Starting with manual planning before trusting autoschedule
Before diving into auto-scheduling in Sorted³, I had to rebuild my daily planning habits from scratch. I’d been relying too much on sticky notes, three different calendar apps, and Zapier reminders from a Notion database that was accidentally renamed during a template import. That alone broke about five automations 🙂 So when I installed Sorted³, I decided to first input everything manually—literally block out my day task by task.
I created a brand-new list called “Morning Brain Dump” that I used as a sort of messy inbox while I figured things out. I added everything—take out trash, update Airtable, fix the webhook to Slack that now triggers four times instead of one. These were all timestamped, but I didn’t activate Auto Schedule just yet. I needed to see how it interpreted my chaos before letting anything snap automatically.
Observations: When you drag a task into a specific time on the calendar and then later extend or reduce its time estimate, it doesn’t prompt you to reschedule anything. That was actually kind of nice, because I didn’t want the app playing Tetris with every small change. But it also meant it was super easy to misjudge blocked time. I had a 15-min task overlapping with a Zoom call for like three hours without noticing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If I had activated Auto Schedule too early, it would’ve swept up all those bad estimates into a perfectly wrong schedule. Instead, I gave myself a week to get comfortable manually adjusting time blocks. So if you’re trying this for the first time, avoid the temptation to hit Auto Schedule right away. You kind of need to lose trust in your own time estimates in order to appreciate how Sorted snuggles it all together later.
What auto schedule actually does and does not touch
Let’s clear this up, because I misunderstood this at first: the Auto Schedule button doesn’t override events on your Apple Calendar unless you explicitly allow it. You’ll still see your calendar events (like meetings, dentist, therapy, etc) inside Sorted³, but those blocks are locked. Auto Schedule only fills gaps between those with your tasks.
However—it only fills tasks you’ve selected. If you bulk-select five tasks and hit Auto Schedule, it will jam them into the open windows in a way that… honestly feels like magic when it works, and pure chaos when it doesn’t. Say you’ve got a dentist appointment at 4pm, and you select three tasks at 2:45pm. Sorted will try to compress them before 4, regardless of whether they actually fit. Sometimes it squishes a 90-minute task into 20 minutes. Sometimes it gives up entirely and dumps it after your next meeting the next day 🙂
There’s no “soft buffer” by default, which I didn’t notice until I started running late for everything. There’s a setting under Preferences > Auto Schedule called Time Buffer Between Tasks. Set that to 10 or 15 minutes if you want room to pee between deep work sessions.
Sorted³ does not auto-schedule subtasks or checklist items. That tripped me up when I had a task like “Update campaign assets” with five checkbox items under it. Auto Schedule treated it like one tiny block, and suddenly I only had 20 minutes to do a six-step workflow involving Canva, Figma, and two rounds of approvals 😅
Setting time estimates without breaking the flow
Okay, honest moment: I ignored the duration field at first. It felt like too much effort to guess exactly how long something was going to take. But then all my tasks showed up as 5-minute blocks, and the whole schedule looked like a Tetris board made of ants.
My trick now is to use fixed phrases in task titles so I remember what I meant by each one later. For example:
– “Write blog draft (60m)”
– “Sync w/ dev team (30m)”
– “Process inbox (15m)”
Then I glance at that and manually set the duration with the little clock icon when I have a second. Surprisingly, setting estimates doesn’t interrupt the flow—Sorted³ lets you quick tap any task and pull up a small overlay where you can input duration with a slider or number pad.
Oh, and one extremely helpful thing I didn’t notice for days: if you type ’30m’ or ‘1h45m’ directly into the task title while creating it, Sorted³ auto-detects that and populates the duration. That little trick saved me so many clicks. But: it doesn’t strip the time code from the title unless you manually clean it. You’ll end up with tasks literally named “Send newsletter (30m)” unless you delete those manually.
Why fixed start times cause more trouble than you think
When you assign a fixed start time to a task in Sorted³—like “Start at 2PM”—Auto Schedule treats that like a sacred command. It will start reshuffling everything else, even higher-priority tasks, just to keep that time locked.
I thought I was being clever by fixing start times for all my deep work blocks early in the day. Plot twist: it broke the entire schedule by 11am. I had a task spill over due to a long video call, but the fixed time blocks didn’t move. So Sorted³ basically just shrugged and left me with overlapping tasks for the rest of the afternoon. No bumpbacks, no alerts—just a jumbled nightmare.
My workaround: I now only assign fixed start times to non-negotiables, like interviews or flight check-ins. Everything else gets a flexible duration and priority, and then I rely on Auto Schedule to place them appropriately. It’s like telling the app, “Hey, these matter, but I trust you to figure it out.”
One actual bug I hit: if you set a start time AND drag the task onto the timeline manually, it confuses the app. I had two tasks render at the same time on the calendar, even though neither was supposed to overlap. I had to delete both and re-enter them to clear whatever rogue timestamp metadata got stuck.
Dealing with priority and how it affects order
This part took me the longest to get a feel for. In Sorted³, there’s no drag-to-top priority like you’d expect in a traditional list. Instead, each task can be given a priority level using a swipe gesture or menu: None, Low, Medium, High.
Sounds simple, but it plays a huge role in Auto Schedule. High-priority tasks get placed first, and they tend to expand fully based on their duration, pushing lower-priority stuff into weird time slots or out of the day entirely. That’s great in theory but weird in practice. I had a 90-minute design task I marked as High just to test it—and Auto Schedule dropped it at 5:30am because that was the only slot it could fully fit 🤣
Now I use High priority very, very sparingly. One per day, maybe two max. Medium means “try to do it today,” Low is for errands or filler, and None means “fit this if there’s space.” Sorted³ respects this ranking fiercely.
Important: if everything is High priority, nothing is. I learned this the hard way when I marked like seven tasks as High on a Monday and watched my whole day get shoved earlier and earlier—Sorted put a call with my VA at 6:15am. No thanks.
When to use auto schedule versus manual drag
I used to think Auto Schedule would replace manual planning. Nope. They actually work best together. I use Auto Schedule for the big placement sweep—what can fit today, given my events and durations—then I nudge things around manually like puzzle pieces.
Manual drag actually feels satisfying here. It clicks into place with subtle haptics, and it shows minute-by-minute reflow in real time. The only downside is: if you manually move a task and then hit Auto Schedule again, Sorted³ will often override your drag. That can be frustrating if you spent a minute perfectly fitting a task between two events.
Trick: use Auto Schedule to generate a starting layout, then lock the tasks you’re happy with before dragging others around. There’s no explicit “lock” button, but you can change the task to Fixed Time, which freezes its placement.
I also use manual drag when I see tasks stacked too tightly—Sorted³ doesn’t always leave enough white space between tasks. A stacked visual looks like you have time, but realistically, there’s no room to transition between them. Manual nudging helps visually breathe.
Why some tasks don’t schedule at all
Sometimes nothing happens. You select a task, hit Auto Schedule… and it disappears. Like legitimately vanishes from the calendar view.
Here’s why that usually happens:
– The task has no duration set, or defaulted to something shorter than one minute.
– There’s no available time left in the day (e.g., calendar’s full and task isn’t flexible).
– You accidentally set the Due Time, which locks it after a certain time window.
I had this happen dozens of times and thought they were bugs. Turns out, it’s just aggressive filtering. If a task doesn’t have anywhere to go, Sorted³ hides it rather than telling you. You can still find it by looking in your Task Inbox or swiping through days.
To avoid it: make sure every auto-scheduled task has three things—start time (or open status), duration, and correct priority. Also double-check that you didn’t accidentally mark it for a specific day in the future.
Some folks online suggest dummy-padding your schedule by inserting fake 5-minute meetings just to keep Auto Schedule more honest. I haven’t gone that far… yet 😛
Sync quirks when using across multiple devices
If you sync Sorted³ across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, be warned: Auto Schedule doesn’t fully sync task positions unless the app has been open on both devices recently. I rearranged my entire week on iPad during a flight, then opened my Mac the next morning… and the new task layout didn’t apply. Tasks reappeared in their previous spots.
The app uses iCloud for sync, which is usually fast but sometimes stubby. Specifically:
– Manual drag changes sync instantly—but only if both devices are connected.
– Auto-scheduled positions often require a force refresh to apply across platforms.
Best practice I’ve landed on: do all the scheduling on one device per day. At the end of the day, make sure the app is open (and left open for a bit) on the other devices to force sync. Otherwise, you’ll get ghost duplicates or missing task positions.
Once, I had a task marked as Done on mobile but still hanging unscheduled on desktop. I tapped it like ten times before realizing it was a sync ghost. Restarting the app and force-refreshing iCloud fixed it, but it was a weird moment.
So if something doesn’t appear where it should, don’t panic. Check sync first. Then check if you scheduled it while offline. Then maybe just restart everything and pretend you’re rebooting your brain too 🙂