Track your energy and headspace to plan smarter days
today's energy check-in captures your daily energy level and mental clarity so you can plan your time blocks around your actual capacity.
Why energy matters more than hours
A 4-hour day working at high energy and clear headspace routinely outperforms an 8-hour day working fatigued and scattered. Tony Schwartz's energy management framework argues that we manage time reasonably well but manage energy poorly — treating it as a constant rather than a variable to optimize around. today's daily check-in asks two questions at the start of each day: how is your energy (low/medium/high) and how is your headspace (clear/foggy/scattered). These two readings take 10 seconds and, accumulated over weeks, reveal patterns that would otherwise stay invisible — the Thursday energy drop, the Monday morning foggy streak, the correlation between back-to-back meeting days and next-morning low energy.
Matching task type to energy level
Not all work requires the same cognitive resources. Deep work — writing, coding, strategy — requires high energy and clear headspace. Administrative tasks — email triage, scheduling, expense reports — can be done at low energy. Social work — meetings, interviews, team discussions — requires emotional energy more than cognitive. Planning your day without knowing your energy means you might schedule deep work on a scattered-headspace morning and struggle through it unnecessarily. With an energy reading, you can adjust: move deep work to tomorrow, do a batch of administrative tasks today, and preserve your output quality across both.
How energy data improves over time
A single energy check-in is a point-in-time reading. Thirty check-ins are a pattern. Today's weekly stats show energy distribution across the last seven days — how many high, medium, and low energy days you had, and how that correlated with planned vs. completed minutes. Users who track consistently for 3–4 weeks often identify reliable patterns: peak energy days (typically Tuesday and Wednesday for many knowledge workers), low-energy recovery windows (often Friday afternoons), and conditions that reliably deplete energy (back-to-back meetings, poor sleep, high-friction tasks). That pattern becomes the basis for smarter weekly scheduling.
The headspace dimension: fog and scatter
Energy and headspace are distinct. High energy with scattered headspace is the feeling of being caffeinated but context-switched all morning — lots of activation, no focus. Low energy with clear headspace is often the state for reflective or editorial work — calm, methodical, not generative but highly precise. today separates these dimensions in the check-in because they suggest different kinds of work. Foggy headspace is often a signal to avoid new creative work and focus on finishing existing tasks. Scattered headspace calls for a single-task focus block rather than a morning of reactive work.
Frequently asked questions
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