Planner, Today, and Calendar

The Planner and Today hold nothing of their own. They show the cards already on your boards in the workspace you are in, arranged by when they are due.

That is on purpose. A to-do list that lives beside your boards is a second place to keep in step with the first, and sooner or later one of them is wrong.

The Calendar is different: it also holds events. A school play is not a task. It has a start and an end, a place, the people it is for and a reminder the night before, so it gets a row of its own. Cards with a due date still appear on the calendar, marked as tasks, and are never copied.

Which one to open

Planner

the week, for deciding what happens on which day.

Today

one day, for getting through it.

Calendar

the household's events and your due dates, by month, week, day or as a list.

Planner#

Seven days across, Monday to Sunday, with an Unscheduled panel beside them. Drag a card onto a day to give it that due date, drag it between days to move it, and drag it back to Unscheduled to clear the date.

The Unscheduled panel is where the week actually gets planned. Everything without a date sits there in plain view until you give it a day or admit it is not happening this week.

Each day also shows your habits, so you can see that Thursday carries six tasks and four habits before you add a seventh. The strip at the top counts the week: tasks, done, still open, minutes focused and habits kept. Switch the Planner to its month view to jump to a different week.

To move several cards at once, check them and use the bar that appears:

Tomorrow, Next week, or a date you choose.

The priority matrix#

The Planner's Matrix view sorts your open cards into four boxes: Do now, Plan it, Hand off or batch, and Later, or not at all. It reads what the cards already say, so there is nothing new to fill in: important means high or urgent priority, and urgent means due within two days (overdue included). The rule is printed above the boxes, and from a tablet up the two questions run along the edges: urgent or not across the top, important or not down the side.

Drag a card to another box with a mouse, or use its menu (the three dots) on any device. Only what has to change changes: moving into Do now from Plan it sets the due date to today; moving out of the important boxes sets priority back to normal. The matrix comes with Pro, Family and Team.

Placing work at a time#

The Planner's Hours view is the week as hours, 6am to 11pm. A due date says when something must be done; a time block says when you will actually do it.

Cards you could do this week wait under To place: the ones due this week, the overdue ones and the ones with no date. Drag one onto a time to place it there for an hour, and drag a block to move it. On a phone, tap a card and then tap a time; the week's days are tabs across the top. In the phone app, switch the Planner to Hours under the week strip: it draws the day you picked by the hour. Tap the hours or To place to put a card there, hold a block and drag it to move it, and swipe to the next day.

Tap a block to change how long it runs (15 minutes to 4 hours), mark it done, move it, open the card or take it off the week. Each day's header adds up the time you have planned on it.

A card with no due date takes the block's day as one, so it shows up on Today and in the Days view too. A card that already has a due date keeps it: moving the block never moves a deadline.

Time blocks come with Pro, Family and Team.

Today#

Four sections, in the order you need them: Overdue, then what is due today, then Upcoming for the next three days, then Completed. Every board in the workspace feeds it, so a card from the launch board and one from the house board sit in the same list.

The box at the top adds a task due today. It goes into the first column of the board you used most recently. Type a day or a time in it ("call the bank Fri 10am !high") and the task takes that instead; see Typing a card in one line.

Press G then T from anywhere to get here.

Plan the day, close the day#

A strip under Today's heading offers the ritual that fits the hour: Plan my day in the morning, Close the day from mid-afternoon. Both are there all day; the one that fits is the bright one.

Plan my day walks four short steps, top to bottom:

1. Left from before. Each overdue card: bring it into today, let it wait with no date, or say it is done.
2. What matters today. Pull in anything due in the next few days that you mean to do today.
3. When you will do it. Give a card a time and it holds an hour on the day, the same time block the planner's Hours view shows. Skip any you will fit in.
4. One line for today. What would make it a good day.

Close the day shows what got done, then each card still open from today: Tomorrow, Later (no date) or Keep. Then one line on how it went.

In the phone app the strip sits on Today under the four figures, with the same two sheets.

Both lines go into that day's Journal note, as "Plan for the day:" and "Closing the day:" with a count of what got done, so the plan and the shutdown are there to read later, on any device, and the assistant can see them. Planning again the same day replaces the morning line rather than adding a second one.

What you finished#

Beside Today's list (under it on a phone): how many cards you finished today and this week, the last seven days as small bars, and how many days in a row you have finished at least one (with your best run). A morning with nothing done yet does not break the run. These are counts of real work and nothing else: there are no points, levels or karma here, on purpose.

The day's plan and shutdown and the counts come with Pro, Family and Team.

Morning brief#

On Pro, Family and Team, Today can send you the day as a short read every morning. Press Send me this every morning, pick a time on the quarter hour, and choose whether it is also emailed. It is off until you turn it on.

The brief covers what is due today or overdue and what is coming tomorrow. In a family workspace it also says who is where, what is for dinner, whose chores are due, and any allowance or bill that falls due. It only reads: it never changes a card, a chore or anything else.

It arrives as a notification, which reaches your phone if push is on, and opens on Today. With email on, it also comes to your inbox with a link at the bottom that stops the emails in one click. Change moves the time, and Pause stops it while keeping your choices for next time.

Each brief uses a few AI actions from your plan's monthly allowance. When the allowance runs out, the brief is skipped until it resets. The brief is written in your time zone at the moment you turned it on.

Calendar#

Month, Week and Day views, plus an Agenda list of what is coming. Weeks start on Monday, the same as the Planner, the habit grid and the money pages. On a phone the calendar opens on the day, and the month becomes a sheet of dots you jump from.

Each person in the household has a color, the same on every screen and on the wall display. The row of names above the calendar filters it: tap one or more people to see only theirs. Events that are for nobody in particular, like trash night, stay visible under every filter. To change someone's color, use the menu on their name.

Events#

New event (or G then C and a click on a day) opens the event sheet. Typing "swimming Tue 4pm every week @Maya" in the title fills the day, the time, the repeat and who it is for as you type; remove a chip and that field goes back. The sheet holds a title, the day or days, a time or All day, where it is, notes, who it is for, and up to three reminders. Anyone in the household can be on an event, including people without an account of their own.

Tapping a time in the week or day view starts the event an hour long. The end time is optional: press No end time under To for something that is a moment and not a stretch, like a flight landing or a pickup, and the calendar shows the start alone.

Times are kept in the timezone they were set in. A swimming lesson every Tuesday at 5pm stays at 5pm when the clocks change, and someone visiting from another timezone sees it at their own local time.

Drag an event to move it: to another day in the month, or to another time in the week and day views, in quarter-hour steps.

Repeating events#

Repeat offers every day, every week, weekdays, every two weeks, monthly on the same date, monthly on the same weekday ("the first Monday"), and every year. A repeat can end on a date or after a number of times.

When you change, move or delete one date of a repeating event, Margin asks what you mean:

Which dates change

This event

only that date. The rest of the series is untouched.

This and following

that date and every one after it. The earlier dates stay as they were.

All events

the whole series. Moving one date moves every date by the same number of days.

Reminders and changes#

A reminder arrives as a notification, and on your phone too if you allow them. For an all-day event it counts back from 9:00 on the day. When someone in a family workspace adds, moves or cancels an event, the rest of the household is told once. Several quick edits to the same event arrive as one notice.

Birthdays and anniversaries#

Add a birthday or anniversary from a person's card in the family hub or from a connection. It repeats every year, shows on the calendar, on the wall display and in the Daybook's coming-up row, and reminds you a week and a day before. If you know the year, it says how old someone is turning. A February 29 birthday is shown on February 28 in other years.

Dates from a school letter#

Add dates from a letter takes a photo, an image, a PDF or pasted text, and reads out every date it finds: days off, field trips, clubs, deadlines. Each one arrives as a card you can edit before anything is saved: the title, the dates and times, the repeat, who it is for. Confirm the ones you want, skip the rest. Nothing reaches the calendar until you confirm it. A date with a start time and no end ("arrive by 8:15") is saved that way and shown as 8:15, with no end time made up for it.

Each household also has a private forwarding address. Forward the school's email to it, and the letter waits under Letters to review with the dates already found. You can make a new address or turn it off in the calendar settings.

In Apple Calendar or Outlook#

Share and subscribe in the calendar settings makes a private link that Apple Calendar, Outlook and Google Calendar can subscribe to: one for the whole household, or one for a single person. The link is read-only and shows repeats and times correctly. Anyone who has the link can read that calendar, so revoke it from the same place if it goes somewhere it shouldn't.

The same place adds someone else's calendar to yours, such as a school's or a club's published calendar. Its events show read-only and refresh about once an hour.

Checklists#

Standalone checklists sit outside boards, because not everything is a project: a packing list, a pre-flight for something you do often, steps you would otherwise retype. Start one blank, from one of the five built in (moving house, pantry staples, travel packing, weekly cleaning, a party), or from a template you saved. What the household needs to buy this week lives on the shopping list, not in a checklist.

Any checklist can be kept with Save as template from its menu and run fresh next time.

Press G then L.

Google Calendar#

The sync button at the top of the Calendar opens its settings. You choose a direction (push from Margin to the calendar, pull from the calendar into Margin, or both) and how many days ahead to cover, anywhere from 1 to 365.

What travels which way

Push

due-dated cards become events, and a card's repeat rule goes with it as a repeating event.

Pull

events in the window arrive as cards on a board called Calendar. A repeating event arrives as one card per occurrence inside that window.

To see the family calendar inside Google Calendar without the two-way sync, subscribe to its private link instead (see In Apple Calendar or Outlook above).

Setting it up is covered in Integrations.