Advanced Planning in Tana

Planning in Tana is framed as a way to manage uncertainty by using longer horizons—half-year “super cycles” broken into six-week “macro cycles”—and then wiring those time blocks into a connected tag system. The core idea is that four weeks is often too short for most meaningful projects, while a year is too long to plan in detail. A half-year strikes a balance: it’s long enough to absorb change, yet structured enough to keep priorities and execution aligned.

Inside Tana, the system is built around “super tags” that interlock across four layers: super cycles, macro cycles, goals/experiments, and then projects/tasks. A super cycle spans roughly six months and contains multiple macro cycles (six-week blocks) plus slack time so disruptions like sickness or vacation still fit the framework. Each super cycle note holds an overall mission statement and a live query that surfaces the macro cycles already defined for that period.

Macro cycles function as the operational bridge between strategy and execution. Each macro cycle has its own start/end dates and includes goals and experiments. Goals represent what must be achieved during that six-week window—for example, “publish one YouTube video per week” or “publish one Twitter thread per day.” Experiments sit alongside goals and are designed to be testable within the same time horizon. An experiment includes an experimental status (planning, running, concluded), plus fields for hypothesis, interventions, and results—explicitly positioned as “n equals one” testing rather than formal scientific rigor.

Projects connect goals to deliverables. A project is linked to a specific goal and carries a status (such as backlog, in progress, done, dropped) and a “final form” description that clarifies what completion should look like. Tasks then link to projects and inherit the project’s structure. Tasks include status (to do, in progress, done, dropped, archived), due dates, and plan-for dates so work can be scheduled on a day even if it isn’t technically due yet. A checkbox mapping ties the task’s status to whether it counts as “done,” and clicking the checkbox jumps directly to the appropriate status.

The system’s real power comes from live queries and semantic “part of” relationships. On a daily note, a query filters to only the super cycle or macro cycle whose date range overlaps the current day, then expands to show the active goals. Another query can retrieve all projects that “serve” the current super cycle recursively—even when there’s no direct link from a project to the super cycle—because the chain of “part of” relationships runs through goal → macro cycle → super cycle. The same logic extends to tasks, enabling grouping of currently active tasks by project within the active macro cycle.

Overall, the planning method turns time horizons into navigable structure: half-year mission, six-week execution blocks, and a linked hierarchy that keeps daily work focused on what’s currently active and what’s connected to the next measurable outcomes.