The planning ahead strategy allows you to "plan" tasks and projects for specific weeks and months.
Planning vs. Scheduling
Planning in Marvin is separate from scheduling a task to a specific day.
Before using this strategy it is important to understand the difference.
Start and End dates
To plan a task or project basically means to give it a start and an end date.
The start date means you don't want to work on this task before this date.
The end date means you want to have the task completed by this date (like an artificial due date/deadline).
The Planning ahead strategy
The planning ahead strategy allows you to plan tasks and projects for specific weeks and months.
A basic workflow example
A basic workflow is to
Figure out what you want to get done this month first (plan projects for this month).
Then allocate those projects to the specific weeks in this month.
Finally either work directly from the weekly list (e.g. fill your Matrix with it, use "the Wall")
or use your weekly list to plan your days (scheduling tasks/projects work sessions to specific days).
How to plan tasks and projects in the planning overlay
The easiest way to plan your months and weeks is by going to the planning overlay.
Opening the planning overlay
First, go to ☰ → Features/Strategies and enable the "Planning Ahead" strategy.
When you enable it, you'll be asked how you want to access it within Marvin:
To open it, either press "P" on your keyboard in the day/main view or click on the "Planning Ahead" link in the left sidebar (if you added it to the sidebar).
The planning overlay
The planning overlay has a rectangle for each week and month respectively.
Toggling between weeks and months
To switch between months and weeks use the keyboard shortcut "V" or click on these buttons in the top left corner:
Planning tasks and projects
To plan specific items for the weeks and months, open up the Master List sidebar with the icon at the top right or use the "X" keyboard shortcut.
You can now drag projects and tasks from the sidebar directly into a rectangle to plan it for this week/month.
How to plan tasks and projects directly
Click on the edit icon of a task or project and find the "Planned:" option.
Picking a week
To pick a week, just hover over the week you want and click. Or use the shortcut "This week" at the bottom to select the current week.
Picking a month
If you only want to plan the item for a month instead (less specific) click the month title at the top "March 2026" and then pick a month.
Un-planning an item
To remove the planned week or month from an item click the trash icon.
Using Hover Buttons Menu / Right-click Menu
You can always add shortcut buttons for planning and unplanning items by going to ☰ → Features/Strategies and opening the Hover Button Menu or Right-click Menu strategy settings. Once there, click on the "Add" button, then on "Action", and choose the desired action.