What is calendar runway?
Calendar runway is the free working time actually left in your diary before a deadline, compared with the effort the work still needs. “Due in 11 days” says how far away something is; runway says whether there is room to do it.
A worked example
Sam Ellis, who runs sales at Meridian Systems (a fictional company), owes Northstar a commissioning report. It is Monday morning, and the report is due on Friday week.
| Days until the deadline | 11 |
| Working days among them | 10 |
| Working hours in those days (09:00–17:30) | 85 hours |
| Free time left once the meetings are counted | 3.5 hours, in 3 gaps — plus 1 twenty-minute gap that is too short to count |
| What Sam estimates the report needs | 6 hours |
| Runway | 3.5 hours free for 6 hours of work: insufficient |
Radar puts the reason on the report — “Insufficient runway: 3.5h free for 6.0h of work” — and counts it towards the report’s risk, so it stands out on the radar while it is still 11 days out. On a plain task list it would still look comfortable for another week.
Why days remaining misleads
Days remaining treats every day as empty. Most working weeks are not: meetings, travel and the work already promised to other people take most of them, and what is left arrives in scraps. Eleven days with three and a half free hours is a different job from eleven empty days, and the difference only shows up when the diary is in the sum.
How Radar works it out
- Free time is your working hours (09:00–17:30, Monday to Friday) up to the end of the deadline day, less every busy event in your connected calendars. Events marked free or working elsewhere, and all-day events, do not count as busy.
- Gaps shorter than 30 minutes are ignored: nobody writes a report in twenty minutes between calls. A gap of an hour or more counts as a work window, and Radar warns when only one is left.
- The estimate is yours. You say how many hours the work needs when you put it on your Radar, and as you record progress Radar counts only what is left: 6 hours at 50% done is 3 hours still to find.
- Correcting it is editing the estimate or the progress. Radar never changes either on its own.
- The verdict: less free time than the work needs is insufficient; less than a quarter more than it needs is tight; anything else has room. Runway is worked out for the next 45 days, where the calendar is still a fair picture of the week.
- It never books time for you. Radar can suggest blocks to reserve, and puts one in your calendar only when you press the button.
Which calendars it counts
Runway needs a connected calendar. Without one, Radar can only show how many days are left. It counts every calendar you connect:
| Calendar | Status |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com calendar | beta |
| Google Calendar | verified against a real account, 20 Sep 2026 |
| A published calendar feed (ICS) | verified against a real account, 23 Sep 2026 |
Hiding a calendar from the calendar screen does not remove it from runway: a meeting you would rather not look at still takes the hour.
Who else does this
Comparing the effort a job needs with the time available is an old idea — it is what capacity planning in project tools has always done. Calendar planners such as Motion and Reclaim go a step further and schedule the work into your diary for you. Radar does something narrower: it measures whether the time exists before the deadline, for everything you are carrying, and tells you weeks ahead when it does not. It does not move anything.
Written by Neos Technologies Ltd · 25 Sep 2026