“I'm a remote UX researcher at a distributed company and I've been using Todoist for years but I keep failing to actually time-block my day. My tasks sit in a list and never get matched to time on my calendar, so urgent things always crowd out important ones. I'm ready to switch to something purpose-built for daily time-blocking that connects my task list and Google Calendar in one view. What are the best apps for this, and how do they compare to Todoist on calendar integration and daily planning structure?”

Based on what you described, I wouldn't optimize for a better task manager. I'd optimize for a tool that treats planning your day as the primary workflow, not an afterthought.

Your pain point isn't capturing tasks—Todoist is already excellent at that. It's the transition from "things I should do" to "this is when I'm doing them." That's exactly the gap a few newer apps are designed to solve. clickup.comzapier.com2sync.com

Here's how I'd compare the strongest options.

My recommendations

1. Sunsama — best fit for your situation

From your description ("urgent things always crowd out important ones"), this is the one I'd try first.

Its philosophy is almost the opposite of Todoist:

• Every morning you intentionally choose today's work.
• You estimate how long each task will take.
• You drag tasks onto your calendar.
• It encourages stopping once your day is realistically full rather than endlessly adding more. clickup.comzapier.com

For a UX researcher, that's especially nice because a day often contains:

• interviews
• synthesis
• analysis
• stakeholder meetings
• writing
• Slack interruptions

Those different work modes naturally become calendar blocks instead of one long task list.

Compared to Todoist

Pros - Calendar and tasks live together. - Strong daily shutdown/startup routine. - Integrates with Google Calendar plus tools like Jira, Asana, GitHub, Linear, and Todoist. - Encourages realistic workload planning.

Cons - More expensive. - Requires spending a few minutes planning each morning.

2. Akiflow — best if your work comes from many places

If your work arrives through:

• Slack
• Jira
• Notion
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Docs

Akiflow excels at pulling everything into one inbox before you schedule it.

It's much faster than Sunsama if you like keyboard shortcuts and processing dozens of tasks daily. Community feedback consistently highlights this as a strength. getdonenow.app

3. Motion — if you want the computer to schedule for you

Instead of asking:

"When should I work on this?"

Motion asks for:

• deadline
• priority
• duration

and continuously rebuilds your calendar around meetings and deadlines.

This is fantastic if your schedule changes constantly.

The tradeoff is that you're giving up some control over how your day is structured. clickup.comzapier.com2sync.com

4. Morgen — strongest calendar experience

Morgen is more calendar-centric than task-centric.

If you already live inside Google Calendar and mainly want tasks to become scheduled blocks, it's one of the cleanest experiences available. clickup.comzapier.com2sync.com

5. Reclaim.ai — protects focus time

Reclaim is different.

Instead of manually placing work, you define:

• research
• writing
• email
• exercise
• lunch
• habits

and it automatically finds time around meetings.

It's particularly useful if coworkers frequently book over your calendar. clickup.comzapier.com2sync.com

How they compare with Todoist

For a distributed UX research workflow

Given your role, I'd lean toward Sunsama.

Research work has natural chunks:

• interview prep
• interviews
• note cleanup
• affinity mapping
• analysis
• report writing
• stakeholder reviews

Sunsama's daily planning flow makes it easy to assign realistic durations to those blocks before your day gets consumed by meetings. It also forces a useful question each morning: "What actually fits today?" rather than carrying an ever-growing list forward. clickup.comzapier.com2sync.com

If you instead find yourself juggling tasks from many systems (Slack, Jira, Notion, email, GitHub, etc.), then Akiflow is probably the stronger choice because its inbox aggregation is one of its biggest advantages.