Daybridge thinks it’s time we reimagined digital calendars

Image: Daybridge

Would you send a calendar invite to your date? You are going to meet for dinner on Friday after you have been out a couple of times. You could tell them over the phone, but would you send them a calendar invite? Would you send them your Calendly link if you haven't picked a time yet? The CEO of a new calendar app company thinks it isn't a good idea. He would love to change that.

Daybridge has been in development for almost two years. McHugh and his team have created a calendar app. You can move events around if you connect it to the calendar. It is a calendar app but it is nice looking. The Daybridge team has a lot of big ideas about calendars and time management that they want to work on next, but so far they have only built basic calendar plumbing.

When Daybridge builds the big ideas are more exciting. Daybridge wants to build a calendar that understands that not all events are created equal and that managing your time isn't just about plugging things into 60 minute blocks. McHugh shared a mock-up of the app that would turn a running event into an exercise journal. The calendar was more of a board of time than a grid of hours. Every event had a different icon, such as a plane for an upcoming flight, scissors for a haircut, or a martini glass for after-work drinks, that made it clear what was happening and when. A lot of people were excited by that mock-up. Get things at a glance and see the plans each day. You are not trying to have time to be a giant void.

Image: Daybridge

Daybridge had to create a calendar that worked to get to that. Many links are needed before the sum can be greater than the parts. McHugh says, "It's not feature complete, and we don't have exact feature parity... but we're at a point where we're ready to start rolling this out."

Traditional calendar events are not always the best way to represent things that happen at specific times. You don't need a giant rectangle that competes with all your meetings if you say you're expecting a delivery between these hours. We think there's something there. He says that the company is trying to find a way to do it without feeling like a task list or calendar event. At some point in the day, I need to do X and get it out of my head. That feels more useful to Daybridge than a half-hour block that talks about medicine.

Image: Daybridge

Daybridge would like to be a record of your life as much as a plan for it. The team is building a lot of automatic categorization tools that will allow you to see what work and after-work drinks are like, as well as give you a better idea of how much you spend on your time. This is something that is being worked on by everyone. If it happens to notice you get a haircut every six weeks at the same place, or if it happens to know when your package is going to arrive, it could build your schedule for you.

Daybridge would like to make the calendar more social. McHugh thinks of Daybridge as a social network and not a productivity tool. He says they are not trying to help you get more done. It should be easy to find time with your friends and family if you use Daybridge.

It's not weird to get a calendar invite from your colleague, and it's not intrusive to send them one Would you let your entire group know that you're playing golf this weekend? Daybridge is trying to figure out how shared calendars work so that they can add people to it as lightly as starting a group chat. He imagined a world in which you could plan a trip with friends in a calendar. The team is working on public event pages that will allow you to create an event, RSVP, and add things to people's calendars without having to create a Facebook event.

Image: Daybridge

The Daybridge that is launching now has barely any of this. Daybridge is a nice looking web app that allows you to manage your calendar on the web and on the phone. The app is very basic and only recently began allowing you to modify your calendar events. I don't think anyone should use it as their primary time management tool because of the many bugs and quirks in it. There are better calendar apps out there than Daybridge.

The app offers a glimpse of what McHugh has been working on. The calendar has three modes: Plan, which shows your time in a normal grid so you can put stuff on it, Focus, which jumps straight to today's calendar and removes everything else, and Relax, which hides all of your work events and shows you only. You can hide all of your work events if you click a button in the normal plan view.

It's a good idea to build a social network on top of a calendar. Daybridge is trying to do a lot in one app, from helping you schedule your time and making the most of it to helping you stay aware of all the time-sensitive things happening around you. It will have to convince a lot of people to pay for another calendar app and start to rewrite some of our unofficial rules about how we use them. A calendar invite is a big hurdle to overcome.

You don't manage your time, but you manage your life. We need some help on that front.