Maybe I can clarify.

- Everything on a calendar is a to-do item, ultimately. We want to remember to do something at a certain time, on a certain date. You're already in that business.

- The problem you are solving is hairy. Shaving the problem doesn't make it go away. Things always come up to ruin a schedule.

- Trivializing the issue means it's on it's path to potentially becoming another calendar or to-do list that does neither well, because we always have to manage both, integrated. I've probably tried 30+ apps over the years to handle my workflow, and it's been a tough go.

- Instead of a to-do queue, it's different types of appointments with your time : unscheduled, tentative (floating), and scheduled.

- Appointments for your time ("tasks") come into an inbox (GTDesq but simpler) and end up on a list. The list gets put into categories (nothing more), which are the GTD contexts (Phone, online, email, home, etc). You can then drop the categories on your day into blocks of hours and the list fills itself, according to the ranking you give everything, and any dates you might assign. :)

- Floating task advance notice - One other thign that's critical is having an advance notice for a task or appointment. Sometimes i like 2 days, other times 10 days. I like being able to set that without a separate reminder entry. It just starts showing up in my list early (lower ranked than the rest of my current stuff on an earlier day). I can start thinking about it or start tackling it in advance... it ends my last minute rushes.

- Each task can be bundled to handle other things of a similar context. I can show you what I do. It works like gangbusters.

- Mini Reviews: Omnifocus came close but their calendar view isn't how it needs to be. Any.do has great UI integration but their calendar view sucks. Astrid is a lot better, and has different types of syncs, their calendar view is a bit better. GTasks for android is the diamond in the rough, the calendar/todo list view was perfect, but entering, categorizing and syncing of tasks is still coming along. The Datebk6 calendar view is the best I've ever found.

There is a very good chance I talked about DateBK5 / Palm apps.. check my history, I'm almost sure I have. Pimlical is http://www.pimlicosoftware.com/, and intended to be the next reincarnation of Datebk6 for android. I specifically left iOS to use this app because I knew he gets me. Actually, his app is the one that taught me to be productive, lol. It's not perfect though and I think Faraday has things I really want too.

Why am I sharing all this? I just want to pay $20 for an app that does all this instead of building it and getting distracted from my core business. I've often thought of sinking in my own money but as you know, building a polished, gestured app isn't a $1-5,000 app development effort. :)

I have spent 10+ years being completely and constantly overwhelmed with having too many projects on the go and getting them all done somehow, and that somehow becoming the norm that I can be peaceful with it as much as possible.

What I learnt is more complex solutions don't work as you get busier. They have to be simpler, quicker and easier than scribbling something down. Everything has to go to one inbox, including emails. It has to be even simpler, but help compartmentalize, self organize, self rank, and self generate as much of your daily list as possible.