How to create a DAILY Planner with xTiles (+ free template & tutorial) | Notion Alternative?

April 18, 2024

😫 Have you ever felt overwhelmed with the process of daily planning? We've got you covered! We've discovered a simple and easy alternative solution that lets you plan your day in the most manageable way.

In this article, we would love to introduce you to xTiles - a simple, user-friendly solution for your productivity needs. We provide a step-by-step guide on how to use xTiles for daily planning, helping you keep your tasks and notes organized in one place.

What is xTiles

xTiles is a user-friendly, customizable solution for daily planning, note-taking, and all-in-one productivity workspace. This app is a mix of Miro and Notion that can be tailored to fit your needs.

xTiles provides a platform for users to organize their tasks and notes. Similar to Notion, it's a powerful alternative for daily planning and management. This app lets you conveniently organize your thoughts, store ideas, and arrange your tasks into Kanban boards, calendars, and more.

Source: xTiles, 2024

Key Features of xTiles

xTiles workspace is a virtual space that contains different projects. In each project, you can create many pages, tabs, blocks, and boxes. Some key features of xTiles are:

Store and organize notes, checklists, links, images, and files in diverse formats
Manage projects, tasks, and subtasks in a table, list, calendar or Kanban view
Set deadlines & assign tasks to members
Set notifications & reminders to stay on top of deadlines and reinforce collaboration

How to download xTiles?

If you're new to xTiles, you can easily access it through its web version. xTiles also offers mobile and desktop apps for both Mac and Windows. We recommend using xTiles on a desktop for a faster experience.

Source: xTiles, 2024

How to Use xTiles for Daily Planning?

We utilized xTiles to build a daily planner from scratch. Our daily planner includes a widget displaying the current month, a time block schedule, a section for notes and useful links, and a section for goals & to-do list. This functionality helps us stay organized and on top of our tasks. We also have a task calendar and an archive for completed tasks or notes, which is a helpful feature for keeping track of past activities without cluttering the main planner.

We have prepared a tutorial video to show you a step-by-step guide and we will walk you through the main steps below!

Create a new project: Daily Planner

Once you've set up an account, you can create a new project from scratch, and start by creating the tabs and boxes for different sections. You can adjust the size, style, and color of the boxes, as well as add different widgets, tables, and images.

Source: The Organized Notebook, 2024

Set up your planner

In this xTiles daily planner, we created boxes or blocks to allocate different sections for schedules, notes, useful links, monthly goals, and a to-do list. You can also view your tasks in the calendar and store completed tasks or notes in the archive.

Use widgets, icons, cover photos to make your workspace uniquely yours

We also highly recommend using widgets and cover photos in xTiles as they can make your workspace more visually appealing and engaging, leading to a more enjoyable and efficient user experience.

Find out more in Indify http://indify.co/ or Widget Box https://widgetbox.app/ for a wide variety of widgets, from calendars and weather forecasts to countdown timers and habit trackers.

Time block

A time block section can’t be missed in a daily planner! We highly recommend you include this in your xTile planner as it can help allocate time to complete tasks throughout your day. This can encourage you to work on one task at a time within a set timeframe and ensure that your day is effectively structured, helping you achieve a balanced and well-managed schedule.

In xTiles, you can easily create a time block schedule using a simple table view and archive it at the end of the day to start fresh the next day!

Source: The Organized Notebook, 2024

Task Calendar

A great feature in xTiles is that every item from the to-do list will be integrated into the calendar view! Simple /Task to create a new task, or easily convert notes and blocks to “tasks”.

It is highly recommended to set due dates and reminders for all tasks so that the tasks show up in the calendar view. You can also view your tasks by gallery view, board view and table view!