Hour by Hour is a clever new approach to scheduling your time from Joe Humfrey of Selkie Design that took me a little while to get used to, but has really grown on me.
The app was inspired by travel planning and the age-old question, “When should I leave for the airport?” You’ve probably been there before. You have a flight at, say, 2:00 pm, but you need to drive 30 minutes to the airport, add some time to park, take a shuttle to the terminal, get through security, and build in a little extra wiggle room just in case traffic is bad or something else goes sideways. Suddenly, 2:00 pm becomes an exercise in mental gymnastics as you work your way back to when you should walk out the door.
Hour by Hour solves this sort of scheduling, but for every type of event, by using the same kind of reverse planning. At the same time, it’s not really a calendar app so much as a scheduling companion for your calendar. You can pull your calendar events into Hour by Hour, but you don’t have to, and if you dive into the app expecting to use it the same way you use a traditional calendar, the assumptions you bring with you will probably trip you up.