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Morgen’s AI Planner creates daily to weekly plans, recommending when to work on which tasks. Your daily plans are designed based on your available capacity, priority levels and upcoming due dates of your tasks, and preferred way of structuring your day.
Even with the AI Planner, you stay in control of your plan. Once a plan is generated, you are invited to review and adjust it while in preview mode before choosing to approve and save it.
What you will need to use the AI Planner
To use Morgen’s AI Planner, you will need:
- Tasks in Morgen. These can be tasks imported from your to-do apps and project management tools through one of our integrations, or created using Morgen tasks.
- At least one Frame. Frames are a way of templating when you want to work on which type of task. Morgen’s AI Planner schedules tasks in Frames based on the filters you’ve applied, priority levels and due dates of your tasks, and your availability. Learn more about Frames in this guide.
We recommend using Frames to create a template of your ideal week. To start using the AI Planner, having multiple Frames in a week will give you a good feel for how the planner prioritizes and schedules tasks.
Set your default preferences for the AI Planner
Though you can always adjust settings during each planning session, we recommend configuring your default preferences for the AI Planner.
Access your preferences by clicking Open Preferences when the AI Planner is on.
Alternatively, access the AI Planner preferences:
- Click on your profile picture or initials in the bottom left corner of your desktop app
- Select Preferences
- Select AI Planner
Here you can adjust:
- Plan intensity levels, specifically the frequency of breaks during long work sessions
- Default duration for tasks when no time estimate has been provided
- Task duration by an additional 20% when scheduled to ensure you have the time you need to complete the task.*
- When tasks with long time estimates should be split into multiple work sessions/across multiple Frames. This is especially important if you have tasks with estimates that exceed the length of your Frames.
* Most people overestimate their capacity and underestimate the amount of time a task will take. This phenomenon is known as the Planning Fallacy and is one of the reasons why daily plans tend to be more ambitious than achievable. We believe the best plan is one you can achieve so we recommend inflating time estimates by 20%.
How to run the AI Planner
To open the AI Planner, in your Morgen desktop app, click the AI Planner button in the upper right corner. Alternatively, click on the title of a Frame and then select Start AI Planning here.
You will be brought into a preview mode, where the AI Planner will generate a recommended plan of scheduled tasks in your upcoming Frames. The recommended scheduled tasks will pulsate over your Frames, making it easy to distinguish proposed tasks from those already booked in your calendar.
How to tune the proposed plan using the settings
While in preview mode, you can easily adjust your plan using the sliders in the menu on the right side or manually make changes directly in your calendar.
The sliders in the menu make it easy to apply changes across your plan including:
- planning more or fewer days at a time. At most, the AI Planner can propose plans for the next 8 days.
- adding or reducing the number of breaks in your schedule. We recommend breaks for more sustainable and achievable work sessions, but leave the pacing up to you.
- changing the default duration of tasks where no estimates are included.
- splitting tasks with long time estimates into multiple work sessions.
As you adjust these settings, changes will be applied to your recommended plan, making it easy to see the direct impact of those changes.
We recommend planning 1-2 days at a time when starting to use the AI Planner. This will give you a feel for the intensity of the plans, accuracy of time estimates, and task selection based on your filters. You can then make adjustments to your set-up as needed.
If you don’t always include time estimates in your tasks or you use an integrated tool that doesn’t have a property for estimates, you can add a duration tag to task titles or notes. For example, Morgen will interpret the inclusion of [30m] or [1h] in titles or notes as the associated time estimate.
How to manually make changes to your plan
You can also make direct changes to your calendar during the preview to adjust the plan. For example, you can:
1. resize proposed scheduled tasks, increasing or decreasing the time dedicated to the task. You can do so by pulling up or down the bottom edge of the task in the calendar or right-clicking on it to select an alternative duration.
2. remove a task from plan by clicking on it, then Del on your keyboard or right-clicking on it and selecting x Ignore task from the menu. As you remove tasks, other tasks will be scheduled if they meet scheduling criteria and fit in the Frame.
3. add a task to a Frame by dragging it from either the AI Planner list of unscheduled tasks or from the task panel on the left. In doing so, you’re reprioritizing the AI Planner’s recommendation and signaling that a different task needs to be given precedence at that time. Other proposed tasks will either be removed or shuffled elsewhere depending on the time available in your Frames.
4. add an event over a Frame on the fly. If have an event that coincides with a Frame but isn’t yet in your calendar, you can add it while in preview mode to prevent tasks from being suggested at that time. If your event has a location and you use the travel time workflow, the AI Planner will additionally not schedule tasks over the travel time blockers.
Finally, if you have multiple calendars connected in Morgen, changing which calendars are visible during planning may also impact the proposed plan. This is because our AI Planner takes into account visible calendars when planning. For instance, if the AI Planner is scheduling tasks in your work calendar Frames, if you then make your personal calendar visible at the same time, it will then adjust the plans to take into account personal appointments and scheduling conflicts.
This also means that if you have Frames in multiple calendars, only those visible when you open the AI Planner will be scheduled. (Here’s a guide about creating shortcuts for your visible calendars using calendar sets.)
Tasks to consider when adjusting your plan
In the AI Planner menu, you may have some tasks listed that are not scheduled but that we have identified as time-sensitive. The tasks listed are overdue or have a due date approaching.
These tasks may have been excluded from your plans due to:
- Insufficient available time. Because of a combination of criteria, other tasks were prioritized first and filled the time available in your Frames.
- Filter parameters. The filters on your Frames excluded these tasks from being identified and scheduled.
- Calendar visibility. When in the AI Planner mode, only Frames in the visible calendars are planned. Tasks related to a Frame in another calendar may have been missed as a result.
- Task duration that exceeds availability. If you have tasks with a long duration and haven’t opted to split long tasks into multiple work sessions, they might not fit in any Frames.
You can manually pull any of these tasks onto your calendar while in preview mode and override the recommended tasks at that time. Alternatively, if you want the AI Planner to include these tasks, you can adjust your preferences, visible calendars, or filters. Finally, if they are overdue tasks that are no longer relevant, you can mark them complete and they will be removed from the list.
How to save or delete your proposed plan
Once you’re satisfied with your plan, click Schedule all in the AI Planner menu. All tasks will be scheduled in your calendars and you will exit planning mode.
If instead, you’ve decided you don’t want to accept the proposed plan, simply tap Esc to exit planning mode. The plan will be disregarded and you will return to your previous view in Morgen.
If your plan doesn’t look as you would expect it, here is a guide on troubleshooting issues with AI Planner.
