Manual Planning
NOTE: Manual Planning is only
available with the Diary+ or Diary++ add ons.
JXCirrus Diary can do a pretty good job of planning (if you give
them good information). There are times when you just don't want
to go with the plan that it makes for you. JXCirrus lets you set
your own times that you want to work on a task.
These plans that you make stay fixed - A bit like an appointment
where you are working on a task. A long task can be broken down
into as many shorter plans as you like.
There are 2 ways you can create manual plans:
- Lock an automatic plan.
- Set the start and end time yourself.
Locking an Automatic Plan
This is probably the simplest way to lock down plans. If you like
the plans that the computer make for you, you can lock them in
place for just one task, or for the morning, or the whole day.
It may seem a tiny bit pointless to lock down the plans from the
automatic planning, but there are a couple of good reasons to do
this:
- You might want to lock in a plan for the whole day, and track
how you are going against it (to give yourself a bit of a push).
- You might want to lock in a couple of jobs during a day (and
the computer has done a good job of planning them for you), and
you want the computer to remind you to start them at their
allotted times.
Locking a single planned time is done like this:
- Go to the Day View.
- Look at the time slots planned by the automatic planning -
They have the
symbol. Pick the one you want to lock.
- Use the
button.
- The time slot you picked should now change to
which is the planned time symbol.
The system will now warn you if you reach that plan and haven't
already started work on that task (using a session).
If you want to lock a group of plans, hold down the Ctrl key (or
Command on Mac) while you are clicking on the plans in the list -
That lets you select a whole lot at once. Then use the same menu
to lock them all at once.
There are 4 other options for locking automatic plans (available
from the Planning
menu, which you can get to by pressing the
button).
- Lock Task for Day - This locks all of
the automatic plans for a task for just today (even if the
automatic plans are split over a number of different time
slots). When it talks about "Day" here, it means whichever day
you are looking at in the Day View.
- Lock Task All - This locks all plans
for this task, whatever the day is.
- Lock Everything for
Day - This locks all automatic plans for the day (where
day is whatever day you are looking at in the Day View).
- Lock Everything
- Locks all automatic plans.
Setting a Time for a Plan
The other main way to set a manual plan is to use
button. This
lets you manually select a time to work on a task.
When you select a task, and then use this function, a dialog will
open for you:
- At the top are fields where you can enter the start and end of
the time.
- Lower down is a list of suggested times for the plan.
Using the Fields
Lets say you have a 30 minute task, and you want to start at
10am...
- Type "10am" into the Start field.
- You will notice that the End field gets set automatically to
10:30 and the duration field is 0:30... That is because the
system knows that it is a 30 minute task, and it assumes you
want to plan for the whole task.
- If you only want to plan 15 minutes, go to the End field and
type "10:15".
- Now press "OK".
- The dialog will now pop back up! This is because the system
assumes that you want to plan the whole task, so it will keep on
going until you have 30 minutes of plans set up (15 to go for
you).
- If you didn't want to plan any more for that task, just press
Cancel.
- But lets imagine you do want to plan the rest at 11AM.
- Type "11am" into the Start field.
- The End field should get filled to 11:15 and the duration 0:15
- That is because you already planned 15 minutes at 10AM, and it
realises that you only need to plan the rest of the task.
Using the List
The planning dialog has a list of suggested times on the left
side of the dialog. This list contains any time slots that are:
- Using the time type that
you have set for this task.
- Aren't taken up by appointments.
- Aren't taken up by other plans.
All you need to do is pick an entry in the list, and your plan
will use that time slot. If the time slot is too short, the dialog
will pop back up and give you a chance to pick another slot (just
to finish off the task).
That is what the "Automatic" button does - It means, if you pop
up again, just pick the first available slot in the list and don't
bother me again.
There is also the "Ignore Work Hours" checkbox - Use this if you
don't want to restrict yourself to working on the task just during
the time type for that task. This gives you 24 hours a day (minus
other plans and appointments).
Moving Plans
Once you have planned your tasks, you might want to shuffle the
plans. You have 2 options here...
-> Move Plan Up
-> Move Plan Down
These options only work in the day view - They just move a plan
either up or down through the day view, swapping with other plans
as they go.
NOTE: Moving plans has a couple of tricks you might need to know
about:
- When you move a plan, and there is an empty time slot next to
it, it will move into that slot.
- If there is another plan next to it, it will swap with that
plan.
- If there is an appointment next to it, it will swap to the
other side of the appointment. Here is the
trick... If there is another plan on the other side of the
appointment, it may split this plan into 2 parts to
allow it to swap with the other plan. That might
lead you to have 2 different parts to this plan - One on one
side of the appointment, and one on the other.
Believe it or not, this is what is supposed to happen.
- Which leans to the most brain-frying part of all of
this... If you have a plan that is split in two on
two sides of an appointment, and you move one of them towards
the other, it will move the OTHER one up
instead. If we didn't do that, we would just end up
swapping the 2 parts of the same plan endlessly.
Confused yet?
Viewing Plans
There are several ways to see the plans you have made:
- View them in the Day View.
- When you click on a task in the, the Item View will show you the
next 5 planned times.
- If you edit the task, you can see the plans in the Entry Edit dialog.
Mixing with Automatic Planning
When the system carries out automatic planning, it treats manual
plans in the same way as appointments... It will not put any
automatic plans overlapping plans that you have set.
Clearing Plans
There are a few ways to get rid of manual plans:
- Go to the Day View, click on
the plan and press the
button.
- Go to the Entry Edit
dialog for a task, then the Plan tab, select plans from the list
and use the Delete button.
- Use the
(planning menu) -> Clear Task for Day to
clear all plans for the selected task for the day (whichever day
is selected in the Day View).
- Use the
(planning menu) -> Clear Task All to
clear all plans for the task whatever the day.
- Use the
(planning menu) -> Clear Everything for Day
to clear all plans for the day (whichever day is selected in the
Day View).
- Use the
(planning menu) -> Clear Everything to
delete ALL plans in the system.