Hi {{ first_name | time billionaire }},
I keep my phone on airplane mode most of the day now.
Not because I'm disciplined. Because the cost of being interruptible was higher than whatever I might miss.
But here's what I realized: the phone wasn't the real problem.
The real problem was being the gatekeeper for my own time. Every request that came in required a decision. Should I take this call? Is this meeting worth it? How do I say no without being rude?
Even small decisions add up. By Friday, I wasn't tired from the meetings themselves. I was tired from all the decisions around meetings.
Rangan Chatterjee writes about this in Happy Mind Happy Life. He calls it "time famine." It's not just about having too little time. It's about the constant cognitive load of managing it.
And that's the thing most productivity advice misses. It focuses on doing more, faster. But the real drain isn't the doing. It's the deciding.
What if you didn't have to decide?
This week we shipped a bunch of updates to intervals. And the theme running through all of them is this: you set the rules once. The system handles the rest.
Here's what's new.
✳️ AI assistant. You can now talk to intervals like you'd talk to a person. Ask what's on your plate today. Add a task through conversation. Say "roll this to tomorrow" when life happens. It remembers context. It nudges you when things slip.
📆 Auto-routing. This is the one that changes how your calendar feels. Paying customer needs help? Books immediately. Cold outreach with vague language? Filtered out. Partnership request that could be interesting? Escalated to you for a decision.
You're not the gatekeeper anymore. You set the policies. intervals executes them.
🔗 Multi-calendar sync. Connect all your calendars in one place. Google, Outlook, whatever you use. intervals sees everything and organizes accordingly.
📹 Zoom integration. Your meeting links get inserted automatically. No more copy-pasting.
Where this is going
Here's what I keep thinking about.
Right now, you interact with intervals. You set policies. You check the assistant. You approve or decline.
But we also shipped something this week that most people won't use yet: agent-to-agent negotiation.
Your AI tools can now talk directly to intervals through our API. No human in the loop.
Your assistant wants to block focus time? It asks intervals. intervals checks your policies and existing bookings. Then decides. Or counter-offers.
This is where calendar management is heading. Not apps you check. Systems that coordinate on your behalf. Machines negotiating with machines based on rules you set once.
We're not there yet for most people. But the infrastructure is live. And I think it matters.
💭 Wisdom this week
"The cost of a thing is the amount of life you exchange for it."
I used to think protecting my time was selfish. Now I think it's the opposite.
When you're not constantly drained by decisions, you have more energy for the people and work that actually matter. You show up better. You think more clearly. You're more present.
It's okay to want your calendar to work for you instead of against you. It's okay to let something else carry the weight of gatekeeping. It's okay to not be available to everyone, all the time.
That's not selfish. That's sustainable. If you want to try intervals: intervals.so
If you're technical and want to build on the API: intervals.so/docs/api
Either way, thanks for reading.
— Ruzgar
P.S. What's the one type of meeting request that drains you most? Reply and tell me. I read everything.
P.P.S. Know a founder who needs to stop being their own gatekeeper? Forward this to them.