User's guide
Ideal Year
Ideal Year holds your goals by life area, the tensions between them, and one year drawn a week to a row, with each thing you want from the year as a layer you switch on and off. It shows only what you have stated. Ideal Year is an app an extension brings, so it is there only when the owner of your LifeOps installed it.
The pageGoals, tensions, the year, its layers and the rule, in that order
In a browser, Ideal Year answers at /year and takes the full width of the window. From top to bottom the page holds Goals, Tensions, The year, Layers and Rule. Under the title is the year being drawn, which is next year until you set another on the Rule card.
Goals is one card per life area with one row per goal, in your own words. New area and Add goal add them, a row opens its goal to edit, and the dialog’s Remove asks first. Tensions are pairs of goals that pull against each other, each written as one side and the other. Every goal and tension on these cards is one you typed; the app suggests none.
The yearOne week per row, and every layer its own column
The year runs from the week holding January 1 to the week holding December 31, Monday first, with the month named where it begins. Each layer that is switched on is its own column of seven days, so two layers stand side by side and never paint over each other. The switches above the grid turn a layer on and off, and the browser remembers which you turned off. Add layer sits beside them.
Hover over a day, or tap it, and a box names the column and the day and then everything on it: the stay a date asks for, the weather band and why, a trip, a work event. Between the switches and the grid, a table puts each place’s weather into words, one row per place, and a key names the colours on the year as it is switched.
Combining layers into one answer is not something the page does for you. It draws each one so you can compare them.
Kinds of layerA layer is a plan, dates, work, ranges or a place
The Layers card lists every layer with what it holds, and Edit on a layer opens it. There are five kinds.
- Dates are for being somewhere on a day. An anchor (be there) draws a stay centred on its date in two strengths, the minimum and the ideal length; an awareness-only date draws a ring; your own birthday draws the days each side of it. A date falls on a fixed day or on the nth weekday of a month, as many holidays do. Where a stay actually falls around its date is not decided, and the page says so under the grid.
- Work holds holidays, and events with the travel days around them.
- Ranges hold a season to avoid, or sample programs you are researching, drawn striped.
- A plan holds trips (core days, extra vacation around them, or tentative), stays, and travel days marked with whether family is there and whether the night is in a hotel. When a plan is on, the dates and work layers are drawn inside its column rather than beside it, and a separate Trips switch hides the trips.
- Weather is one weather station, chosen by searching the national weather service’s list. Its column is colored by the rule below.
Weather and the ruleOne rule bands every place, and the bands are never picked by hand
A place’s days come from that station’s 1991–2020 daily normals, published by NOAA’s climate center (NCEI): the normal high and low, and the dew point where the station reports one. They are read once when the place is added; Read NCEI again on its card reads them afresh.
The Rule card holds one set of thresholds for every place. A day is Avoid from the avoid high up, Fits your rule from the fits high, OK, not great from the third threshold, and Too cold below it. A dew point threshold, off until you set one, makes a muggy day Avoid as well. Change a number and every place is banded again.
Where you know better than the averages, Add an override on a place’s card sets a band for a stretch of the calendar with your reason. The day is drawn in that band and its box says it is your override.
Where the nights goA plan adds up its nights and what they cost
Under the grid, with a plan switched on, a table counts each plan’s nights for the year as drawn: home, parents, travel, drive hotels and work trips the company pays for. Home nights are split by the weather band of the place the plan names as home. The costs come from the plan’s rent and state tax and the prices a night on the Rule card. When a comparison of your own has been entered, it is shown beside these, as entered.
On the phoneThe phone shows the year, and the web changes it
On the phone, Ideal Year draws the same year, a month to a card and a week to a row, with each layer that is on as a line of seven days inside its week. The Layers card switches them on and off, and the phone remembers the choice; the Key card names the colours. Every card folds and stays folded. Tap a day and the lines about it appear under its week. Goals, tensions and every change to a layer stay on the web.
A connected ClaudeA Claude you connect can read the year
A Claude conversation connected to your LifeOps has a tool that reads Ideal Year: your goals, your tensions and every layer’s year, in words. It reads; it does not change anything here.