🚀 NEW Priorities are here! Unlock the update for your account here. Your UI might look slightly different as we update our help docs for the new system – check out the Priorities overview to learn more.
You can opt-in now, or wait until the update rolls out to all users.
Priorities overview
With Priorities, you can take control of all the events on your calendar – both Reclaim-created smart events and non-Reclaim events (like meetings created in Google Calendar) – to auto-schedule a productive plan for every week around your most important work.
Set the priority level for your Habits, Tasks, Smart 1:1s, Scheduling Links, and even Google Calendar events from Critical (P1) to Low priority (P4) and Reclaim will auto-schedule your calendar around the things that are most important.
Check out the Priorities Notion wiki
With so many exciting improvements coming to Reclaim's prioritization system, our help center will be updated in the coming weeks. You can check out our Notion wiki here to learn more about what's new with Priorities.
Priorities overview
Reclaim allows you to assign universal Priorities to everything on your calendar – both smart Reclaim events and non-Reclaim events (ex. a recurring standup created in Google Calendar) – so you can prioritize your most important meetings and focus work sessions in the workweek.
Prioritization levels:
There are four priority levels you can set for the events on your calendar:
Critical (P1): Reclaim will schedule Critical items before any other events, and these can overbook lower-priority items as your calendar books up.
High priority (P2): High priority events will be prioritized before medium and low priority events, and can be overbooked by critical events.
Medium priority (P3): Medium priority events will be prioritized before low priority events, and can be overbooked by medium-critical priority events.
Low priority (P4): Low priority events will be prioritized last, around your availability, and can be overbooked by higher-priority items.
How Priorities work
Your Critical (P1) Smart 1:1s and Habits will always take top billing, and Reclaim auto-schedules the rest by priority and due date – intelligently ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.
If your smart events have the same priority level, Reclaim will prioritize scheduling your Smart 1:1s first, Habits second, and Tasks third based on your availability.
Habits
Higher-priority Habits schedule before lower-priority Habits, Tasks, and Smart 1:1 events. As your calendar books up, higher-priority Habits can overbook lower-priority items to make sure you have time for your important routines.
Learn more about prioritizing your Habits →
Smart 1:1s
Higher-priority Smart 1:1s schedule before lower-priority Smart 1:1s, Habits, and Tasks. As your calendar books up, higher-priority Smart 1:1s can overbook lower-priority items to make sure you have time for your important one-on-one meetings.
Learn more about prioritizing your Smart 1:1s →
Tasks
Higher-priority Tasks schedule before lower-priority Tasks, Habits, and Smart 1:1. As your calendar books up, higher-priority Tasks can overbook lower-priority items to make sure you have time to get work done.
Tasks with the same priority level will be prioritized based on soonest due date.
Priorities for Tasks also features 'Up Next' capabilities which can override priority levels and schedule certain to-dos ASAP.
Learn more about prioritizing your Tasks →
Scheduling Links
Priorities for Scheduling Links work a little different. Higher-priority links will show lower-priority Habits, Tasks, Smart 1:1 events, and non-Reclaim events on the calendar as available time slots, so you can offer your most availability for important meetings.
Scheduling Link meeting events on your calendar will never be overbooked by any Reclaim event, regardless of priority level.
Learn more about prioritizing your Scheduling Links →
Prioritizing non-Reclaim created events
One of the most powerful features of Priorities is that you can also prioritize non-Reclaim events (ex. recurring internal team meetings, standups, etc.) to offer up your maximum availability for important meetings.
Important things to note:
All non-Reclaim events on your calendar will always be set to P1 by default (most critical) so they will never be overbooked by Reclaim – unless you manually change their priority level.
Your non-Reclaim events manually set to a lower priority level can only ever be overbooked by higher-priority Scheduling Links which will show that time as available – non-Reclaim events will never be overscheduled by Habits, Tasks, or Smart 1:1s, regardless of their priority.
Learn more about Priorities for non-Reclaim events here: Prioritizing your non-Reclaim created events →
How to get started with Priorities
Activate Priorities:
Switch to the new prioritization system today from the Priorities page. All your existing events will be intelligently mapped to Priorities –
Walk through the Priorities onboarding to learn more about what's new and how everything works.
Review your Priorities and make sure they align to your expectations.
Try turning down the priority of non-Reclaim calendar events to watch your availability open up on higher-priority Scheduling Links.
When you opt-in to Priorities, all of your existing events will be smoothly transitioned with default Priority settings to match your previous settings.
How existing events will be prioritized:
‘High priority’ Habits → High priority (P2)
‘Low priority’ Habits → Medium priority (P3)
Tasks → High priority (P2) + your top three tasks will be added to ‘Up-Next’
Smart 1:1s → High priority (P2)
‘High priority’ Scheduling Links → Critical (P1)
‘Normal priority’ Scheduling Links → Medium priority (P3)
Non-Reclaim events → Critical (P1)
Review and update your Priorities as soon as you opt-in to the new system.
Managing your Priorities
Priorities are designed to be flexible and adaptable as your schedule changes, so you can reprioritize smart events to reflect what’s most important right now. Here's how you can manage and edit the Priorities of your Reclaim events:
Planner Priorities overview
You can see an overview of your Priorities in your Planner in the right-side menu – under each of the four priority levels, and sorted by feature category.
Each of your Reclaim events will be tagged with a priority level, indicated by the ‘bar’ icon to the right. You can change the priority of that event by clicking on the 'bar' icon 📶 and setting a new priority.
Or by dragging-and-dropping the event into a different priority level.
Priorities page
You can also manage your priorities in a side-by-side view from the Priorities page.
Just like in the Planner, you can click on the bar icon to set a new priority for the event, or drag-and-drop to reprioritize your Reclaim events.
You can also use settings for your Priorities page to filter the view by event type or Scheduling Hours by clicking the 'sort' icon in the top right of the Priorities page.
To adjust the column width of your page, click the 'gear' icon and slide to adjust.
Note for Mac users: If at wider view settings your Priorities columns get cut off to the right of the page, and you do not see a slider at the bottom of the page — check your Mac System Preferences under General > 'Show scroll bars'. Set this to 'Show always' to reveal the scroll bar.
Google Calendar add-on
You can also view your events by priority level and feature category directly in Google Calendar via the free Reclaim add-on. Click on any scheduled smart event on the calendar, or select it from the add-on sidebar, to view more details.
You can update to the priority level of your Tasks and Habits directly in the add-on by clicking 'Edit' on an item to pull up the editor module where you can adjust the priority.
The priority of your Smart 1:1s, Scheduling Links, and non-Reclaim created events can only be edited from the Reclaim app.
Priorities FAQ
How do I unlock Priorities for my account?
How do I unlock Priorities for my account?
You can enable the new prioritization system in one click from your Priorities page in the Reclaim app. If you're having trouble seeing that page, feel free to reach out at [email protected].
Is switching to the new prioritization system going to mess up my existing Reclaim events?
Is switching to the new prioritization system going to mess up my existing Reclaim events?
Upgrading to the new prioritization system will not mess up your calendar (just make it better). All of your smart Reclaim events will be automatically migrated over with default priorities that you can then customize once activated.
Here’s how your existing smart events will be prioritized when you switch:
‘High priority’ Habits → High priority (P2)
‘Low priority’ Habits → Medium priority (P3)
Tasks → High priority (P2) + your top three tasks will be added to ‘Up-Next’
Smart 1:1s → High priority (P2)
‘High priority’ Scheduling Links → Critical (P1)
‘Normal priority’ Scheduling Links → Medium priority (P3)
Non-Reclaim events → Critical (P1)
How do I prioritize Tasks now without stack ranking?
How do I prioritize Tasks now without stack ranking?
Priorities offer more control over how your tasks are prioritized with even more granular settings. Rather than having to stack-rank your entire task list, Reclaim considers the priority level, availability, and deadline when auto-scheduling them in your calendar. Learn more about prioritizing your Tasks here.
Additionally, you can leverage the ‘Up Next’ feature in the Planner to tell Reclaim which select items you want to work on next – overriding priority levels. ‘Up Next’ tasks will be prioritized in order. Learn how to use Up Next for Tasks here.
Will Reclaim schedule over my Google Calendar events, like other work meetings?
Will Reclaim schedule over my Google Calendar events, like other work meetings?
Not unless you want it to! All non-Reclaim events on your calendar will be tagged as Critical (P1) by default and will never be overscheduled by Habits, Tasks, or Smart 1:1s no matter what their priority level is.
The only time Reclaim will schedule over a non-Reclaim created event (like a Google Calendar meeting or another event) is if you manually turn down the priority level for that event from the Planner. If you choose to do this, that event can only be overbooked by a higher-priority Scheduling Link to offer up maximum availability for your most important meetings.
Will Critical (P1) Reclaim events schedule over my meetings booked via Scheduling Links?
Will Critical (P1) Reclaim events schedule over my meetings booked via Scheduling Links?
No. Meetings booked on your calendar via your Scheduling Links will never be overbooked by any other smart events that Reclaim schedules including Habits, Tasks, Smart 1:1s, or other Scheduling Link meetings – even if those have a higher-priority.
Will other attendees be notified if I change the priority of a non-Reclaim created event in Google Calendar?
Will other attendees be notified if I change the priority of a non-Reclaim created event in Google Calendar?
No. Changing the priority of non-Reclaim events on your calendar only applies to the availability shown in your higher priority Scheduling Links. It will not notify or affect the meeting for other attendees.
What changed from how Reclaim used to prioritize my calendar?
What changed from how Reclaim used to prioritize my calendar?
The new prioritization system offers more granular control for how you can prioritize events on your calendar. There are a couple major changes from how Reclaim used to prioritize events:
High/low priority vs. priority tiers: Reclaim used concepts like “high” / ”normal” priority for Scheduling Links, and stack-ranking your Tasks and Habits to identify which items were most important to schedule on your calendar first.
Now, items can be categorized into four different priority tiers (P1-P4) for even more control over your week. Reclaim will intelligently prioritize scheduling events in a bucketed approach based on which are marked with higher priority levels, from critical to lowest priority.
Prioritizing non-Reclaim created events: Previously, Reclaim would never overbook events that it didn’t schedule.
With the new system, you can now set priority levels for non-Reclaim events. This allows your higher-priority Scheduling Links to overbook those events tagged at a lower priority level to maximize availability for your most urgent meetings.
How is this new prioritization system better?
How is this new prioritization system better?
We wanted to give users a universal way to prioritize everything on their calendar so they can better defend time for the things that are most important.
This new system offers more granular control over your schedule – allowing you to make smarter tradeoffs, understand what is more and less important to you, and automatically build out a plan that reflects your true priorities every week.
Please reach out to our support team if you have any questions or feedback on Priorities! We're excited to hear what you think of this new prioritization system as we work to bring even smarter scheduling to our users.