DayPrivate / Method

Mac, iPad, iPhone

A rapid planning method app that keeps the method honest.

Most planning apps hand you a list and wish you luck. The rapid planning method asks for something harder first: name the result, know why it matters, then decide the actions. DayPrivate is built that way down to its object model, and then it attaches a clock, so the plan has to meet the day it was written for.

The shape of it

Three answers, in that order.

The method's whole argument is that a task list written without a reason is a list you will abandon by Thursday. So the order matters. You do not start with what to do.

01

The result

Stated as something finished, not something worked on. "Proposal sent to the board" survives a bad morning. "Work on proposal" does not.

02

The purpose

Your reason, in your own words. This is the part every other planner drops, and it is the part that decides whether you open the app on a day you feel like quitting.

03

The actions

Only now the list. Each one marked as something that must happen today or merely should, because a plan where everything is critical is a plan with no plan in it.

How it is built in

Not a template you fill in. The way the app stores your day.

You can run this method on paper, and plenty of people do. What paper cannot do is notice. These are the places the method stops being a worksheet and starts being enforced.

Result and Purpose
Both live on the outcome itself, not in a separate document you stop opening. Zoom into an outcome and the result is the headline with the purpose underneath it, in full.
MUST and SHOULD
Mark an action MUST or SHOULD, or leave it unflagged. The rollup shows the must total separately, so you can see at a glance whether today is actually achievable or just optimistic.
Blocks on a real clock
Put an outcome on the grid and it takes real time. Let the app place it and it routes around the meetings already in your calendar; drop it by hand and it lands exactly where you put it. If the work does not fit the day, the day says so before you start.
The Reckoning
A block ends with musts still open and the app asks one quiet question: re block it today, push it to tomorrow, or leave it. No streak to protect, no guilt animation.
Alignment
Where the hours actually went, against the outcomes you said mattered. Estimated against tracked, so the gap between the plan and the week is a number rather than a feeling.
Year Map
One cell per day for the whole year, colored by what the plan did with it. It is a record, not a scoreboard, and it cannot be edited after the fact.

The part nobody asks until it is too late

What happens to a year of plans when the company goes away.

This category has a short memory and a long list of shutdowns. These are matters of record, and they are the reason DayPrivate has no server to switch off.

Clockwise

Shut down on 27 March 2026 after its acquisition by Salesforce, with user data deleted.

Amie

Removed its free tier and left users unable to reach their own data.

Todoist Goals

Retired on 13 July 2026, and the Goals data went with it, on a product with more than a million paying subscribers.

Sorted 3, the counterexample

Its support channel went dark, yet its users kept everything, because it only ever synced through their own iCloud. No server to shut off means nothing to lose.

DayPrivate follows the last pattern deliberately. Your outline is a file on your disk. Sync, if you turn it on, writes encrypted change sets into your own iCloud Drive under a passphrase only you hold. There is no account to close and no company database holding your year. If this project stopped tomorrow, the copy on your machine would keep opening.

Straight answers

When this is the wrong tool.

  • You need Windows or Android. DayPrivate is Mac, iPad and iPhone only, and there is no browser version planned.
  • You want your team in it. There are no shared boards, no assignees and no comments. It is built for one person's day.
  • You want the app to plan for you. It will not auto schedule your week from a priority score. It asks you to decide, then holds you to what you decided.
  • You want to be productive in five minutes. The outliner is quick to learn. Running the full method, with outcomes and purposes and a weekly review, is a habit rather than a setting.

Price

Eight dollars a month, or sixty nine a year.

One plan with everything in it, on every device you own. If the plan lapses, the last version you paid for keeps working, and your outline and exports stay yours. See what the plan includes.

One message, then nothing

Hear when the build is ready.

One email when DayPrivate is ready to install, and nothing else. No drip sequence and no newsletter.

Your address is used for that one message and nothing else.

Questions

The things worth asking first.

Is this affiliated with Tony Robbins or Robbins Research International?

No. DayPrivate is an independent product, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or licensed by Robbins Research International. The method is referred to here only to describe how the app organises a day.

Do I have to plan this way to use it?

No. Underneath it is a full outliner with the shortcuts, zoom and mirrors you would expect. Outcomes and purposes are there when you want the structure and out of the way when you do not.

Does it work without an internet connection?

Yes. Everything runs against a local database on your device. There is no account and no server call in the normal running of the app.

Can I get my plans out?

Export the whole outline to OPML or plain text whenever you like. Settings shows you the exact path of the database file.

Is there an AI feature, and is it required?

There is an optional session readout on the Mac app, and it is off until you install a model on your own machine. Nothing is sent anywhere. On iPhone and iPad, and without a model, the rest of the app is unchanged.

What about a paper planner?

Paper is genuinely good at the thinking part and genuinely bad at noticing. It cannot tell you that a block ended with two musts open, or that the week went somewhere other than where you aimed it.

Rapid Planning Method and RPM are referred to descriptively on this page to explain a planning approach. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.