Plans and the calendar

Most decisions turn into a schedule. "Post every Tuesday this quarter and ship two videos; we expect 40 demo requests by December 31" is thirteen posts, two videos, and a date to check the number. A plan holds that schedule on the decision itself, and the Calendar tab lays every decision and its plan out in time.

A decision's plan

Open a decision and use Add in its Plan section. Each item has a day, a title, and optionally a time, an owner, tags, a link to where the work lives, and a note.

Items are all day unless you switch All day off and give a start time, and optionally an end, for a webinar, a scheduled post, or a launch at noon. Times are kept in the time zone they were planned in, and everyone sees them in their own.

Tags say what kind of work an item is, such as blog, video, social, or event. Each tag keeps the same colour everywhere on the calendar, and tags you've already used are offered as you add new items.

• Repeat weekly adds one item per week through the day you pick. Each week is its own item, so you can move or skip one without touching the rest.
• Tick an item when it ships. Adding a link doesn't mark it done, because drafts have links too.
• Skip an item you decided not to do. Skipped items stay on the plan, crossed out, so it's clear later what was dropped on purpose.

You can change a plan freely while the decision is open. When you settle the decision, its plan is kept exactly as it stood. The settle dialog shows how many planned items were done, skipped, or never marked, so the lesson you write can tell "the idea didn't work" apart from "we didn't do it."

The calendar

The Calendar tab answers one question: what are you doing, and when will you know if it worked? It has four views, and it remembers the one you used last.

Week has a row for all-day items and an hour grid for timed ones. Drag an item onto an hour to move it there, or click an empty hour to add something at that time.

Month is a traditional calendar. Each day lists its items with a dot in their tag's colour, and a flag marks the day a decision gets checked. Drag an item to another day to move it, or use + on a day to add something there.

Quarter shows three small months. Each day shows how many items fall on it and is shaded to match, and the days a decision gets checked are outlined. Pick a single decision on the left to shade its run, from the day it was made to the day it's checked. Hover a day to see what's on it, or click it to see its items and readings beside the calendar, with a button to open that week.

List shows only the days with something on them, one after another.

Click any item to see it beside the calendar, with the decision it's part of. From there you can mark it shipped, skip it, move it, edit it, or remove it. Press Escape to close it.

Choosing what to show

The panel on the left starts with a small month to jump around in, then:

• Decisions work like calendars you can show or hide. The ones with the most planned in view come first, settled ones are folded away, and a search box appears once the list gets long.
• Metrics lays up to four of your metrics over the calendar. Metrics an open decision expects to move are listed first, with a target icon. In the quarter view one metric shades each day by its reading, and several draw a small bar each in their own colour. In week and month the readings sit under the date. A weekly metric's reading covers its whole week.
• Tags narrow to kinds of work.
• People narrow to one person's items. Click yourself to see what's yours.

Add puts an item on the calendar. Choose which open decision it's part of, or leave it as just a date: a holiday, an industry event you're watching, someone else's launch. If you're spending time or money on a date and expect something from it, record it as a decision instead, so it gets its own plan and gets checked.

Taking it with you

Export downloads whatever the calendar is showing, including the tag and person filters:

• Calendar file (.ics) opens in Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Calendar. Each item and each check-in day becomes an all-day event, with tags as its categories.
• Spreadsheet (CSV) has one row per item with its day, status, owner, decision, tags, and link.
• Copy as Markdown puts a checklist grouped by decision on your clipboard, ready to paste into a doc or a message.

Planning with zv1

Ask zv1 to plan with you, for example "plan our Q4 marketing around the November launch." It can record the decisions with their expectations and add the dated work under each one, and you approve every write first. zv1 can also read the calendar, so "what's on my plate this week?" gets a straight answer. See Ledger + zv1.