Top Calendar Scheduling Tools with Energy-Based Planning (2026)
Looking for scheduling tools that account for energy, not just free time? Here are the best energy-based scheduling tools that help you work when you’re actually sharp.
Your calendar tells you when you’re busy. It doesn’t tell you when you’re actually capable of doing good work.
That’s the problem with most scheduling tools. They optimize for availability; finding empty slots and filling them with meetings and tasks. But availability isn’t capacity.
You’ve experienced this: a 2pm slot looks free on your calendar, so you schedule a strategic planning session. Then 2pm arrives. You’re six meetings deep, mentally fried, and staring at a complex deck you can barely think about. The time was available. Your brain was not.
Traditional calendar tools ignore this completely. They treat Tuesday at 9am the same as Tuesday at 4pm, even though your cognitive resources are completely different.
Energy-based scheduling tools are different. They combine your calendar with actual performance data—sleep quality, natural energy rhythms, cognitive load—and help you schedule work when you can actually do it well.
Here are the top calendar scheduling tools that account for your energy, not just your availability.
What Energy-Based Scheduling Actually Means
Before we look at specific tools, let’s clarify what makes a scheduling tool “energy-based.”
Traditional calendar tools ask: When are you free?
Energy-based tools ask: When can you do this work effectively?
The difference is critical. Energy-based scheduling considers:
Sleep quality and recovery: Did you get eight hours or five? Are you coming off a week of sleep debt or fully recovered?
Circadian rhythms: When are you naturally sharp vs. naturally sluggish?
Cognitive load: Have you been in meetings all morning, or is this your first task?
Task complexity: Does this require peak mental capacity or can you handle it during a natural dip?
Tools that truly support energy-based scheduling do three things:
Track or integrate with energy data (sleep, movement, recovery indicators)
Forecast your performance windows throughout the day
Schedule work accordingly—demanding tasks during peaks, lighter work during dips
Now let’s look at which tools actually do this.
1. rivva – The Only True Energy-Based Scheduling Platform
Price: $13.99/month (7-day free trial)
Best for: Founders and executives who want scheduling that respects their human capacity
rivva is purpose-built for energy-based scheduling. It’s not a calendar tool with energy features tacked on—the entire platform is designed around the principle that your capacity changes throughout the day.
How it works:
rivva integrates with your health apps (Apple Health, wearables like Oura Ring or Apple Watch) to track sleep quality, movement patterns, and recovery. It uses this data to forecast your energy levels throughout each day.
Then it combines this energy forecast with your calendar to create an intelligent daily plan. Nia, your AI assistant, automatically schedules:
Deep work during peak energy windows (strategy, complex analysis, difficult writing)
Shallow work during natural dips (admin, email, routine tasks)
Recovery breaks between intensive sessions
Meetings at times that won’t destroy your productive hours
When your schedule changes—a meeting runs long, a priority shifts—Nia automatically adjusts the rest of your day.
What makes rivva different:
Energy timeline: Visual forecast of your energy levels throughout the day, updated based on last night’s sleep and accumulated sleep debt. You can see at a glance when you’ll be sharp and when you’ll be running low.
Automatic task capture: rivva extracts tasks from your email (including meeting summaries, Notion comments, GitHub issues, document tags) and combines them with manual inputs. Nothing lives only in your head.
Capacity-aware scheduling: Unlike tools that just find empty slots, rivva knows the difference between “available at 2pm” and “capable of strategic thinking at 2pm.” Tasks get scheduled when you can actually handle them.
AI coaching with Nia: Chat to reschedule your day, break down overwhelming tasks, or get help prioritizing. Nia understands both your work context and your energy context.
What it does well:
Only tool that truly unifies calendar, tasks, and energy data in one workspace
Reduces cognitive overload—you don’t need to manually cross-reference your sleep data with your calendar to figure out when to schedule deep work
Sustainable productivity—helps you get more done without burning out
Adapts to your actual patterns instead of forcing you into a generic template
Limitations:
Full energy features require health app integration (though it works without, just with less intelligence)
Newer platform compared to established calendar tools
Currently iOS and web; Android in development
Pricing:
Monthly: $13.99/month
Quarterly: $31.50/quarter ($10.50/month)
7-day free trial
Best for: High-performers who are tired of scheduling tools that ignore the fact that you’re human. If you’ve ever looked at your calendar, saw you were “free,” scheduled important work, and then struggled through it because you were mentally fried, rivva solves that problem.
2. Reclaim.ai – Calendar Defense with Basic Energy Features
Price: Free for basic; $8-12/month for premium
Best for: Protecting focus time from meeting overload
Reclaim.ai is primarily a calendar management tool. It doesn’t do true energy-based scheduling, but it does have features that help protect your productive hours.
How it works:
Reclaim automatically blocks time on your calendar for habits (exercise, lunch, focus time) and flexible tasks. It marks these blocks as “busy” so meeting invites can’t steal them.
The “energy” aspect is indirect: you manually define when you want focus blocks (presumably during your best hours), and Reclaim defends them.
What it does well:
Prevents meetings from consuming all your available time
Smart scheduling finds times that work across team calendars
Habit tracking ensures recurring activities (exercise, breaks) actually happen
Good team features for coordinating schedules
Limitations:
No actual energy tracking or forecasting—you manually set when you want focus time
Task management feels like an afterthought
Doesn’t automatically capture tasks from email or other sources
Reactive (defends time you specify) rather than proactive (tells you when to schedule work)
Best for: People whose main problem is too many meetings eating their productive hours. Less useful if you need help identifying when your productive hours actually are.
3. Clockwise – AI Calendar Assistant for Teams
Price: Free for individuals; $6.75-16/month for teams
Best for: Teams trying to coordinate schedules and protect focus time
Clockwise is designed to solve the team scheduling problem. It analyzes everyone’s calendars and automatically finds meeting times that minimize disruption to focus blocks.
Energy-related features:
Clockwise doesn’t track your actual energy, but it does try to batch meetings and protect “focus time” blocks on your calendar. The assumption is that uninterrupted time = productive time.
What it does well:
Automatically moves meetings to create longer blocks of uninterrupted time
Team-wide focus time protection
Flexible meetings that automatically find optimal times
Analytics on meeting load and focus time
Limitations:
No personal energy tracking or forecasting
Optimizes for “uninterrupted time” without considering when you’re actually sharp
Primarily valuable for teams, less useful for individuals
Doesn’t integrate task management
Best for: Teams where everyone’s calendar is constantly interrupted. Not useful for individual energy-based scheduling.
4. Vimcal – Fast Calendar with Time Zone Support
Price: $15/month
Best for: Professionals who schedule many meetings across time zones
Vimcal is a fast, keyboard-driven calendar app with excellent time zone features. It’s not energy-based, but worth mentioning for professionals with complex scheduling needs.
Energy features:
None. Vimcal is a calendar tool, period. It doesn’t track energy, forecast performance, or schedule work intelligently.
What it does well:
Incredibly fast—keyboard shortcuts for everything
Excellent time zone management for global teams
Booking links and availability sharing
Clean, minimal interface
Limitations:
Zero energy awareness
No task management
Just a calendar replacement—doesn’t help you schedule work intelligently
Best for: People who need a better calendar interface but don’t need energy-based scheduling.
5. Motion – Automatic Time Blocking
Price: $19/month
Best for: Automatic task scheduling on your calendar
Motion combines tasks and calendar, automatically blocking time for tasks based on deadlines and priorities.
Energy features:
Motion has basic “work hours” settings where you can specify when you prefer to work, but it doesn’t actually track your energy or adapt to daily variations.
What it does well:
Automatic time blocking saves manual scheduling
Reschedules automatically when calendar changes
Integrates tasks directly into calendar view
Deadline tracking prevents last-minute scrambles
Limitations:
No actual energy tracking—just static “work hours” preferences
Doesn’t adapt to daily energy variations (post-sleep quality, accumulated fatigue)
Can create unrealistic schedules that ignore cognitive capacity
Expensive compared to alternatives
Best for: People who want automatic time blocking but have predictable energy patterns. Not useful if your capacity varies day-to-day based on sleep, stress, or cognitive load.
What to Look For in an Energy-Based Scheduling Tool
If you want a tool that actually helps you work with your capacity instead of against it, look for these features:
1. Actual Energy Tracking (Not Just Preferences)
Not good enough: Settings where you manually specify “I work best in mornings.”
Actually useful: Integration with health data that tracks your actual sleep quality, movement, and recovery—and adjusts recommendations based on how last night went.
2. Daily Adaptation (Not Static Rules)
Not good enough: “Focus time always blocks 9am-11am.”
Actually useful: “You slept poorly last night, so your peak performance window is shifted later. Deep work rescheduled to 11am-1pm when you’ll actually be capable.”
3. Task-Capacity Matching (Not Just Time-Blocking)
Not good enough: “This task takes 30 minutes, here’s a 30-minute slot.”
Actually useful: “This task requires deep focus. Scheduled for 10am when your cognitive capacity is highest, not 3pm when you’re running on empty.”
4. Proactive Adjustment (Not Manual Rescheduling)
Not good enough: “Your schedule changed. Go manually fix everything.”
Actually useful: “Meeting ran long, so I’ve moved your afternoon tasks to tomorrow morning when you’ll be fresh, and protected this evening for recovery.”
Currently, only rivva does all four of these things.
How to Choose the Right Tool
The best tool depends on what you actually need:
If you want true energy-based scheduling: → rivva is the only tool that tracks actual energy, forecasts performance, and schedules work accordingly.
If your main problem is too many meetings: → Reclaim.ai or Clockwise can help defend focus time, but they won’t tell you when to use it.
If you just need a better calendar interface: → Vimcal is fast and clean, but has zero intelligence about when to schedule work.
If you want automatic time-blocking: → Motion works if your energy is predictable, but it doesn’t adapt to daily variations.
The Bottom Line
Your calendar should do more than track when you’re busy. It should help you schedule work when you can actually do it well.
rivva does this comprehensively. It tracks your energy, forecasts your performance windows, and automatically schedules work around your real capacity—not just your calendar availability.
So, you get more done without feeling completely fried. You make actual progress on strategic priorities instead of just surviving your schedule.
Because here’s the thing: you’re already working hard. The question is whether you’re working at the right times, in a way you can actually sustain.
Ready for scheduling that respects your human capacity? Try rivva free for 7 days →
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between energy-based scheduling and regular time blocking?
Regular time blocking finds available slots and fills them with tasks. Energy-based scheduling considers your actual cognitive capacity and schedules demanding work during peak performance windows, lighter work during natural dips.
Do I need a wearable or health tracker for energy-based scheduling?
For the best experience, yes. rivva uses health data to accurately forecast your energy. But it still provides value without it—you can manually indicate your energy levels and the system adapts.
Can’t I just schedule important work in the morning myself?
You can, but that’s a static rule that doesn’t adapt to reality. Energy-based tools adjust based on how you actually slept, accumulated fatigue, and daily variations. Your peak window shifts based on real data, not generic assumptions.
Are energy-based scheduling tools worth the cost?
If you’re a high-performer whose time is valuable, absolutely. Better scheduling means more productive hours and less burnout. At $13.99/month, rivva pays for itself if it saves you even 45 minutes a week.
What if my schedule is completely unpredictable?
That’s exactly when energy-based scheduling helps most. When your calendar changes constantly, you need a tool that can automatically reschedule work around your shifting availability AND capacity. Manual rescheduling is exhausting and often wrong.
How is this different from just “knowing yourself”?
You probably do know your rough patterns—mornings are better, afternoons are rough. But daily variations (sleep quality, accumulated fatigue, stress) affect your performance in ways that are hard to track mentally. Tools that integrate actual data catch patterns you’d miss and adjust automatically.