A Plan Comes Together
BubbleTimer can now help you plan out your day. If you fill in bubbles that are at 30 minutes or more ahead of the current time those bubbles are now grey planning bubbles. Planning bubbles are there just to let you know how you'd planned to spend your time. They do not count against goals or in the totals or charts.
Here is a shot of how I planned to spend this morning:
After doing some planning you bubble in your time as normal as the day progresses, but you are now able to see where you spent your time as you'd planned (no grey) and where you deviated from your plan (lots of grey). Eventually I'll use this deviation in some interesting data visualizations that show you how you do against your plans.
Here is what my not so on task morning looks like so far:
If you're not a fan of planning out your day, that's also fine of course. Ignore this capability. BubbleTimer is based on timing what activities emerge in your day. It's not important that you plan them out unless that's helpful to you. Doing some planning in the morning proves to be pretty useful to me in keeping my day on track and my time on activities that matter but your mileage may vary.
Two quick cautionary notes are in order: This is not meant to replace whatever you use as a calendar program. Don't try to do that. Also, this feature is to help you plan today or the next few hours. Don't go crazy and try to plan how you'll spend tomorrow and the next day and next week. As soon as you bubble in time on a day in the future the activities for that day become fixed and any activity additions and deletions you do today won't carry forward to that day.
The iPhone UI is oblivious to planning bubbles at this point. It neither displays them nor makes them. This will be addressed shortly.
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I have to admit, I'm a little afraid to use this feature. What if I end up becoming productive overnight? Will I lose myself in the process? I'm already noticing such an improvement in my habits just from tracking time and aiming for goals... this could change me forever!
Actually, I'm just as afraid that I'll let myself down by not sticking to my plan. :(
But seriously, I am excited that I have the choice of whether or not to attempt this planning, so thanks for making it happen! :)
I noticed that when I deviate from my plan, it doesn't automatically remove it, but keeps the plan bubble there. I think that's probably the right functionality, but I wasn't expecting it. Would it be possible to get a keyboard shortcut that removes the plan bubble at the same time as you add the "done" bubble? Like, ctrl, shift, alt, whatever.
I've been trying to use the planning bubbles, but I find that 30 minutes is an awfully long time in advance to guess how my use of time will actually go.
I can see why the very next bubble is not treated as a planning one, and I was expecting something like that because it makes sense. But the bubble after that, I can't guarantee that I'll be doing what I intend! Sure, it's really only a bit over 15 minutes from now, but I tend to get distracted really quickly when I least expect it... and/or for really long times.
If the planning bubbles could start just one bubble earlier than they do now, I would be able to catch more diversions from my intended actions!
As it stands, the best answer for me is to just leaving those bubbles blank despite having clear intentions of how I want to fill them.
But I am wondering: was it a toss-up between switching after one bubble or two, and why did you pick two bubbles? (You must be better at following through on your intentions than I am...)
Any chance you can make planning bubble fills more visually distinct? I know it's a light gray, but from a distance or a glance, I spend more mental energy than I'd like. How about making it substantially lighter, or a different color, or less neat / more neat pencil fill. (One could argue that a messy pencil fill should be the "plan", and a dark black, perfectly filled in oval should be the actual "record"). Thanks.
@Ian No, that's cheating! You didn't stick with your plan so live with that gray bubble there haunting you for the rest of your days. If you really want to erase your tracks it's one extra click on the planning bubble to make it go away. That's your penance.
@Qrystal I was torn actually between 0 bubbles in the future, 1 in the future, or 2 in the future. As it is now, I actually find it a bit annoying and I tend to do the same thing you do, which is to leave the next 30 minutes unplanned. I don't really like that. I picked bubbles in advance to also be black because of a comment on Get Satisfaction by j0dan: "Except the very next bubble which I sometimes fill in before it "happens". I'm not exactly sure how that got into my head as 2 bubbles ahead would be even better. I'm changing it now.
@JerryK: I like the messy plan, neat reality idea a lot. I'm nervous to neaten up the dark bubbles though because it's an aspect of BubbleTimer that people really notice and like. It gives it some character. So... maybe the right idea is to make the planning bubbles messier. As it is now, they are actually gray versions of the same 12 variations of dark bubbles. I'll think about this.
Thanks guys!
Sean
Thank you very much! Now I'm really glad I didn't keep my concerns to myself. :)
Also, I like the idea that planning bubbles should be messier, like a really hasty scribble that is about half as dense as the reality bubbles. That would totally enhance the amount of character already present (and I totally agree that neatening up the dark bubbles would detract from that!)!!
I seem to have a strange aversion to following a plan exactly... or at all. HOWEVER, I've come up with a mental trick that just might work:
DON'T PLAN. Instead, use the grey bubbles to GUESS how your day will go! Isn't it awesome to guess something right? Harness that awesomeness as a reward for knowing in advance how your day will probably go!
I am just about to start trying this, and I'll report back when I see how this works for me.
So Eric (who handles graphics) was insanely thrilled when I asked him to do 12 black bubbles... Let me tell you! Making them gray wasn't bad, but now I get to tell him to do 12 new gray ones instead. He's going to love you Qrystal and JerryK.
I'm kidding of course, he won't mind (too much). It's certainly the right idea though. I think the hastier gray bubbles will be cool.
Dispatching the request over IM now.
Do let me know how the guess psuedo-planning works out. I'm just such a HUGE planner I can't imagine having to trick myself. I can imagine the opposite. To do something w/o a plan I pretty much need to trick myself into thinking I have a plan.
-Sean
I LOVE the scratchy bubbles!
I'm not quite done investigating the Guessing-Not-Planning approach, but the new bubbles are helping! :P
The planning bubbles are now slashes (thanks Eric!). What does everyone think?
I ... kinda like it, actually. Having them stand out more is great.
However, it kinda brings me to propose another suggestion... something I was resisting suggesting, because there have been so many changes to the planning bubbles already! But since you went ahead and changed them again, I'm gonna go ahead and suggest it...
How about doing horizontal lines instead? The graphics can be made so they line up with each other, so if you're planning a block of time, it looks like you just drew a line through the bubbles.
Also, if you then go ahead and confirm that you actually did what was planned, the bubbles could still have a line through them, thus you'd be able to see that you planned and succeeded. That is an aspect that was not possible with the grey bubbles, and I found myself wishing for it.
(Just noticing I've been with BubbleTimer for exactly three months today, only missing about a week of bubbling over Christmas! Woot! <3!)