Workload

Workload is a forward-looking estimate of how many hours your garden needs each week, and a tool for smoothing the weeks that are too heavy. It is built from your open tasks: each task’s type has a default time estimate (in minutes), and those estimates are summed by due-date week to produce the bars you see. Once you have completed a few tasks, the estimates move toward what those types really take in your garden (see “How estimates learn” below).

Use it to spot weeks that are too heavy before they arrive, not after — and then to do something about them without leaving the page.

Choosing a horizon

The switch at the top sets how far ahead to look: 4, 8, or 12 weeks. Eight is the default. Your choice stays in the page address, so it survives a reload and you can bookmark or share a specific horizon.

Reading the chart

Each bar is one week. The height of the bar is the total estimated hours of open tasks due that week. The horizontal line is your capacity — the number of hours per week you have set as your comfortable ceiling.

When a bar crosses the capacity line, that week is over capacity. If any week is over, a banner at the top names how many and points to the worst one; tap it to jump straight there. A week being over is not necessarily a problem — it is a signal to look at what is due and rebalance.

How estimates learn

Every completion can carry the minutes it took: the minutes field beside Mark done on Today (filled in with the estimate, so one tap keeps the estimate as the actual), the one-tap complete on the task list (which records the estimate), and the task page’s own complete form. Over the last year of those actuals, each task type’s estimate is pulled toward its real average in your garden, weighted so that a single unusual day cannot swing it. With no actuals a type stays at its default. A task whose estimate you typed yourself is never changed: the calibration applies only to the estimate the app filled in from the type.

Scope counts too. Task types that the model defines per asset (harvest, weeding, fertilize, bed turnover, pest check) multiply by the number of assets linked to the task, and per-plant types (tomato pruning, staking) multiply by the linked plantings. A weeding task across three beds is three times a one-bed weeding. Again this only applies to the app-filled estimate; a typed estimate is taken as is.

The whisker: the likely upper bound

Each bar carries a thin whisker from its top to the week’s p90, the hours the week is unlikely to exceed. It is the estimate plus a spread that comes from how variable each task type has been for you (or a default spread until a type has five actuals). A week whose whisker crosses the capacity line but whose bar does not is “likely over capacity”; the week’s panel says so. The legend under the chart names the whisker whenever one is drawn.

Overdue and undated tasks

Tasks that are already past due are folded into the current week so what is behind stays visible. They are drawn as a separate terra-colored segment at the base of this week’s bar, with a legend under the chart, and the week’s panel says how many hours of the total are overdue. The capacity check uses the whole bar (due this week plus overdue), so a large backlog keeps the current week flagged until you complete, reschedule, or skip it.

Tasks with no due date cannot be placed in a week. They are not in any bar; instead a line under the chart says how many there are, so a light-looking week is never hiding work you forgot to date. Give a task a due date and it appears in its week at once.

Weeks run Monday to Sunday on your garden’s own calendar date, not the server’s. The garden’s timezone is picked up from its location the first time the forecast runs; a garden with no location uses UTC. A task you have started (status “In progress”) still counts as open work and stays in the forecast until it is done.

Adjusting a busy week

Tap a week’s bar to open its detail panel and see the tasks driving that week. For an over-capacity week you have two ways to rebalance (writers only):

Smooth this week spreads the week’s lowest-priority tasks across the lighter weeks ahead until it is back under your capacity line. It moves their due dates only — nothing is deleted.
Defer on a single task pushes just that task to the earliest later week where it still fits under the line (or, when no week can hold it, the lightest one).

Only maintenance work moves: weeding, compost turns, tool and irrigation maintenance, planning sessions, harvest processing, canning, freezing and seed saving. Sowing, transplanting, harvesting, watering and interventions are tied to the plant’s calendar, so they are listed in the panel without a Defer button and Smooth leaves them where they are. To move one of those anyway, open it and change its due date by hand.

You can also tap any task to edit it right there — push its due date to a lighter week, trim the estimate, change priority, or update the details — without leaving the chart. Either way the forecast recomputes immediately, so the bars reflect the change at once. Use the back arrow to return to the week’s task list. Read-only members can open a task to view it but not edit, and do not see the rebalancing actions.

Per-garden vs global

Per-garden workload (/g/your-garden/workload) — the forecast for one garden, with a capacity line based on that garden’s effort settings.
Global workload (/workload) — all gardens stacked in a single chart. Each garden has its own color. The capacity line is your global override, or the sum of per-garden capacities if no override is set.

Setting capacity

You can set how many hours per week you want to spend in a specific garden in Garden settings → Effort. To set a global ceiling across all gardens, go to Account settings → Global workload capacity.

Leaving capacity unset means Evengrow uses a default. Setting it explicitly makes the spike line meaningful.

Beside the capacity input, and under the capacity figure on the Dashboard, the app shows what you typically complete: the median of your completed hours per week over the last eight weeks, counting the minutes you recorded (or the estimate when you did not). It is a reading, not a limit; use it to set a capacity you actually keep to.

Tips

Tasks without a due date do not appear in the workload chart; the count under the chart tells you how many are waiting for one.
Completing or rescheduling tasks immediately changes the forecast. If a week is spiking, moving a few tasks back a week or marking them outsourced will flatten the bar.
The AI proposals take the forecast into account — it tends to suggest lighter tasks for already-heavy weeks.
Outsourced tasks are excluded from your personal workload by design. If a task is hired out, it should not count against your time.