The Philosophy Behind My New Time Management App: YearGrid

YearGrid is an online calendar I'm in the middle of creating that let's users see and plan out the entire year in one screen - 365 days right there in front of you with no scrolling or needing to go to other menus. The idea is with a fully visible year, planning this week planning for something 6 months from now can happen all at once and you can have context right there for comparing. It's my attempt at making a software program that can unleash the inner strategist in me and in all of us, so that we can get more done and have mastery over what is otherwise a very ephemeral thing that tends to always escape us or run out and leave the reason a mysetery: time. How does it do that? How can a computer program make you a master over time? Through the principle of Occurance and phenomenal user experience design. I explain below.

Published in Category:

Software Development

Published on:

Read time:

a computer with a keyboard

Core Philosphy

Most planning tools are built around tasks, meetings, and deadlines. YearGrid is built around something deeper: the human need to see time clearly both in the longterm and short term.

Question

Answer

What problem are you really solving?

Not “calendar UX,” but disconnection from time.

What is your philosophical stance on time?

Time is finite, visual, emotional, seasonal, strategic.

Why does seeing the year matter?

Because humans make better choices when time has shape.

What is YearGrid?

A visual year-planning interface that lets you see, mark, and shape an entire year at once.

Who is it for?

Founders, creators, teachers, athletes, project leaders, self-improvers, anyone living by arcs instead of isolated tasks.

What does it replace or complement?

Calendars, planners, Notion boards, whiteboards, spreadsheets, yearly reviews.

What is the simplest user action?

Look at the year, select dates, mark phases, track arcs, understand where you are.



The Problem With Normal Calendars

Question

Answer

Why are monthly calendars insufficient?

They fragment the year into disconnected pages.

Why do task apps fail here?

They focus on completion, not perspective.

Why do people lose track of the year?

Time is usually experienced as a stream, not as a landscape.

What does this cost people?

Poor pacing, forgotten goals, reactive living, missed seasons, burnout.

The modern calendar is optimized for appointments. YearGrid is optimized for orientation and strategy.

YearGrid.io as a SaaS App

YearGrid is a Software as a Service (SaaS) style program, meaning its available to anyone with an internet connection via the website YearGrid.io, updates automatically, has no downloads, and remembers your data by letting you log in via a familiar account to you (like your Gmail, Outlook, or work email.) Like most SaaS software, its revenue model is a simple cancel-anytime subscription which at this time is $9.99 per month, or $95 for the year (20% discount from monthly).


Most planning tools are built around tasks, meetings, and deadlines. YearGrid is built around something deeper: the human need to see time clearly.




The core insight: Time as Landscape

You ever see things like a War Map or War Table (Game of Thrones has many scenes featuring these) that generals use to plan a battle? It's a visual way of looking at the battlefield and surrounding landscape, the resources available, the units, etc. Well that in a way is what YearGrid attempts to do - just with your time. With your year, and the years behind it. Can through software, we create a visual landscape where you can see the distances and size of blocks of time, down to the level of the individual day, so that you can plan and manage your preparation as effectively as possible.

Considerations

ICS Files

An ICS file (file extension .ics) is a universal calendar file format used to store and share calendar events. It contains critical event details like the title, start/end times, location, description, and time zone.

https://fileinfo.com/extension/ics

https://emailshot.io/blog/what-are-ics-files/

google inquiry

https://www.framer.com/marketplace/components/addtocalender/

LLM TXT

https://www.framer.com/marketplace/plugins/llm-text-generator/
https://llmstxt.org/


SEO



Filtering

We've added the ability to filter your collection lists in the CMS. This allows you to keep your content in a single collection, yet customize how that collection is presented on each of your web pages. For example, if you're creating docs for your app, you might want to filter articles per topic on your homepage. Or when creating a blog, you might want to filter your blog posts per category.

Save To Reading List

Bookmark

Upvote

Double Downvote

Send to Somebody

v05.17.2026

© Conner Torres | 2026