Re-Prioritized Pain Point: Time Management

Updated Ranking

DEMOTED: Time Management

Revised Score: 48/100 (was 90)

Why Demoted: “70% already have calendar solving this” is a critical signal. If the majority of your target audience has found adequate solutions, you’re competing for the 30% who either:

1. Haven’t discovered existing solutions (education problem, not product problem)
2. Have unique edge cases calendars don’t solve (niche market)
3. Aren’t actually experiencing this pain strongly (false positive in research)

What Changed:

• Impact Score (was ~85, now 50): Original score assumed massive time loss. Survey reveals 70% are adequately served = actual unmet impact is much lower than assumed.
• Solvability Score (was ~80, now 15): “Tools like Notion handling the workflow” means you’d be building a feature that already exists in a product users trust. Building here means competing with:
  • Google Calendar (billions of users, free, trusted)
  • Notion (loved by power users, extensible)
  • Apple Calendar, Outlook, etc.

Product Opportunity: Effectively none unless you identify a specific sub-segment with unmet needs that calendars miss. Example niches:

• Time blocking for ADHD users (requires different UX than standard calendars)
• Multi-timezone coordination for distributed teams (calendars struggle here)
• Time tracking + planning in one view (calendars plan, don’t track actual time spent)

Key Learning

Survey data revealing existing solution adoption is a KILL SIGNAL. When 70% of users report an existing tool solves the problem:

1. The pain point may be real but already solved - Your original #1 ranking was based on genuine pain, but the market moved faster than your research.

2. Remaining 30% likely has low willingness to switch - Users who haven’t adopted calendars after decades of availability either:

   • Don’t feel the pain strongly enough to change behavior
   • Have unique constraints (not representative of broader market)
   • Will adopt existing solutions before discovering yours

3. “Workflow handled by Notion” compounds the problem - Notion is a platform play. Users invested in Notion workflows have high switching costs and expect deep integrations. A standalone time management tool competes with their existing ecosystem.

Decision Framework

Should you build here? Ask:

• Can you identify the 30% unsolved segment? What specifically do calendars fail at for them?
• Is the unsolved segment large enough? (30% of your total addressable market)
• Do they have high willingness to pay? (enough to justify building against incumbents)
• Can you build 10x better for that niche? (not just incrementally better)

If any answer is “no,” DEPRIORITIZE THIS PAIN POINT.

Recommendation

Do NOT build time management as your primary pain point. The combination of:

1. 70% solution adoption rate
2. Multiple strong incumbents (Calendar, Notion)
3. Low differentiation opportunity

…means this is a saturated market masquerading as a high-urgency pain point.

Next steps:

1. Re-examine your pain point list - What ranked #2, #3, #4 in your original research?
2. Look for “unprompted mentions” - Which pain points came up in interviews without asking?
3. Check for spending signals - Where are users already spending money without satisfaction?
4. Validate unsolved segments - If you still think there’s opportunity, interview the 30% who DON’T use calendars effectively. Why not? What’s blocking them?

The strongest signal is when users complain about a problem AND existing solutions don’t solve it. This pain point fails the second test.