Dreamlines
Dreamlines are the Celestial Vault’s name for quarterly notes — empty canvas pages for horizon-setting and multi-month planning.
A Dreamline is the Celestial Vault's name for a quarterly note.
In standalone Time Garden, the four notes per year that sit between months and the year itself are called quarterlies. In Celestial, they're Dreamlines — and they work a bit differently.
What Makes A Dreamline Different
A standalone Time Garden quarterly note is a rollup: it auto-aggregates the three months that came before it, runs AI summaries, builds Wheel of Life progression charts, and shows you what the last 90 days looked like.
A Celestial Dreamline is the opposite direction. It's an empty canvas — a freeform planning page for the next three months. A horizon-setting note rather than a retrospective one.
You write into it. You set intentions, sketch projects, list questions, dream a little. The vault doesn't fill it for you.
Why "Dreamline"
The name is a small homage to Tim Ferriss's "Dreamlining" concept from The 4-Hour Workweek — a planning exercise where you write out what you'd actually want to be, do, and have over a defined timespan, in concrete terms, with prices and dates attached.
Karl uses dreamlining for his own quarterly planning, and the Celestial Vault treats the quarterly note as a natural home for that practice. The name gives the page a different flavor than "Q2 2026" — it's not a bureaucratic time bucket, it's a horizon you're sketching.
Use it however you want.
"Dreamline" is just the name on the file. You're not required to do Tim Ferriss-style dreamlining inside it. Some users use Dreamlines for project plans, some for OKRs, some for reading lists, some for completely freeform reflection. The page ships empty so you can decide.
Where Dreamlines Live
Time Garden/04 Quarterly/
├── 2026/
│ ├── 2026-Q1.md
│ ├── 2026-Q2.md
│ └── ...
└── 2027/
└── ...One per quarter. Filename YYYY-QN.md.
The Dreamline Template
When you create a new Dreamline (via the shortcut bar's dreamline button or the ⌥⇧Q shortcut), it generates with:
- A banner themed to the quarter
- A navbar linking to the previous Dreamline, the year, the previous/next month, and the next Dreamline
- An alias input for naming the quarter
- A few empty sections you can fill
There are no forced rollup tables, no AI buttons by default, no Wheel of Life. Just space.
If you want to drop in a rollup table, an AI summarize button, or a Wheel of Life chart, you can — Templater components are available, and template editing is documented.
Why Celestial Dropped Weekly Notes
You might notice the Celestial structure doesn't have weekly notes between daily and monthly. This is intentional — and it's why Dreamlines feel different.
The standalone Time Garden vault has 5 layers (daily / weekly / monthly / quarterly / yearly). Celestial has 4 (daily / monthly / Dreamline / yearly). The weekly was removed for a reason: in Karl's experience, the weekly was too granular for most users. The week-shape was visible enough on the monthly's daily-rating chart. The weekly note ended up being a place few people actually filled.
Dropping the weekly leaves space for the Dreamline to be its own thing — a quarterly that's not a "weekly's bigger sibling" but a fundamentally different kind of note.
(For a full breakdown of these structural differences, see How Celestial's Time Garden Differs.)
How To Use Dreamlines
There's no prescribed format. But here are a few patterns that work:
The Tim Ferriss Dreamline
Write what you'd want for the next 6 / 12 months in three buckets:
- Be: identities you'd want to embody
- Do: concrete experiences and accomplishments
- Have: tangible objects, locations, conditions
Pick one item from each bucket per quarter. Make them specific enough to price out — the act of pricing reveals which items are actually expensive (in money, time, or risk) and which are surprisingly cheap.
The OKR Dreamline
List 3 objectives for the quarter. Under each, list 3 measurable key results. Revisit weekly during your daily notes.
The Reading-List Dreamline
Just a list of books you want to read this quarter, with notes on why each one. Revisit when you finish each.
The Reflection Dreamline
A blank page. At the end of the quarter, write a paragraph about what it was. No structure. Just memory.
The "Project Headquarters" Dreamline
If you have one big project this quarter, the Dreamline becomes its top-level page. Sketch the project. Link to sub-notes (which can live in the root of the vault, with categories: *Projects*). Use the Dreamline as the launchpad you return to.
Linking Out To Other Notes
Because the Dreamline is just a regular markdown note, you can *wikilink* to any other note in your vault — books, people, projects, ideas. Combined with the self-organizing layer, this means a Dreamline can become a hub note that pulls together everything related to a quarterly theme.
Up Next
- How Celestial's Time Garden Differs — full breakdown of the structural changes
- Quarterly Notes — the standalone Time Garden equivalent (the rollup-style version)
- The 36 Category Pages — link your Dreamline to projects, books, and people