Does your day fit?
Add up what you want to do today and see whether it fits the hours you will actually be awake. It comes with an ordinary day already filled in: remove, add, adjust.
Your waking window
Hours awake
16 h
50 min over the line
What you want to fit in today
- 8 h
- 50 min
- 1 h 30
- 40 min
- 2 h 20
- 1 h
- 30 min
- 2 h
50 min over
As it stands, today does not fit. Something on this list is getting dropped; better you choose which now than at eleven at night.
What you are looking at
The column is your waking window, from the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed. Each band is a block of the day, drawn at the size it really takes. The line at the top is where the day ends: whatever sticks out above it is what you are not going to do, however firmly it sits on your list.
Most people are surprised twice. First by the phone block: average smartphone use runs well over two hours a day, and that time appears in nobody’s plan. Then by the gaps between things: switching tasks, finding your keys, the coffee. If the total comes out exactly even, in practice it does not fit.
A plan that does not fit is not an ambitious plan. It is a list of things you are going to leave half done.
The arithmetic of an ordinary day
24 hours. Eight of sleep leave 16. Eight of work and one of commuting leave 7. Cooking, eating and clearing up, another hour and a half: 5 and a half. Out of that come the shower, the shopping, the people you live with and the new habit. That is why five 30-minute habits do not fit: they are two and a half hours on top of what is left.
If it does not fit, there are four ways out
There is no fifth. Choosing which one is the work; the tool only tells you that a choice has to be made.
Cut the elastic block
One block stretches without you deciding it: the phone, the TV, the scroll after lunch. Take 30 minutes off that before you touch anything else. It is the only cut that costs you nothing.
Lower the ambition, not the frequency
Ten minutes of reading every day beats an hour on Sundays. What builds the habit is the repetition, not the volume. Cut the block into four and keep one.
Move the block to another day
Not everything has to be daily. The gym three times a week takes a third of the slot in the weekly count and still works. Assign real days: "Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday", not "three times".
Drop one entirely
The most uncomfortable one, and the one that works best. If there are two new habits on the list, one waits until the other stands on its own. Write it down somewhere and come back to it in three weeks.
Questions
How many free hours does a day really have?
Between three and five for most people who work eight hours and sleep seven or eight. The exact figure depends on your commute and who you live with, and that is what this tool puts in front of you: not a general number, yours.
How much margin should I leave?
About 15% of the window, which in a 16-hour day is roughly two and a half hours. It is not waste: it is what absorbs the unexpected call, the traffic and the day when something costs double. A day planned to 100% fails at the first surprise.
Do you store what I type?
No. The calculation happens in your browser and is never sent anywhere. Close the tab and it is gone. There is no account, no email and no tracking cookie on this page.
What if I want to plan the week, not the day?
Multiply the window by the days that look alike and spread the blocks that are not daily. To keep track of what you actually do each day — rather than what you planned — you need something that asks you daily: that is what the app is for.
Now you know what fits. The hard part is repeating it
Monkway counts the days you have kept it up, reminds you at the hour you choose, and shows you at the end of the month how many times you actually did it.
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