If you think "I wish there were 20 of me" or "There aren't enough hours in the day", SuperMemo can help you with Tools : Plan.
Tools : Plan can help you do two things:
When using Plan you produce a list of activities and the desired time allocations for these activities. SuperMemo then checks the available time, and shortens all activities in proportion. If your days are repetitive, you can fine-tune your schedule to the last minute. If they are not, you can still benefit by planning in advance and tracking your progress as you go.
Plan can be used to plan your entire day, or it can be used to plan shorter slots, e.g. your daily learning slot. For example, your 2-hour-long learning schedule in the evening could look like this:
Using Plan to plan the entire day works best for people who are not limited by meetings, deadlines, and multiple interruptions. It is most suited for those who can freely schedule activities throughout the day. But, with some skill and effort, it can also be used by those whose days change at a minute's notice, and those whose days are not composed of regularly repeating activities.
Future society will strongly drift towards deadline-free, creative work that will excellently fit dynamic scheduling offered by Plan.
The main purpose of Plan is to keep optimum proportions of time devoted to particular activities in your schedule (e.g. 25 minutes for e-mail, 25 minutes for web surfing, 105 minutes for learning, 45 minutes for sports, 2.3 hours for the kids, etc.).
An optimally adjusted schedule is a powerful tool that can help you understand nuances of time-management. You can make one-minute daily adjustments to the schedule in order to maximize the effectiveness of your work, your health, your family life, and minimize stress and chaos introduced by poor planning. It will give you a quality insight into your own life. It will help you see the connection between your activities and their results. It will ensure that you stop neglecting lesser things that can produce major problems in a long run. Plan is highly recommended for people with low-stress tolerance and perpetual problem with organizing their day.
With Tools : Plan you first create a schedule and then execute it.
OptStart[n-1]+OptLen[n-1]=OptStart[n]
). If Work could start at 7:07 and the Work: Creativity slot at 7:36, you would be able to use the optimum 340 minutes for Work: Creativity. This column tells you how much the timing of slots departs from the optimum schedule as a result of fixed timing or duration. Your schedule template defines your optimum at which you should strive. However, in real life you will never reach this optimum. This is why you will always need to start a day with your schedule template and modify the schedule in real-time as you go. The process of executing the schedule may also use the sound alarm that will help you terminate activities when their time is up.
This is how the schedule could have looked after having been executed (as exported with Export on the toolbar):
Nov 08, 2006, Wed (17.6 h)
The above file is directly importable to your diary providing a daily record of your performance. Note than none of the activities lasted as long as planned (100%). The figures in the parentheses indicate the actual length (ActLen field), the percentage of time devoted to the activity as compared with the optimum time (OptLen field). Note also that the total time was increased to 17.6 hours on this particular day due to going to sleep 46 minutes later than planned (22:46 instead of 22:00).
Shortly before the end of the current activity, the alarm is raised (as in the picture below). You can either stop the alarm or snooze it by typing in the number of minutes to pass until the alarm is to be raised again.
If you turn off the computer or just exit SuperMemo, the alarm will not be raised. If you want to quit SuperMemo and still keep the alarm going, send SuperMemo to the notification area (formerly known as the system tray or the status area) with Window : Hide SuperMemo (Shift+Ctrl+G). You can see the time remaining to the next alarm by moving the mouse over the SuperMemo icon in the notification area. To bring SuperMemo back out of the notification area (colloquially known as the system tray), click its icon on your Windows desktop or in the area. You can also bring SuperMemo back with its Windows shortcut (if you have created one).
While the alarm dialog is up, it plays your selected sound file (use Menu : Alarm : Choose music to change the file).
If you keep overrunning your allocated time slots, the remaining activities of the day will progressively get squeezed. This is the main problem with using Plan. The problem, naturally, does not come from the system of optimizing your day with Plan. The problem comes from our natural tendency to add time to enjoyable slots, from being late, as well as from being interrupted by unexpected events (e.g. phone calls). If you do not religiously stick to the schedule, schedule optimization will not work! A vast majority of users of Plan report doing well only in the first half of the day, while activities scheduled for the evening usually get squeezed beyond usability. This is where schedule analysis with Delays comes handy. It helps you better understand your weaknesses, as well as weak spots in the schedule (i.e. activities for which you allocate too little time, activities which you tend to overrun, etc.).
Not only at the beginning, your schedule will require fine-tuning (i.e. adding a few minutes here, taking away a few minutes there, etc.). You may always want to reduce the time for breakfast and increase the time for sports or education; however, your plans may be unrealistic. In the exemplary schedule above, you may find yourself spending an average of 48 minutes for breakfast as opposed to the desired 30 minutes. To prevent this from happening, you should use the button Delays to honestly analyze your schedule and realistically adjust the length of activities that you never manage to complete in time or which never get enough time as compared with the plan. Use your currently executed schedule to analyze today's (or yesterday's) delays, and use your schedule template to correct weak spots.
The delay analysis of the schedule presented in the previous paragraph would produce the following outcome:
Delays: Nov 08, 2006, Wed (17.6 h)
Delayed: 03:17 hours
Extras: 00:00 hours
Lost: 03:42 hours
(exported: Thursday, November 09, 2006, 1:41:23 PM)
In the schedule above, there were delays of 3 hours and 17 min. There were no extra slots inserted. The losses in shortened activities stood at 3 hours and 42 min. Those numbers are relative to your originally desired values. Once you use Adjust, delays and losses should be of the same value; in this case: 3 hours and 28 min (not listed above).
It is easy to notice that Breakfast and news was the greatest schedule offender. You have devoted 70 minutes instead of the planned 30 minutes. This produced a 40 min. delay in the schedule. Your evening shower lasted 54 minutes instead of the usual 25 adding 29 minutes to the total delay. In conclusion you may decide to either improve your discipline (e.g. by taking shorter showers) or increase the desired length of time devoted to individual slots (e.g. increase the breakfast slot to avoid the bad practice of eating in a hurry). It is enough you go through the slots that produce delays. Extending these slots will automatically shorten all other slots.
As for the slots that produced negative delay, you may want to check for consequences of doing less than planned. Those may be strategic slots that you like less or execute too late (e.g. while being tired, or when the other activities in the schedule squeeze the slot in question out of the allocated time).
Once your schedule seems perfect, you should by all means avoid delays which call the whole idea of schedule optimization in question. You have to realistically adjust the lengths of activities and strive at completing individual slots ahead of time. This will prevent end-of-schedule activities from being a constant casualty of delays.
Once your schedule stabilizes and you can efficiently stick to its timing, you can use the button Adjust on the toolbar that will copy ActLen fields to Length fields. This will help you adjust realistic length figures upon schedule analysis. Usually, your first plans will by far exceed your abilities, hence the importance of the Adjust option. Note that in earlier SuperMemos, OptLen field was used in ActLen. This would not account for fixed-time slots that may require compressing preceding or succeeding activities. Now, even if you use fixed times (e.g. to perfectly time your nap, or to squeeze in an appointment), after Adjust, the % column should all be set to 100%.
Remember to use it only on your template schedule, or at the beginning of the day, otherwise you won't be able to do delay analysis (Plan will now think you are doing your timing optimally).
The following circumstances may call for special actions in the schedule manager:
If you would like to keep statistics of individual activities, group activities by starting their name with the same keyword. For example, name your SuperMemo repetition slots as Reps A, Reps B and Reps C. If you select Totals on the toolbar, SuperMemo will add up the time used for repetitions by adding the length of the three slots starting with the keyword Reps. If you want to modify the length of the activity in the statistics, e.g. due to a short break, list the corrected length immediately after the keyword. For example, if Reps B lasted 23 minutes, but you had to leave for the toilet, you could correct it to read as Reps 18 B. SuperMemo will then add 18 minutes of Reps to statistics instead of 23 minutes.
If you want to keep additional statistics, you can list them inside individual slots by preceding the keyword with ++ and following it with a statistic. For example, if you want to keep statistics of individual sport efforts in your 2-hour sports slot, you could write down the sports slot as:
Sports 120: ++Jogging 20 (two rounds), ++Gym 15 (low-back strengthening), ++Swimming 25, ++Sauna 20, walking back home
For the schedule above, the daily totals will look as follows:
TOTALS: Nov 08, 2006, Wed (17.6 h)
If you keep Monthly statistics update checked when using Totals, SuperMemo will store daily statistics in your monthly statistics file. If you check Annual statistics update, SuperMemo will collect all monthly statistics (from monthly statistics files), generate an annual statistics file, and display it in your default spreadsheet (e.g. in Excel).
For the above example, the following files will be used to store statistics:
If your schedule is overcrowded with multiple slots, you can group some of them together, and make SuperMemo randomly choose one on a given day, another on another day, etc. For that purpose choose Menu : Activities or press Shift+Ctrl+E. List the activities in individual rows of the Activity Options dialog box. Specify the length of individual activities and the maximum length of the slot in Length (min). On saving the new schedule with Save as, SuperMemo will randomly select one of the listed activities and choose its proposed length in schedule optimization (on condition the length is not longer than the maximum length allowed for that slot). For example, if you would like to alternatively browse New Scientist, cnn.com and Scientific American websites, and your time is too short to go to all these places in your reading slot, you can ask SuperMemo to randomly assign a single site on a given day, so that you could explore them individually. SuperMemo may then list the following entry in the schedule:
{#R: 16 Read NS | 10 Read cnn.com | 13 Read SciAm}
In this case, Plan will try to allocate randomly 16 minutes for NS, 10 min. for cnn.com or 13 min. for SciAm. As always, the actual length of these activities will depend on the allocation of time for other things on this particular day.
Instead of using random allocations, you can also choose to assign a different slot to each day of the week (use Choice method: By day in Activity Options). For example:
{#D: 10 Read: cnn.com | 16 Read: NS | 13 Read: SciAm | 16 Read: NS | 15 Read: Wikipedia | 16 Read: Economist | 16 Read: PCMag.com}
In this case, Plan will try to allocate 10 min for cnn.com on Monday, 16 min. for New Scientist on Tuesday, etc.
Use incremental reading instead of Plan to optimize time allocations to different learning subjects
Tasklists vs. Plan
Gray fields cannot be edited
SuperMemo Plan is not of much use beyond SuperMemo
From: Luis Neves
Country: Brazil
Sent: Dec 4, 2000
I would like to spend five hours on effective reading and learning starting at 6 pm. However, my interests are wide. Here are some things I would like to read: 3 daily newspapers, 1 daily Dilbert comic strip, 1 daily Linux news journal, 1 daily Internet news journal, 2 weekly magazines, 2 monthly science magazines, 1 on-line book of C language, 1 on-line book of TCL/TK language, 1 site for Kylix and Delphi, 1 neuroscience site and more. What would be my optimum strategy assuming I want to use SuperMemo and incremental reading?
Answer
You could best prioritize your entire learning with incremental reading. Proportions of individual subjects could best be determined by the priority queue. However, Tools : Plan can also be helpful, esp. if you need to add some reading on paper. This could be your exemplary schedule:
Reading&Learning (5 h)
- 18:00 - SuperMemo - incremental reading and importing new articles(81 min, 100%)
- 19:21 . SuperMemo - incremental reading of high-priority material(40 min, 100%)
- 20:01 . SuperMemo - core repetitions(40 min, 100%)
- 20:41 . Linux, C, TCL/TK - 2 articles(17 min, 100%)
- 20:59 . Internet - 1 article(13 min, 100%)
- 21:12 . Kylix/Delphi - 2 articles(20 min, 100%)
- 21:33 . Neuroscience - 1 article(20 min, 100%)
- 21:53 . reading on paper (weekly, science)(61 min, 100%)
- 22:53 . other (Dilbert)(7 min, 100%)
The plan above was built using the following assumptions:
From: Jarek Dobrowolski
Country: Poland
Sent: Fri, Aug 25, 2000 16:43
Tasklists are an interesting concept but they are too trivial a model of reality to be universal. For example, how can I best split 9 hours into the optimum amount for sleep and jogging? Should it be 8+1 or 8.5+0.5? Tasklists do not help!
Answer
Tasklists work well for a subset of optimization problems you will meet in your daily schedule. Your example is indeed entirely unsuitable to be handled with tasklists. Tasklists demand tasks to be well-defined, uniform and with good estimates on value and time. For example, they work great for prioritizing investments. SuperMemo has always been developed with the use of tasklists. However, you cannot prioritize your house chores and your shopping list using the same tasklist. This fails the uniformity criterion. You need two tasklists for that. Tasklist do not work well with deadlines (even if deadlines are included in the concept). Tasklist are not good at reflecting dependencies between the tasks. In other words they are far from universal. For the problem of optimizing your day, you should rather use Tools : Plan. There you could include 30 minutes of jogging, 8 hours of sleep, 2 hours of incremental reading and 30 minutes of core repetitions. Using delay analysis, you can easily make minor adjustments to your schedule on a daily basis. If jogging made you too tired, you could shorten the distance and the time slot. If you did not get sweaty enough, you could add 3-5 minutes and see the results on the following day. You could add some sleep time if you do not wake up within the slot. You could also add some time for core repetitions if your incremental reading floods the learning process with topics and results in low retention. Tasklist fit well with the Plan within a single uniform time slot. In that slot, you can prioritize your reading, writing, making orders in your house, etc. To sum it up: the model proposed by SuperMemo will regulate the length of the time slot with the Plan. Within your uniform time slot you can use tasklists to prioritize individual activities
Why can I not edit the Delay field?
Answer
Delay is computed automatically by SuperMemo and depends on the start time of a given activity as compared with the optimum time. Once you set the start time of an activity, its delay (in minutes) is fixed and cannot be changed. Only Start, Activity and Length columns are editable. The remaining columns are determined by SuperMemo. The value of those fields come from their mathematical definition and cannot be modified (as much as you cannot modify the number of minutes in an hour)
From: M.M.
Sent: Nov 19, 2009, 01:31:26
Question
I am using Plan to compile my learning time statistics. Why are unmarked/unchecked activities such as Reading included/counted in my 2009 Year Total?
Answer
All activities listed in the schedule are taken into consideration. SuperMemo has no way of knowing if you used Begin to mark the beginning of each activity and set up the alarm, or simply stuck to the plan religiously and completed it without using Begin. To simplify things, SuperMemo adds all activities from the schedule at the moment when you choose to save the statistics. All activities havetheir duration taken from the ActLen (actual length) column. The only exception are activities with a manual expression of the duration (e.g. ++Reading 22). If you do not want an activity included in the statistic, simply delete it.
From: zm
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 10:14 PM
I would like to see better integration of Tools : Plan with MS Outlook. For example, export plan and import it in MS Outlook
Answer
The main idea behind Tools : Plan is to perfectly adjust proportions of time allocated to individual activities during a day or during a learning time block. Those proportions are continually adjusted as you proceed with the execution, and such a plan is of little use without SuperMemo. If you only need to export a record of your daily activities, you can use the Export button. This will export Plan in the HTML format
From: SuperMemo R&D (Beta)
Country: Poland
Sent: Tue, Apr 09, 2002 19:55
Question
If I included all my slots in Tools : Plan, it would require 18 hours which is impossible to manage
Answer
That is exactly where Tools : Plan is supposed to help. We always want more time than we have. Either for work or for rest. The main idea of the Plan is to collect all activities that you would like to execute, give them as much time as you would like to give, and then ask SuperMemo to fit it all together. Your appetite can still be considered temperate if you need only 18 hours per day (after all this is a quite realistic number). However, if you happen to call for 28 hours, SuperMemo will still help you by compressing all activities proportionally. Then, with a daily execution of your schedule, and with the help of delay analysis, you will be able to hone your routine and find the perfectly adjusted proportions for all activities. In an extreme case, some activities will have to go. Others will get compressed to tiny slots. Tools : Plan will help you take a birdseye view of your day and look for efficiency bottlenecks
From: Beta
Country: CA
Sent: Tue, May 12, 2016
Subject: Undo in Plan
Question
Alt+Backspace does not work in the activity editor (Ctrl+E). What if I delete some text by mistake?
Answer
You can use Ctrl+Z or Undo on the context menu (right click). The undo is one-level only