Time Management HowTo

Time Management HowTo

General

To find out if your FreeMind runs the Time Management plugin, type Ctl-t at a node - this should open a little window showing a calendar. Or you can find an entry Show Calendar... under the Tools Menu.

The Time Management Plugin gives you the following additional functionality:

• associate a node with a reminder
• add a date to a node
• list the nodes with reminders in chronological order

This can be used e.g. to add deadlines to nodes, and to be reminded at deadlines or to review the urgent tasks for the next week.

Reminders

When a node has an associated reminder, the node will show a little clock icon.

When the reminder runs off, i.e. the date/time of the reminder is reached, the icon changes to a blinking little clock/Remember Bell item for the node itself, and to a blinking little clock/Flag icon for supernodes. This way you will be reminded even if the node with the reminder is collapsed in the hierarchy

Time Management Windows

There are two main windows with the time management mode, which are activated by selecting Show Calendar... and Show Time Scheduler List... in the Tools menu.

The Calendar window will give the functionality to set date/time and to define/remove reminders. The Time Scheduler list gives you a chronological list of the nodes with reminders.

Time Management Functions

The Calendar window gives you some functionality which applies to the selected node. Note that you cannot re-select the node while the window is open.

The Calendar windows is activated by pressing ctl-t at a node, or by selecting Show Calendar... from the menu.

Setting Date and Time

When opened the first time, the calendar will probably show the current date and time. You can however set date and time to arbitrary values which are then used in the following commands.

To set the date, you can

• change the day by clicking a day button
• change the month by
  • selecting it from the drop down menu in the upper left corner
  • increase/decrease the current month by the little up and down arrows right to the month's name
• change the year by
  • entering a new year into the text field at the top
  • increase/decrease the current year with the little up and down arrows right to the year's text field

To set the time, you can

• just type into the two text fields for hours and minutes

You can reset the date to today by clicking Today.

Setting a Reminder

Once you have set a date/time, you can set a reminder for this date/time by just clicking Remind Me At This Date. Your selected node will be tagged with a clock icon. When the date/time is reached, the node gets a blinking clock/Remember Bell Icon, and all parent nodes will get a blinking clock/flag icon.

Removing a Reminder

To remove the reminder of a node, select the node, open the calendar window, and click Remove Reminder.

Appending the current date

By clicking Add The Current Date, you can append the set date to the end of the selected node.

Close the calendar window

You can close the calendar window by clicking Cancel or the usual window close button.