Today

The idea

Most planners fail in the same place, and it is not a missing feature. It is the typing. You copy dates off a syllabus or a schedule, and then you keep copying, because a planner is only true for as long as somebody maintains it. Studies of student planners put the drop-off at around the third week of a semester; across habit and planning apps generally, most people stop within a few months.

Today does not ask you to type your schedule, because your material already states it. A meeting workbook says which weeks it covers. A study article prints the week it is studied. When you import one, those dates come in with it — and Today reads them.

What you see

• Your practice, first — Reflection and Reading, with where you actually stand: whether today is done, the run of days behind it, and the next chapters in your plan.
• What’s coming — the material from your library, grouped into This week, Coming up and Earlier. Each row opens that section.

Reach it from the Today button in the bar at the bottom of your phone, or from Explore → Today on a larger screen.

The Today button

Tapping it opens a sheet rather than taking you somewhere, so you can look without losing your place. It carries:

• the week, with a dot under each day you kept — a streak is made of exactly those days, so that is where they are shown
• Reflection and Reading, each saying where you stand rather than just naming themselves
• up to three things from this week’s material
• All of today, which opens the full page

This week, on your dashboard

The dashboard carries the same answer, in a This week block just above Continue reading. It lists the material in your library dated to the week — a weekly workbook’s week, a study edition’s article — each row the section’s title with the publication’s name beneath it. A row opens that section in the reader.

• « This week » — the arrows step a week back or forward. The label says Last week, Next week or Week of a date, and ↺ Today brings you back to this week.
• Drop an EPUB on it — on any week — or press + Add to import one. Its weeks land on your schedule on their own.
• All of today → opens the full Today page.

With nothing dated yet, the block is an invitation instead: Study something week by week? Drop its EPUB here, and each week lands on your schedule on its own. — with Add weekly material → beneath it.

Where the dates come from

From the publication, and from nowhere else. When a file is imported, its week labels are read and then checked against the calendar — every week has to begin on the right day and span seven of them. A week that does not check out keeps its label and is reported as undated.

That refusal is deliberate. A comment filed under the wrong week will not be found, and you will not know to go looking for it. Undated is recoverable; wrongly dated is not.

If it looks empty

Today reads the library on the device you are using, because that is where imported publications are kept. So a phone that has not imported anything shows nothing to come, even when your laptop shows plenty. Import there too, or use the library transfer, and the dates arrive with the file.

Material that states no date at all — a colleague’s notes, something you wrote yourself — does not appear here. It is not lost; it simply does not claim to belong to a week.

Tell it when you meet, once

The publication says which week. Only you know which evening. So a row asks once — When is it? — and from then on every future issue of that publication binds to the same answer without asking again.

A week with a time reads like an appointment rather than a date range:

The be ready by half is worth explaining, because it is not a countdown. You are not asked how many days before a meeting you like to work; you are asked when you prepare — Saturday morning, say — and the deadline is the last of those before the meeting. That is how people actually work: not “two days ahead” but “the morning I have an hour”.

Needs you now

Once a meeting has a time, the band leads with what wants you today rather than what happens to be dated soonest. A row is urgent when your preparation window has opened and the meeting has not happened yet.

It can always empty, and that is the point. A row leaves the moment there is any of your work against it, and it leaves anyway once the meeting is past. So it never becomes a pile of things you did not do — each week’s item appears when its preparation day arrives and is gone by the end of the week, with or without you.

The timer is already loaded

A meeting workbook prints every part and how long it is given. That is the whole of a meeting timer, and it is already in the file you imported — so a week that is on now offers Run it, and pressing it loads tonight’s actual programme, by name, with the publisher’s own budgets.

Nobody builds a template. Nobody types ten part names on a Thursday evening while people are arriving. And because it is generated from the week rather than saved once, next week’s run is next week’s parts.

The part you have been given

If you hold a part on a week, say so — Which part is yours? — and the row carries it, with a Rehearse button that times that one part against its own printed budget.

Going over is the real anxiety of a timed part, and it is the one number no calendar can show you. Nothing here is a checkbox you tick: rehearsed and on time are read from the timer’s own record, so they cannot go stale and there is nothing to maintain.

Put it in the calendar you already use

Settings has a Calendar feed — one link you subscribe to from Google, Apple or Outlook Calendar. Your meetings then appear where you already look, with a reminder at the time you prepare, and you never open this app to find out when something is.

That is deliberate rather than lazy. Your calendar already handles reminders, the lock screen, sharing with your family, and being right about time zones — all of it better than a second calendar inside another app would.

Two things to know. The link is read-only and carries when you meet, never anything you have written. And because a calendar app cannot sign in, the link itself is the key — anyone who has it can see your schedule, so share it only as you would share your calendar. Replacing the link in Settings stops the old one working everywhere.

What it does not do yet

• The feed carries your meetings, not each week’s subject. Publications stay on your own device, and your calendar fetches from our server — which has never seen them.
• Two of the four preparation stages are missing. Rehearsed and on time are there; an outline and gathered sources are not yet, and are left out rather than shown as permanently undone.