One calendar, four tiers, and a fixed slot rule: that is the whole time management for developers system behind André Elias's planning video from April 2025. S-tier projects earn two weekly slots, A-tier projects earn one, and B-tier projects only fill gaps that happen to remain. He says the change cut his procrastination sharply because every block already has a named owner.
What Is the Three-Step System for Time Management for Developers?
Time management for developers who run several projects at once is a three-step system: inventory every project and its open tasks, rank the projects in a tier list by importance, and assign each tier a fixed number of weekly calendar slots. André Elias, a Brazilian developer who builds SaaS products while holding a full-time job, walks through his own version of this system in a video published on 3 April 2025.
The system is intentionally simple. There is no dedicated app, no time-tracking software, and no elaborate methodology. The planning document is a board with four parts: a project list, a tier list, a weekly calendar divided into morning, afternoon, and evening blocks, and a small idea board. Elias shares the document in the video description so viewers can copy it as inspiration, and he says the payoff is not more hours but fewer decisions, because each block already knows what belongs in it.
The steps below reconstruct his method in the order he presents it, with the concrete slot rules he applies to his own portfolio of projects.
Step 1: How Do You Inventory Every Project and Task?
The first step is a complete inventory of every active, recently finished, or still-planned project, with the tasks each one currently needs. Elias lists his own: building a course from scratch (platform plus recorded lessons), testing cold outreach and ad creatives for his SaaS, producing two YouTube videos per week plus a Friday live stream, and shipping promised updates, such as transparent checkout, to his Next.js SaaS template. He also considers paid ad creatives for that template.
He recommends including your day job in this list if you have one, because the job competes for the same calendar and needs to be placed somewhere in the schedule later. Each project gets sub-cards for its concrete pending tasks, which produces the overview that the later steps depend on.
A workable inventory, following his example, looks like this:
- List every active project, including your job.
- Under each project, add one card per concrete task (record lessons, write ad creatives, fix checkout).
- Keep finished or dormant projects in the list so the ranking step sees them too.
Step 2: Why Rank Projects in a Tier List Before Planning?
The tier list is a cold, deliberate ranking of every project, borrowed from the familiar S-to-D format used in gaming and entertainment videos. Each project from the inventory becomes a small card, and the cards are placed on shelves: S at the top, D at the bottom. Elias calls it a cold analysis because it forces you to admit which projects you actually believe in, independent of how much you enjoy them, and he describes it as a genuinely enjoyable exercise once done.
His own ranking shows how the criteria work in practice. YouTube and his flagship SaaS, Love You, sit in S tier because he sees high added value and viral potential. His course in pre-sale and a partnership with Rocket City, where he records a course and does mentorships for them, are also S, since both are immediate priorities. The SaaS template, Love You's sibling chat product, and his mentorships land in A tier: real potential, but not at the same level. A SaaS he built years ago sits in D tier, not because it is bad, but because he is no longer willing to invest time in it and has put it up for sale, hoping to sell it soon.
The ranking matters more than the labels. Once every card has a tier, the calendar in the next step has an objective input instead of a mood-based one.
Step 3: What Slot Rules Turn the Tier List into a Weekly Calendar?
The calendar is a week divided into days, and each day divided into morning, afternoon, and evening blocks. Hour-level granularity is optional; Elias prefers blocks because his schedule is not a standard eight-hour workday. If you do work standard hours, he suggests placing project blocks in the evening or on the weekend. The allocation follows one rule tied directly to the tier list.
| Tier | Meaning | Calendar slots |
|---|---|---|
| S | Total priority | 2 slots per project |
| A | Strong potential | 1 slot per project |
| B | Fill leftover gaps | 0 to 1, only if space remains |
| C | Long-term, low urgency | none scheduled |
| D | Not active now | none |
Applying the rule, his course and his Rocket City content each claim two weekly slots (Thursday and Friday for Rocket City, Thursday and Monday for the course), while each A-tier project claims one: the template, Love You on Tuesday, the chat product on Wednesday, and mentorships on Friday. YouTube is the exception with three slots, two of them on the weekend, because he deliberately bets on that channel. B-tier projects have no reserved time; they only enter the schedule when a gap appears. C tier is for long-term projects without much urgency, and D receives nothing by design.
Two practical buffers complete the calendar: short blocks for customer support emails, which he says take at most twenty minutes to answer, and deliberately empty weekend blocks for unnamed projects he is not yet allowed to discuss publicly. He also fixed a channel schedule on top of the calendar: a short video on Tuesday, a longer storytelling video on Thursday, and a Friday live stream where he builds a product from zero or answers viewer questions.
How Does the Idea Board Keep Future Projects from Blocking Current Work?
The final component is a lightweight idea board, a simple kanban with four columns: under consideration, has potential, executing, and finished. New ideas enter at the left and only move forward when they mature and spare time exists. Elias mentions using something like Trello for this, and the point is to park ideas without letting them interrupt the tiered schedule.
This board answers a failure mode he names directly in the video: having so many things to do that you freeze, question what to focus on, and end up doing nothing. New ideas compete for attention on the board instead of in the calendar, and execution only begins when a slot genuinely opens.
What Tools Does This Stack Use to Build the Products?
The planning system is tool-agnostic, but the products Elias builds inside it follow a recognizable stack. His course teaches building Love You, his most successful product, from zero with Next.js, Tailwind CSS, and Firebase, and he sells a pre-built Next.js SaaS template as a faster starting point. The course was in pre-sale with a discount at the time of the video, and the template is included free with the course.
For readers who want a structured program rather than a template, his paid course platform also hosts material such as the Crazystack Typescript course at crazystack.com.br, which covers typed full-stack development in the same ecosystem.
The tooling detail matters for one reason only: the planning method is independent of what you build. The tier list and slot rules would work the same for a portfolio of mobile apps, content sites, or consulting engagements.
Why Does This System Reduce Procrastination for Multi-Project Developers?
Elias's own account is that the system changed his day-to-day because it eliminates the choice of what to work on. With every slot assigned in advance, the morning question is not which project deserves attention but which card the calendar already names. He reports that his procrastination dropped considerably once every block had a single, pre-decided task.
The mechanism is visible in the structure. Decision cost is paid once, during the tier-list exercise, instead of being repeated at every transition. Weaker projects are protected from their own optimism: a D-tier product gets no slot, so it cannot silently consume an evening that belonged to an S-tier course. And because the ranking is written down, it can be revisited when priorities change instead of being renegotiated from memory every week.
FAQ
Do I need paid software to run this planning system?
No. The video describes a shared document with a project list, a tier list, a weekly calendar, and a small kanban board. Any board tool or spreadsheet reproduces it.
How many projects can this system handle at once?
The slot rules scale by tier, not by count. In the video, roughly ten projects share a week because only S and A tiers receive guaranteed slots; everything else fills gaps or waits.
What happens to D-tier projects?
They receive no calendar time. In Elias's case, a D-tier SaaS was put up for sale rather than abandoned, which is one way to exit a project without deleting it.
Does this work if you have a full-time job?
Yes, and the video assumes it. Elias holds a full-time job and allocates evenings and weekends, using three blocks per day instead of hourly scheduling.
When should I re-rank the tier list?
The video does not fix a cadence, but the ranking is a written artifact, so it can be redone whenever priorities shift, such as after a launch, a sale, or a new partnership.
Should I use hourly scheduling or blocks?
Elias chooses three blocks per day because he does not work a fixed eight-hour day. Hourly scheduling is a valid alternative if your calendar is more regular.
Is this system related to Bootcamp do Dev Doido or other creators like Gustavo Dev Doido?
The video does not reference either. The tier-list method here is André Elias's own; other Brazilian dev creators publish their own planning approaches, so compare them before adopting one.
What does a B-tier slot look like in practice?
In the video, a free Friday block becomes a B-tier slot when mentorship work finishes early. If no gap appears, the B-tier project simply waits until the next week.
Can this system handle shared projects, like a spouse's work?
Yes. The video shows his wife Carol's projects on the same calendar; her columns stay lighter because she focuses on other things. Shared calendars work as long as each card has one owner.
Turn Your Own Planning Videos into Written Guides
André Elias's tier-list method is a good example of knowledge that lives comfortably in a video but would be easier to copy as text: the slot rules, the tier definitions, and the kanban columns all read better as a reference than as a replay. Many creators sit on exactly that kind of material.
If you explain systems like this on YouTube, Skala Blog turns a video into a structured written article: paste the YouTube URL, transcribe it, and generate a publishable draft your audience can follow step by step.
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