Plan your day with time-blocking and Auto-schedule
A to-do list tells you what to do. It rarely tells you when. That gap is where good intentions go to die: ten open tasks, four hours of actual free time, and no plan for how the two meet. Time-blocking closes the gap by giving each task a place on your day, not just a spot in a list. In Beck, time-blocking and one-tap Auto-schedule live on the Calendar timeline, and they're part of Beck Pro.
Start by giving a task a duration
Every task in Beck can carry an estimated duration — a ten-minute email reply, a ninety-minute deep-work session, whatever the work actually takes. Duration is the small piece that makes everything else work: it's what turns an abstract task into a block you can fit into a real day. Rough estimates are fine. The point isn't precision, it's making the size of your commitments visible.
Drop it onto the timeline
Open the Calendar view and drag a task onto the timeline. It becomes a sized block, as tall as its duration, sitting right next to the meetings and appointments already on your day. Now your intentions and your commitments live in one place instead of two. Move a block and the task's scheduled time moves with it — no editing fields, just dragging.
Let Auto-schedule fill the gaps
Placing every block by hand is pleasant on a quiet morning and tedious on a busy one. So when you'd rather not, tap Auto-schedule. Beck slots your unscheduled tasks into the open gaps around the events already on your calendar — working around your meetings, not on top of them. The plan it builds is one you could actually follow, because it respects the time that's already spoken for.
Why it changes the day
Time-blocking makes overcommitment impossible to ignore. If eight hours of tasks won't fit into a four-hour afternoon, you see it at 9am, not at 5pm when it's too late to do anything but feel behind. It also quietly removes a tax you pay all day: deciding what to do next. When the next block is already on the timeline, the decision is made, and you can spend the energy on the work instead.
A realistic way to use it
Capture tasks through the day as they occur to you. Then, the night before or first thing in the morning, give the important ones a duration, open Calendar, and Auto-schedule. Drag anything that feels wrong. Whatever doesn't fit is not a failure — it's useful information telling you to cut, defer, or hand something off. A plan that admits your day is finite is far more useful than a list that pretends it isn't.