A task list tells you what needs doing, a calendar tells you when you’re busy, and a notes app holds all the context around your life. But more often than not, these apps are separate, which means planning your day itself turns into another task where you’re constantly jumping between apps.
So instead of bouncing between Todoist, Google Calendar, and Notion to figure out what needs my attention, I replaced all three of them with one app that plans my entire day. The idea wasn’t to replace every feature these three apps offer; no single app can do that. It’s replacing the constant switching between them with something simpler.
A to-do list that finally learns to say no
Daily planning, time estimates, and an Ideas pile for stuff you haven’t committed to
Open Sunsama is inspired by Sunsama and takes the same approach to daily planning. Organize tasks by day, estimate their duration, and give them space on a calendar. It’s not just another space to collect work; it makes the relationship between that work and the available time visible.
Tasks support P0 to P3 priorities, can have subtasks, rich text notes, and time estimates, and unfinished work can automatically roll into the following day. That covers the core of a personal to-do workflow without requiring a separate planning database. There’s also an Ideas feature that adds boards for projects and possibilities that aren’t ready for the schedule. This means an idea can quickly become a task when it’s time to act. Anything that might be sitting in your backlog until you’re ready to work on it can quickly be moved into a specific day’s workload.
This gives you a meaningful boundary between work you have to do and work you intend to do. Capturing something doesn’t have to mean committing to doing it the same day. You aren’t forced to treat your entire backlog as today’s assignment. The calendar gives that decision a visible limit without requiring an elaborate productivity system.
Self-hosting it takes one command and some homework
Docker Compose, a few URLs to fix, and a backup plan you can’t skip
Getting Open Sunsama running on your own hardware is a rather simple job. The Docker requirements are at least 2GB of RAM, Docker, and Docker Compose. The requirements are quite lean, meaning you can get it running on anything from an old laptop to an adequately specced-out Raspberry Pi.
Installation is a matter of cloning the GitHub repository, entering the directory, and running docker compose up -d --build. Compose automatically starts PostgreSQL, Redis, the API on port 3001, and the web interface on port 3000. Database migrations run automatically when the API starts.
A small snag here is that the defaults point to localhost, so accessing the app from another computer means setting the API_URL and WEB_APP_URL flags to addresses a browser can reach. The API address is baked into the frontend during the build, so changing it requires rebuilding the web container. And if you want remote access over the internet, the documentation covers HTTPS through a reverse proxy.
Self-hosting also means owning recovery. The documentation provides PostgreSQL backup and restore commands, while the Compose configuration keeps generated secrets in a separate persistent volume. Both of these deserve your attention before you start dumping all your commitments in the app.
Tasks become a day once you give them a time slot
Drag, resize, and a timer that exposes your optimistic estimates
Once you add your calendar, Open Sunsama becomes much more than another to-do list. Dragging a task into an available slot creates a linked time block, which you can resize to match the duration of work. For example, designing an interface and coding it can occupy two separate sessions instead of hiding in one “create interface” task or two separate tasks that then need their own management.
Google Calendar, Outlook, and iCloud events can appear beside those blocks, and edits to provider events can sync back. However, the task time blocks stay inside Open Sunsama rather than appearing on the connected calendar. If your coworkers rely on calendar availability, that restriction can be a problem. As far as connecting Google Calendar is concerned, it involves configuring Google Cloud OAuth credentials.
One feature worth pointing out here is the focus mode, which isolates a task and tracks actual time against its estimate. The payoff is feedback: if a task repeatedly overruns its estimate, it gives you a solid data point to further optimize your schedule around it and change your plans accordingly.
Know what you’re replacing, and what you’re not
Notion, Google Calendar, and the limits of a single planner
Task notes and idea boards can cover some planning, but they won’t substitute for Notion’s relational databases, documentation, or wiki workflows. Replacing Notion makes sense when its job is to organize plans and their context, not maintaining an in-depth reference library.
Similarly, replacing the Google Calendar interface doesn’t mean you get rid of Google entirely, especially if you work with people who still use it to schedule meetings. Self-hosting the planner and dealing with a calendar that needs to be available to a whole team are different projects entirely.
You also get optional AI assistance through MCP Servers, which lets AI assistants read tasks and create or rearrange time blocks. You can also have a local connector to target your own API. It can be a helpful feature, but it doesn’t mean you get an autonomous scheduler running everything in the background.
Last but not least, there are two more caveats you should consider. The prebuilt desktop and mobile apps currently connect only to the hosted service, so if you’re self-hosting, you’re left with the web app. And if you’re using it in a commercial environment, you’re going to need an enterprise license.
Replacing most of three apps still counts as a win
Fewer tabs, fewer systems, and a clearer “what am I doing today?”
Replacing three apps with one doesn’t mean finding a tool that does absolutely everything; in fact, it’s very likely that you won’t be able to at all. For me, the point is to bring parts of daily planning together without carrying over the complexity of my old, three-app setup.
There are compromises, and I wouldn’t mistake a focused planner for an entire workspace. But that’s also part of the appeal. I want fewer places to check, fewer systems to maintain, and a clearer answer to what I’m going to get done today.