Decision guide
Reminder, alarm, or calendar event?
Most people put everything in whichever of the three they opened first, and then wonder why their calendar is full of things that are not appointments. The three tools answer three different questions, and sorting them takes about ten minutes.
Each tool answers a different question
A calendar answers "where do I have to be, and when am I not free?" It is fundamentally about commitments that occupy a block of your time and that other people may also be able to see. Its job is to show you the shape of a day before you agree to something else.
An alarm answers "make a noise at this exact minute." It has no opinion about what you should do; it is a mechanism for interrupting you at a time. That is the entire feature, and it is why alarms are the right tool for a very narrow set of things.
A reminder answers "tell me to do this at a moment when I can." It is about an action rather than a block of time, and it has a state — done or not done — which neither of the other two really has. A calendar event does not care whether you did anything during it. A reminder is exactly about whether you did.
Put crudely: the calendar holds your time, the reminder holds your intentions, and the alarm is a bell. Problems start when a tool is asked to do one of the other jobs — an all-day calendar event standing in for a task you keep dragging forward, or an alarm at 15:00 whose meaning you have forgotten by 15:00.
What goes where
The test is not how important something is. It is whether it occupies time, whether it needs an interruption, and whether it has a done state.
Calendar: things that occupy time
Meetings, appointments, trains, the school play, a two-hour block you are protecting for work. If somebody else needs to know you are busy, or if the thing has a duration rather than a moment, it is a calendar event.
Alarm: things where the minute is the point
Waking up. The oven. A twenty-minute nap. Leaving for a train at exactly 07:42. The content barely matters because you already know what it means; what you need is a noise at a precise time.
Reminder: things you have to do
Ring the surgery. Post the parcel. Move money before the 1st. Take the 18:00 dose. These have an action and a done state, and they need to arrive at a moment you can act rather than at a moment in a schedule.
The overlap: prep before an event
The meeting is a calendar event. Reading the paper before it is a reminder, set for the hour you could actually read it. Putting both in the calendar is how the prep silently stops happening.
The overlap: recurring obligations
A standing meeting belongs in the calendar because it occupies time. Bins, doses and the weekly review belong in reminders, because they are actions with a done state that happen to repeat.
The overlap: deadlines
A deadline is not an event — nothing happens at 17:00 on the 12th except the passing of a moment. Put the deadline date in the calendar for visibility if you like, but the working reminders go earlier, on the days you can do something.
The two failures worth naming
The first is a calendar used as a to-do list. It starts reasonably: an all-day event for something that must happen that day. But an all-day event has no time, so it does not interrupt you, and it does not have a done state, so it sits there looking complete when nothing has been done. Within a month the calendar has a layer of these across the top of every week, and you have learned to read past them. That layer is the exact opposite of what a calendar is for, which is seeing your day at a glance.
The second is a to-do list used as a calendar. Appointments live in a list with no duration, so you cannot see that Tuesday already has four hours committed, and you agree to a fifth thing. Then you are late to two of them, which is a worse outcome than any amount of untidiness.
Both failures come from the same instinct: putting everything in one place so nothing gets lost. The instinct is right about capture and wrong about storage. One inbox, then a two-second decision about which of the three tools it belongs in.
A ten-second sorting test
- Does it occupy a block of time that should show as busy? Calendar.
- Do other people need to see it, or does it need to sit alongside their availability? Calendar.
- Is the exact minute the whole point, and do you already know what it means? Alarm.
- Is there an action with a done state? Reminder.
- Could you do it in a fifteen-minute window at some point that day? Reminder, set at the best of those windows.
- Is it a deadline rather than an event? Reminder several days earlier, and optionally a calendar entry on the day for visibility.
- Is it preparation for something already in the calendar? Reminder, at the hour you could actually prepare.
Timelee reads your Google Calendar, it does not write to it
Connecting a Google account lets Timelee show your calendar events next to your reminders on one screen, so you can see the meeting and the prep for it together. It is a read: Timelee does not create, change or delete anything in your calendar, and connecting it cannot alter what is already there. If you want something to appear in your calendar, you still put it there yourself.
Your calendar holds your time. Your reminders hold your intentions.
Keeping them separate is what lets the calendar stay a truthful picture of a day, and what lets a reminder stay something you act on rather than something you scroll past.
Common questions
Should I put my to-do list in my calendar?
Time-blocking — deliberately booking a block to do a specific piece of work — is a reasonable technique, and that block genuinely is a calendar event because it occupies time. What does not work is dumping undated tasks into the calendar as all-day entries, because they do not interrupt you and they have no done state.
What is the actual difference between a reminder and an alarm?
A reminder carries meaning and a done state; an alarm makes a noise at a minute. In practice the interesting difference is how the phone treats them — an alarm is usually exempt from silent and do-not-disturb, while a reminder delivered as a notification usually is not.
Where do deadlines go?
The work goes in reminders, on the days you can do it. The deadline itself can go in the calendar so you can see it coming when you are agreeing to other things. What should not happen is a single reminder on the deadline day, which arrives too late to be useful.
Does Timelee replace my calendar?
No, and it is not trying to. It shows your Google Calendar events beside your reminders so the two are visible together, but your calendar stays where it is and stays the authority on your time.
Can I see my calendar and my reminders on one screen?
Yes, on the web dashboard, once you have connected your Google account. You can switch between all items, calendar events only, and your tasks.
What about things with no date at all?
They belong in none of the three until you give them a moment. Keep them on a separate someday list you look at during a weekly review, and promote one into a reminder when you decide it is actually happening this week.
Spend ten minutes sorting
Open your calendar and move every all-day entry that is really a task into a reminder with a real time. It is the single change that makes both tools honest again.
Keep reading
- Google Calendar beside your remindersRead-only access, one screen, no writing to your calendar.
- Alarm remindersWhen the minute is the whole point.
- Tasks and to-do listsWhere actions with a done state live.
- The delivery ladderHow much noise a given reminder is allowed to make.
- Prioritising a to-do listOnce things are in the right tool, what to do first.