It was born as a research project at Stanford, where Jacob Bank, a computer science PhD candidate, and his advisor, AI expert Yoav Shoham, started exploring how machine learning could be applied to time management. To help with their research, they brought on Dan Ariely, the influential behavior psychologist and author of the book Predictably Irrational. It didn’t take long for the group to realize that there was an opportunity to bring time management more in step with the times. “It suddenly occurred to me that my calendar and my grandfather’s calendar are essentially the same,” Shoham recalls.