How dates are chosen
Timing traditions are optional
Most dates in a plan come from practical scheduling: your deadline, your steps, and the days you can work. On a few kinds of steps, an optional timing tradition can move a date slightly or add a caution. Your plan says when that happens, and you can turn it off.
Available today
| Method | The tradition | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Planting aboveground crops | Moon-planting folklore sets aboveground crops while the Moon grows, in earth or water signs. | A traditional belief described by university extension services, which report no reliable evidence for it. Dates calculated by our code. Sources: University of Illinois Extension, University of Arkansas Extension. |
| Planting root crops | Moon-planting folklore sets root crops while the Moon shrinks, in earth or water signs. | A traditional belief described by university extension services, which report no reliable evidence for it. Dates calculated by our code. Sources: University of Illinois Extension, University of Arkansas Extension. |
| Mercury retrograde | Astrological tradition advises extra care with agreements and communication during this time. It is a caution, not a ban, and preparation is fine. | The dates are astronomy. The advice attached to them is an astrological tradition with no known physical basis. Sources: NASA StarChild, Scientific American. |
Astronomy and tradition are different things
Astronomy is measurable. The Moon’s phase, its position along the ecliptic, and the apparent backward motion of Mercury are calculated here for any date, by our own code and an open-source astronomy library, not by an AI model.
Tradition is belief. The twelve signs are an astrological convention: equal divisions of the sky that no longer line up with the constellations of the same names. The idea that any of this makes a day better for a task is a traditional belief, and science has not established it.
Not available yet
We are researching these. They do not affect any date in your plan today.
- Western electional astrology
- Financial and mundane astrology
- Vedic Muhurta and Panchang
- Chinese date selection and solar terms
- Strength ranking across multiple timing systems
What this means for you
“Traditionally favorable” describes what a tradition says. It does not mean a date will make something succeed. The plan works if you work the plan.