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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those things that only the GooglePlex bubble can come up with.

As a busy person (my wife and I both work, we have a child, and hard time constraints due to teaching obligations, etc.), free time is exactly what I want to schedule as little as possible. I want to spontaneously decide to do a hike with my family, or when my daughter wants to play, I want to be there. There's enough obligations already, free time should be spontaneous and available to family.

It is also a bit annoying that they focus on these features without solving real problems first. Someone already mentioned search, which is (ironically) indeed quite bad. Also, appointment suggestions based on e-mails has very low recall. I especially noticed this since I switched back to Mail.app, which picks up a lot more dates in e-mails.

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>This is one of those things that only the GooglePlex bubble can come up with.

Actually they acquired the company that came up with it.

The Timeful team has built an impressive system that helps you organize your life by understanding your schedule, habits and needs.

You can tell Timeful you want to exercise three times a week or that you need to call the bank by next Tuesday, and their system will make sure you get it done based on an understanding of both your schedule and your priorities.

https://gmail.googleblog.com/2015/05/time-is-on-your-sidewel...

Good point. I was originally going to say 'the SF tech bubble', but I do not want to offend too many people ;).

I still think the point stands, between missing features, adding questionable features, and failed April 1 jokes, I sometimes wonder how much 'market research' there is.

"Tech bubble" sounds like something completely different anyway...

As someone who is self-employed, works from home, and actually likes their job - scheduling free time is really important for me. If I don't, my work and my side projects creep into everything. I also thought this practice was ridiculous but then I started doing it and it's really improved my work/life separation.

I think for many people, if they don't schedule those things, they often don't happen. Time gets eaten away by life's minutiae.

The week passes without us going for a family walk. The year passes without planning a holiday.

Just because it doesn't match your lifestyle means it's not a real problem?

It matches exactly how I want to use my time and how I would solve this problem. Now what? Your way isn't "real".

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