AAP Help. Setting Time Parts

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Setting Time Parts

Now you should decide how much time on average you should allocate to each activity. No need to think hard and try to guess absolutely right from the start. Later you can find out from statistics how much time you actually spend for an activity on average and change time part for the activity if necessary

We begin with activity Work. Let us assume that you have decided to spend for your work 8 hours five days in a week that is equal to 8x5=40 hours per week. To input this time part first move rectangular cursor to row Work clicking in this row (we will call it activate a row). For our purpose it does not matter which cell of Work row is activated .

Click RIGHT mouse button in Work row. The pop - up menu appears . Select Change Time Part item clicking with LEFT mouse button at this item. Adjust Time Part dialog box appears .

For Work activity it seems more natural to input time in terms of hours per week. To change the time units click inside "In terms of" box and in appearing drop down list select (click on) "hours per week" item like in the next image fragment .

Now Adjust Time Part dialog should look like . Click in the box with 0 inside at the bottom left corner of the dialog, delete 0 with Backspace key and type how much hours you plan to spend for the work in a week. As we agreed above, for this example it will be 40 hours. You can type 40, but if you would like to see how AAP does arithmetic calculations for you, you can as well type 5*8 (that corresponds to 8 hours 5 days a week i.e. 5 times 8). After typing 40 or 5*8 click OK button.

The fragment of Input Panel should now look like . For the sake of comparison with other activities all time parts in Input Panel is always shown in % of waking time. However you can always see a time part in its natural units if open Adjust Time Part dialog as you did for setting the time part above or in Activity Item Info dialog box. Absolute values of % in Time Part % column in Input Panel are not so important. They have no direct influence on priorities. Time Part % are shown so that you can compare how much time you have planned for one activity RELATIVE to other one.

Let us assume in this example that to keep good Health you have decided to run (do jogging) 30 minutes every day. So for Health hours per day seems to be are more natural units than hours per week as for Work. Enter the time part for Health similar to as you have done it for Work before. When you open Adjust Time Part dialog select "hours per day" instead "hours per week" and type 0.30 or 0:30 (i.e. 30 minutes) instead of 40 hours. Than click OK. Note that in this version if you enter minutes alone, you still must explicitly type 0 for hours as 0.30 or 0:30 in the example above.

For the sake of the example we assume that you plan to spend for Relationships about 2 hour every working day and 4 hour every day at weekend that is 2x5+4x2 = 10 + 8 = 18 hours per week. Input time part for Health similar to as you have done it for Work before. Do not forget to select hours per week as your time units. The only difference is that you should input 2*5+4*2 or 18 as planned time instead of 40. After long time it might happen that you forget why you have desired to spend 18 hours per week for Relationship.

To remind yourself that you planned to spend for the Relationships about 2 hour every working day and 4 hour every day at the weekend you can write down the corresponding note in Memo of Activity Item Info dialog box for the Relationships. Of course you can do the same for any other activities you like.

At the end of this lesson the fragment of Input Panel with your activities should look like . If your values in Time Part % is different from those in the image, open Adjust Time Part dialog for the corresponding value once more and check whether you have select the time units and entered the time that was recommended in this lesson. If it is not the case, enter new correct values or change the selection and click OK.

Now all is ready for everyday input of the approximate time that you spend for the activities and compare the priorities in Priority Panel to decide what to do first. Entering the time is simple and easy (much more simple and easy than setting the time parts). Nevertheless we believe that some features, which are related to this process, are worth to discuss and we will do it in the next lesson.

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