Gmail's New Summary Cards Highlight the Important Information in Your Flood of Emails Quick LinksWhat's Motion? The Setup and UI Calendar and Task Management Other Key Features of Motion and Pricing Key Takeaways Motion is an AI-powered task manager that integrates with popular calendars and automates task scheduling and meetings. Motion automatically schedules tasks based on attributes, tracks deadlines, and sends notifications. With no free plan, Motion is pricier than similar productivity services.
What if you could add tasks to your calendar and let AI prioritize and schedule them for you? Motion claims to do the same. After a few weeks with the app, here's why it's my current one-stop productivity app.
What's Motion?
Motion is an AI-powered task and time management app that allows you to schedule and manage your tasks efficiently. It integrates with your Outlook, Google, and iCloud calendars to block off time for tasks. You can add projects or tasks, set deadlines, create recurring tasks, and book or reschedule meetings based on your calendar schedule.
While a good to-do app can do some of it, Motion streamlines everything into one app. Its algorithm prioritizes your most important tasks but also helps you tackle meaningful work you may have been putting off. More importantly, it helps you set realistic deadlines by tracking your schedule.
The Setup and UI
Motion is a premium app, but you get a free 7-day trial to evaluate the features. The initial setup is all about Motion learning about you. You will be guided through the setup to add calendars from Google, Outlook, and Apple, as well as your workdays and hours, and recurring tasks like gym sessions or weekly chores. Finally, finish the setup by adding a few tasks for the week.
Navigating Motion's UI is critical to make the most out of it. Initially, the interface may seem cluttered with multiple tasks imported from your calendar, but things settle as you customize the preferences. The key is understanding Motion's three core tabs: Calendar, Project, and Booking.
The Calendar tab is the default tab set to Weekly view. It shows your daily schedule, including tasks, events, and meetings for the week. If it feels overwhelming, switch to the Day view to focus on today's tasks. All your completed and due tasks for the day will appear in the right pane, which you can click to edit or mark as complete.
The Project tab works as a bucket to organize tasks for different aspects of your life, such as work, university, hobbies, and more. I use it to organize my tasks for different clients. You can create a project from scratch or use the built-in template. The handy Kanban view lets you use filters and view projects as cards or tiles that can be rearranged with a drag-and-drop.
The Booking tab is where you can create and share booking links. It lets you check availability and schedule or reschedule meetings with external contacts using Google Meet, Zoom, Phone, or a custom link.
Calendar and Task Management
By the time you are ready to start adding tasks, Motion knows your schedule and work hours. When you create a new task, it will first check your calendar and try to fit the tasks into it based on their attributes.
To create a new task, from the Calendar tab, click Add Task or press T. Enter a title for the task and then add a description. You can also forward an email from a linked account to Motion to turn it into a task.
The task attributes are crucial to Motion's work, so you need to get them right for the AI to do its job. For recurring tasks, select the Recurring option, then select your workspace and project. Tasks can be set to repeat daily, weekly, or monthly, and you can specify the exact days, such as every Sunday.
Auto-scheduling is enabled by default, meaning Motion will automatically schedule your tasks based on your availability. If you prefer more control, you can manually drag and drop the task into any suitable time slot. You can also assign tasks to team members, change task statuses, and set the priority level -- ASAP, High to Medium, or Low.
In addition to priority, the other important attributes are task duration and the deadline. This is the estimated time to complete the task, which helps Motion schedule your other tasks in the calendar accordingly.
When it's time to start your task, Motions sends a notification. If you finish the task in time, mark it as complete, and it will start your next immediate task. If you need more time, it will move the task to the next slot available for the same duration.
Tasks with hard deadlines may be scheduled outside your usual work hours to get it done on the same day. If it is not finished by the end of the day, it automatically schedules and moves it to the next day.
Other Key Features of Motion and Pricing
Motion lets you configure your general and automation preferences from the Settings tab. For instance, for Auto-scheduling you can choose whether the tasks appear on your external calendar or stay in Motion calendar, configure break between tasks, set up conference options, tweak notifications settings, and fine-tune your schedule.
However, Motion has some limitations. It only supports Zapier for integration, which could pose a challenge if you're migrating from other productivity tools. Additionally, it lacks bulk actions for tasks, meaning deleting or editing multiple entries can be tedious.
When it comes to cost, Motion is definitely an investment. There's no free plan, and after the 7-day trial, pricing starts at $19/month (billed annually) or $34/month for those preferring a month-to-month option. For teams, it's $12/month per user (billed annually) or $20/month for monthly payments.
Despite these limitations, Motion's strength lies in its ability to take any task, schedule, and prioritize them based on their attributes on your calendar. You tell the app what needs to be done, and it tells you when you should do them for effective time management. It's a good solution for busy professionals who can leverage all of its capabilities and justify committing to a full-year payment. For others, tools like Reclaim.ai or Asana might be more cost-effective alternatives with enough functionality.
