Plans in Groupthink now ask “Did this happen?”

Plans fall through. A coffee gets pushed to next week. A dinner gets cancelled the afternoon of. If you write a plan down, your record of that person should not assume it happened.

Groupthink is a memory for the people in your life and work. You can now log a plan with someone before it happens. When the day comes, you say whether it happened, and the record follows your answer.

Log it ahead of time

Open the person’s page and click Log. Set Date to a day that hasn’t come yet. Under the date, the form tells you: “This date is still ahead, so it will be saved as a plan.” Add a title if you like, then click Save.

Say Ines Vargas logs a coffee with Theo Marchetti for Thursday. On Theo’s page the plan shows as Planned · Thu, Oct 15. It does not count as time with Theo yet. It is something Ines means to do.

The Log an Interaction guide covers the form in full, and this post covers logging a call, a text or a visit after the fact.

Answer the question on Today

On the day of the plan, open Today. A section called Did this happen? lists each plan whose day has come, with the people on it and the date. One click answers it:

• Happened counts the plan as time with everyone on it, on the plan’s date. A box opens right away asking How did it go? Write a line or two about what you talked about and click Save debrief, or click Not now.
• Didn’t happen tells Groupthink the plan fell through. The row reads “Marked as didn’t happen. It doesn’t count as contact.” If the plan just moved, click Pick a new date and choose a day ahead. It becomes a plan again.

Clicked the wrong one? Undo takes either answer back. The one exception is a plan with a debrief written on it, which stays marked as happened.

You can also answer on the plan’s card on the person’s page. Today shows up to ten plans from the past 30 days, newest first. Nothing is sent to anyone, and no email or notification goes out about a plan. After 30 days an unanswered plan leaves Today, but you can still answer it on the person’s page.

What the person’s page shows

Each plan carries a label: Planned while it is waiting, Happened once you say so, and Fell through once you click Didn’t happen. A plan that fell through stays in the person’s history, greyed out, because meaning to see someone and not managing it is part of the story too. A debrief shows as its own note, labelled Debrief.

Why it matters

Until recently, a plan whose date had passed looked the same as something that happened. A cancelled dinner could be counted as the last time you saw someone. Lists that read from that date, like Going Cold, would then treat you as in touch when you weren’t.

Now a plan counts as being in touch only once you say it happened, and saying so takes one click on Today.

Plans and the Did this happen? question are live now on the web at app.groupthink.com and in the Mac app. New to Groupthink? Start at groupthink.com.