Turning personal calendars into scheduling assistants

Personal calendars have long played a major role in time management, but they have evolved little over the years, and their contribution to productivity has stagnated. Inspired by logical theories of intention as well as experimental results on human productivity, and leveraging the power of optimization algorithms, we seek to reinvent the digital calendar. First, we increase the expressive power of calendar systems by deriving new entity types that go beyond simple events to better represent human intentions, plans, and goals. Next, we build on social psychological research to characterize the properties of a schedule best engineered for human productivity. Finally, we develop an optimization framework and algorithm to generate these schedules from a set of entities. With these tools combined, we transform the digital calendar from a passive repository into an active scheduling assistant.

Duke Scholars

Author Dan Ariely Fuqua School of Business