Multiple Timelines on Calendar

General
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How to use new Workflowy Calendar feature with multiple timelines/calendars

Recent #Untangled session produced a use-case that others might find helpful.

Let’s say you already have 2 or more separate timeline/calendars in your Workflowy. Since there is only one Workflowy Calendar, everything will live together under one Day Node. Here are some options of how you can package that data for easier consumption. I like to call them context overlays. They can be flat (tags) or structured (nodes) or any combination of the two.

Flat:

  • combine everything directly inside the Day Node — no separation by category/type — to have a complete view of your day

  • move things into your new Calendar by /Move to Date command

  • if there is too much stuff mixed in together in a single day, here are some additional overlays:

    • group/divide overlay
      • items can be moved around and sorted into logical groups and separated by dividers (type --- followed by a [space] in a new node)
    • tags overlay
      • add tags (#personal, #family, #job1 , #job2) so you can filter by various categories (they can be emoji tags as well, if that’s your cup of tea)
      • tags can be added to the Note Field section to lessen the clutter or at the very least standardize the view
      • if you only have 2 categories and one of them is used considerably more than the other, only use tags on the secondary one to limit the clutter and then exclude that tag when you only want to see you primary content
      • you’ll need to tag your items, which might result in too much overhead and unnecessary clutter
    • consider using nodes/structure overlay instead

Nodes/structure overlay

  • by category

    • have category (like personal, family, job1 , job2) nodes inside your Day Node
      • those nodes can be tags or some other specific format like .category so that you can filter for that stuff across your Calendar
      • if you actually want to filter for a category and have its contents expanded (shown) in the search results, use a little trickery: search using .category > -zzz, where zzz is something that would never be found in your nodes
    • if you mostly use the Calendar for one category, you can leave those items directly within the Day Node, and then tuck other categories away in their own nodes
    • you can create a template with categories that you will insert into Day Nodes as needed
    • you can still use /Move to Date command, and then sort things out when planning your day
    • if you are moving to an existing Day Node with the structure already in place, you can use /Move to Child command and use natural language (or type your date) to find your destination date (more trickery: if your Calendar node is your top-most node at the Home level, its matches will filter to the top) and then pick a Category within
    • you can Zoom In on the category for focus

  • by time

    • use time slot nodes inside a Day Node (templates would shine here)
    • time slots can be anything: hours, parts of a day, time blocks…

  • by some other criteria/combo

    • think of how you approach your day and create a structure that allows you to focus on the right things at the right time: can be more rigid using nodes or more flexible using tags
    • @frank.dg’s Timeline book is a great resource for ideas and inspiration

Bonus: View Overlay

  • if you’re feeling adventurous, you can switch to a Board View within a Day Node and have a Kanban board, Morning/Afternoon/Evening board, Projects board, etc.

Moving multiple existing calendars into the new Workflowy Calendar

As for the move itself, if you move multiple date nodes into the new Calendar and then use Calendar Layout, all of them would end up under an “umbrella” date node, thus keeping things separate. So if you have a primary calendar that you’d like to use, I would suggest moving that first and getting it into the new structure. Then move any other calendars/timelines you might have and initiate the Calendar Layout again. This way your primary calendar items will become the Day Node’s children, while the other calendars’ dates will be the children, and their contents — grandchildren.

• Date (Workflowy Calendar)

  • stuff from Primary Calendar

  • Date (from Secondary Calendar)

    • stuff from Secondary Calendar

The beauty of Workflowy is that you can conjure up your own system and it can change from day to day without the need to redo everything. You can use the built-in Calendar or not, you can have a separate section for Projects or Work stuff or Personal anywhere in your outline and work out of those nodes, or mirror things as needed to your Calendar, or move them, or even link them to a date in the Calendar (so they’ll appear in the Backlinks section). Here, I only outlined a few options for organizing more than one existing calendar/timeline node into a single Workflowy Calendar, but the possibilities are endless (including turning off the Calendar in Options and just using Workflowy dates, or take it a step further and turn off the Dates too and use user-defined date tags or forget about the dates altogether…)

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