of Glass to be intriguing and more than a little clever; but does it actually deliver?
Yes, in a word. The masterstroke of Glass is that it actually functions like real life. Events and deadlines roll over, draw nearer, move innocently closer to the top of your list. It has three modes – Plan, Act and Done. Done is more than self-explanatory, and Plan as you may have guessed is where you enter your appointments and commitments – with one twist. You also set a time that you’d like the task in question to be completed by. While the developers themselves admit this may appear to be a little extra work, it more than pays off when you kick Glass into hyperdrive by pressing the Act button.
You’re suddenly presented with a list of tasks, ordered by priority. Not only that, Glass is smart enough to know which ones you can achieve in the short term, and which ones deserve a place on the back-burner. Suddenly, it’s your best friend. You’ll feel like a hero as you eliminate tasks at a rate of knots, and feel an easing in your gut as you strike off the most pressing ones. If you find yourself mired in a hectic lifestyle but don’t have the patience or application for calendars in their traditional form, this app is worth checking out. Or, if you simply want to streamline your life and look sleek while doing it, Glass is a more than worthy ally.
Make a pressing date with Glass Planner today at the App Store!
