Deep work in the morning, everything else written down
Priya is a backend engineer on a team of five. She writes code on a Mac all day, and standup is at 10. This is one of her weeks, and the six moments in it where HourLife does its work.
- A team of five
- Standup at 10
- On a Mac all day
Priya's week, Monday first. Each lit hour is a moment below.
Priya is an example, not a customer. The week is made up; everything HourLife does in it, the app does today.
The week without a system
Programming is not hard to plan because there is too much of it. It is hard because the work that matters needs long, unbroken hours, and the day is built to break them: standup, a review request, a question in chat, a build that fails at four.
The team's work lives in its issue tracker, and that part is fine. What had no home was her own side of it: the thought that arrives mid-debug, which hours are actually good for hard problems, and what she did all month when her lead asks.
A week with HourLife
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Hour 9 of 168 Monday 09:00
Fifty minutes before standup
Standup is at 10, so the hour before it is the only clean one on Monday. She taps the mode name at the top of Today, and under “Jump to” picks Deep Work.
Under “Current focus” she picks one task, the slow query on the orders endpoint, taps the session length to make it 50 minutes, and taps “Begin session”. The Focus timer runs on that task, and when she closes the day, Close day counts the minutes she focused.
Today in the guide Free
The switcher, with Today, Week and Month under “Your day” and Deep Work, Sprint, Rest and Capture under “Jump to”. -
5 hours later Monday 14:00
A thought caught mid-flow
Halfway through a stack trace she remembers that the staging certificate runs out next month. She types it into the Mac app's Command Bar and presses ⌘↩ instead of ↩, which sends it to her Brain inbox, and goes back to the trace.
It is not today's problem. Later she opens the capture and, under “WHAT IS THIS?”, picks “Snooze” and “Tomorrow”. It leaves the inbox and waits in “Snoozed” until Tuesday, when it comes back to be sorted.
Brain in the guide Free
The Snooze sheet, with Tomorrow, In 3 days, Next week and Next month, and a date picker under “Or pick a date”. -
26 hours later Tuesday 16:00
The month, as Markdown
Her one-to-one with her lead is at half past four, and the first question is always what she has been working on. In Calendar she opens “Export…”, picks Month, chooses the sources to include, and writes it as .md.
The live preview shows the exact text first. The file is plain Markdown, so it sits beside her other notes and opens in any editor, and the month is written down instead of rebuilt from memory in the meeting.
Export, with Day, Week or Month and the data sources to include. -
28 hours later Wednesday 20:00
When she is actually sharp
For three weeks she has scored her energy from 1 to 10 in the morning, afternoon and evening. Some of the scores come from Start day and Close day, which save theirs as energy logs, so she rarely opens the module to log.
Insights groups the entries by weekday and slot and names her two strongest windows, Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and her lowest, Friday afternoon. The database migration goes on Thursday morning, and Friday afternoon gets the code reviews.
Energy in the guide Premium
Insights with Sat AM as the peak and Thu PM as the lowest window, averages by weekday, and today’s recommendation. -
16 hours later Thursday 12:00
Chat stays closed until 11
Last Monday she started a 14-day experiment: keep team chat closed until 11 and see whether her mornings rate higher. Its one measure is a Quality rating of her morning focus, and each evening the “EXPERIMENTS” card in Evening mode asks for it, 1 to 5, in one tap.
At lunch on Thursday the list shows it under “RUNNING” with a few days left and her average so far. She writes the week's check-in, how it is going and whether to continue, modify or stop, and leaves the verdict for the end. The Data tab adds nothing of its own: “No interpretation — numbers only. Draw your own conclusions.”
Experiments in the guide Premium
Two experiments under “RUNNING”, each with its badge, days left, hypothesis and progress, and measure tiles reading Morning Energy 2.9 → 3.8 and Deep Sleep 0.8 → 1.1. -
29 hours later Friday 17:00
Shutdown, then the weekend
Her shutdown routine starts at 5:30 on weekdays. It sits on the “TODAY” line, and its card is due with “Begin”. It has three steps: a Todo to push the branch and note where she stopped, a Module step that opens Tasks to plan Monday, and a five-minute Timer to clear the desk.
The run goes one step at a time, and the timer starts on its own. The routine is set for Monday to Friday, so its streak counts only those days, and the weekend is not a miss.
The “TODAY” line with Morning Startup at 7:15am and Evening Shutdown at 8:30pm, and both cards due with “Begin”.
The screens show HourLife's own sample data, not Priya's.
Where Priya would start
Four modules, set up in the first week. The rest can wait until the week asks for them.
Common questions
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Is HourLife an issue tracker for my team?
No. HourLife is a personal planner, not an issue tracker or a team tool. Tickets, sprints and code review stay in the tools your team shares. HourLife holds your own side of the week: what you are focusing on, what you caught mid-flow, and how your days went.
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Which of these modules are free?
Today, Brain, Calendar and Routines are free. Energy and Experiments are part of HourLife Premium.
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Does it run on my Mac?
Yes. HourLife runs on iPhone and Mac, in English, and your data syncs between them through iCloud. The Mac app keeps every page in a sidebar, has a keyboard shortcut for everything, and its Command Bar finds any page, action or item by name. One Premium purchase unlocks both.
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Can I get my data out as Markdown?
Yes. Calendar's “Export…” writes a day, a week or a month as .txt, .md, .pdf or .json, from the sources you pick. The preview shows the exact text, and the PDF is typeset from it.
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Can I start a Focus session from a shortcut?
Yes. A link to hourlife://focus/start?minutes=45 starts a 45-minute Custom session, and Shortcuts can open it for any length from 1 to 99 minutes.
Your week, not Priya's
Every moment above is one module. Most people start with Today and one other, and add the next when the week asks for it.
HourLife runs on iPhone and Mac, and syncs between them through iCloud.
