Getting Started
Time estimates and realistic planning
Use time estimates to see whether your plan fits before the day gets away from you.
2 min read
Why estimates matter
Juno compares the total estimated time of today's tasks against the hours you actually have between your workday start and shutdown. Without estimates, the planner can only count tasks — not workload.
Add a time estimate
Open a task and use the time estimate field (clock icon). Pick from the suggested durations or type a custom value (e.g. 45m, 1h 30m).
You do not need perfect estimates. A rough size helps you spot an overloaded plan before committing to it.
Where estimates show up
- Morning ritual uses estimates to compute whether today is realistic.
- Calendar planning uses estimates to draw task projections around meetings.
- Add to Calendar uses the estimated duration when it creates task time blocks.
- The Today column shows planned and actual time for the selected day.
- The workload counter can show total remaining time or actual vs planned progress.
- Stats can show how much focused time you actually spent across contexts and tags when that section is enabled.
Planned vs actual time
Planned time comes from the task's estimate and any calendar blocks scheduled for the selected day. Actual time comes from time you tracked while working.
Open a task to see the all-time actual total. On task cards and the calendar, Juno focuses on the selected day so yesterday's work does not make today's plan look more complete than it is.
When work does not fit
If a task does not fit inside the day or inside its context's schedule, Juno can show overflow warnings on the task and projection. Reduce the scope of the work, defer the task, or move another task out of today. Change the estimate only if your understanding of the work has changed, and extend your schedule only when you really have more time.
How to estimate well
- Start with approximate durations and refine them as you learn.
- Estimate the focused work, not interruptions or context-switching.
- Track how off you are for a week. Calibrate from data, not optimism.
- Break larger commitments into smaller tasks when they need separate blocks of time. Use subtasks to describe the steps within a task.
When a task has no estimate
Planning still works, but the result is less useful. The fastest fix is to estimate only the 5–10 important tasks of the day, not everything.