Time Planner:Family and friends are what truly make sense
"Family is not an important thing. It is everything", "Old friends are like a pure gold" - those quotes are made to motivate us to put more time and effort to our relationship with dear ones. And yes, sometimes we just don't have enough time for them, but what if it's more about the quality not quantity of time together? Here Time Planner app can really help out with managing our time for important relationships.
Here's what we can do to have our personal and social life more organized:
- Think about with whom and what you do during your friends- and family-time.
- Plan those things, even though the plan might be very approximate.
- Add reminders so you remember your plans in a daily hustle.
- Track important things to get some stats.
- Analyze the statistics so you get some ideas how to add more joy to your family time, or to add more family to your joy time )
Contents
Create categories
Imagine we'd like to implement some scientists' recommendations in order to be happier interacting with our dear ones, so we decide to have 8 hugs every day (by the way, there are at least 10 reasons why it's so great). Lets create a subcategory "Hugs" in new category "Family".
- Tap on big "+" button in Control tab and choose "Category".
- Enter the name (Family) and choose the parent category "Root".
- Choose its icon, icon color etc. and tap on "Save".
- Tap on big "+" button in Control tab and choose "Category" again.
- Again, enter the name (Hugs) and choose the parent category "Family". This way it's going to be a subcategory.
- This time let's choose its icon from file system, taping on the button to the right of icon button. Note that the color (colors) of the icon from the file system is not applied to the color of the activity in the app, so please choose for it the closest color from the color palette. Then, tap on "Save".
Also we can have a list what we can do, for instance, together with our kids, so whenever we have a minute for them, we don't go idle thinking what we should do. By the way, there was a study that revealed one of the main reasons why fathers spend little time with their children - they simply don't know what to do with them. So, if you're a mom, it might be a nice idea to create such a list for the father of your kids :)
- Tap on the activity in Control tab to open the task list.
- Then tap on "Add task" button.
- Type the name of a task, and adjust it the way you like. Use priority marks and levels of offset for tasks so the task list is easy to navigate.
- Tap on "Add one more" button (right to the "Save" button on the action bar) and this task is be saved and a new task creation dialog is opened, so you can keep adding new tasks in one tap.
- In a task list, you can touch and hold the task, and move it slightly to the right so it changes its offset - it becomes a subtask.
Add friends & family to your daily plans
Let's embed people that are dear to us in our schedule, as well as remember all important dates. Even if we are unable to fulfill everything we planned, we will at least think about our precious ones, and can give them a cheering smile and say a kind word - it's not time-consuming at all! But if we planned nothing, we might be dragged in a hustle so much that we risk to forget about them.
So here is how you can create the list of birthdays and anniversaries in this app:
- Tap on the menu button right to the category's name in Control tab, and choose "Scheduled activities".
- Tap on "Add scheduled activity" button.
- Choose event as a type of scheduled activity, and set the rest the way you need, then tap on "Save".
- Please note that "events" are featured in Schedule tab, but not in Logging tab, as there is nothing to be logged.
Reminders that help you out
Don't let ourselves forget about something important like best friend's birthday or wedding anniversary, using reminders that can be set to trigger even a week before the day X.
- Find the scheduled activity you need to add reminder to, in "Scheduled activities" list or in Schedule tab, tap on it to edit.
- Tap on "Add reminder" in the end of the dialog appeared.
- Choose "allocated" as reminder type, set it to trigger when you want it to, and adjust other items as well.
- Note that you can create any amount of reminders to single scheduled activity so you are all-armed by the time the "due date" comes. In our case, we'll be absolutely ready to mom's birthday.
Track what you do
We log time and values of a certain activity once we've started, so we are able to get some stats after some time. Moreover, the moment of logging helps us to switch our mind to the new activity we're about to start.
- Find the bubble of activity needed in Logging tab.
- Tap on it once you start performing the activity, and tap again once you're done (if that's the time that you log), or tap on a "quantity-bubble" every time you have it done one time, - in our case, had a hug )
- Note that you can also log anything done, creating the logged activity or using "Timer" feature.
Statistics about things that are hard to measure
Relationships are the expression of our emotional nature, our need as human beings. And it is not the area where competition and productivity race should rule. So the statistics regarding this area of our life are supposed to inspire us to organize our lives the way we have more joy in our daily communication with dear ones.
- In Logged top tab (in Statistics tab) press big wrench button on the left, to open the settings drawer so you can adjust the stats you'd like to look through.
- Put the drawer back and review the pie chart of logged quantity. In our case we can see 17 actions of love to our daughter, and 43 hugs this week! We bet that if we haven't planned those little things and haven't seen them in our schedule regularly, they would not happen that often.
So what?
According to the famous 75-year-old study of happiness the main things that makes human life long and happy is active social life and being in a securely attached relationship to another person. Those things are worth working on and are worth devoting time to, though it's more about the quality than about quantity. So let's consider even small actions of love to be important! After all, everything we do for education, job and home is devoted to becoming happier and to making our dear ones happier, isn't it?
Please let us know how the app helps you to keep in mind and to do what's important to you, we will really appreciate it!