Planning

Doing things later

Busy supports several specific commands related to planning -- that is, scheduling tasks for the future. They are done, defer, and activate. The task-specific commands handle items in the plan state and, in some cases, the done state.

The task commands accept filters. The done and defer commands reference the todo collection; the activate command references the plan collection. The default for done and defer is the top item in the collection; the default for activate is to activate only plans deferred to today or earlier.

Planning by date

Planning is by date, not time, and is relative to the current date according to the system clock.

There are two ways to add items to your plan:

  • Using the defer command to move existing items from the todo collection to the plan collection
  • Using the add command with a --when option to create new items directly in the plan collection

In the done command, the date can be specified using the --defer option (or by inputting a value after issuing the command). If the option is omitted, then the date can be provided as input during confirmation.

The date may take any of the following forms:

  • A specific date in YYYY-MM-DD format, such as 2018-10-28. Slashes are also acceptable, but the order is always year, then month, then day.
  • A specific date without the year in MM-DD format, such as 7-4, which will defer the item to that date in the future (even if it's in the next year).
  • A specific day of the month as a simple integer, such as 12, which will defer the item to that day of the month, in either the current month or the next month.
  • An integer, a space, and the word day or days, such as 4 days, which will defer the item to that number of days from today.
  • An integer without a space and the letter d, such as 4d, which is a short form of 4 days.
  • The word tomorrow, which is also the default if no date is provided.
  • The word today, which is useful for activating tasks later in the day.

As examples:

# Defer existing tasks 4, 5, and 6 to 4 days from today
busy defer 4-6 -w "4 days"

# Add a new task directly to the plan collection for tomorrow
busy add "Call the dentist" --when tomorrow

Note that the plan collection keep the task information from the todo collection along with the date information (as an absolute date).

To pull tasks from the plan collection and put them back into the todo collection, use the activate command. There are two ways to use the activate command:

  • With no filter, in which case Busy activates all the tasks scheduled for today or earlier, bringing the todo list up to date
  • With designated items from the plan collection; note that the activate command accepts item designation from the plan queue itself so use busy list -s plan first to get the right list.

Finishing and repeating

The done command removes the designated Task (or the top task if none is designated) from the todo state and adds it to the done state, with today's date to indicate when it was completed.

Optionally, a task can have a repeat value by adding a right angle bracket a relative date phrase (same as with the defer command).

  • check email > 1 day
  • phone mom > sunday
  • balance the checkbook > 6

The done command uses the repeat value as the default for its iteration.

Ready to get Busy?

Go deep with BusyML.