Friday 3 July 2015

Trying something new (ish)

Now, don't get me wrong... I still love my Filofaxes. I'm still in the scarlet Adelphi and am intending to stay in it until the end of the year at least.
But...
I am also running in parallel another system to try and a) use my Traveller's Journal and b) see my week a bit better.
A few weeks ago, I blogged about a home-made week plus notes diary for the TJ (see here). I mocked that up in the (hateful) Moleskine cahier and have now mapped out the rest of the year in the (hateful) Moleskine cahier. (I'm only using that because I'm trialling this. In the final version, I will use a Rhodia instead).
On the LHS, I have the page divided into 8 blocks - 7 for the days of the week and 1 for tracking things (same as I had in the blog post).
The RHS is the side which is going through various iterations while I find what works. Like the LHS, it is divided up into 8 blocks. I've pretty much settled on labelling the blocks with 6 main life-areas, an 'other' and 'next week'. In the life-area blocks I have next actions for projects within those life-areas; in 'other' is a list of other things to do this week (that don't fit into the other areas) and 'next week' flags up important things that are just over the page (because we all know that I am incapable of just turning it over and having a look. I know... but know your character, huh? I know I won't turn the page, ergo I have to write a summary of it on the one before).
My diary is a bit too private to show you a filled-in version, but this is the basic layout:


'Other' will almost invariably be in the box to the left of 'next week' but the other 'life-areas to block' mapping has been a bit fluid and hasn't quite settled yet (hence not being filled in).

I bought the day stamps from eBay and also spent a bit of time working out the best layout of day name plus date before finally settling on the day being in the top left and the date in a circle in the next box along.

The (hateful) Moleskine cahier is 13cm wide and 21cm tall and each block is 6cm wide and 5cm tall, leaving me a little space to write the date range in, in red.

I've been using this layout in conjunction with time-boxing on a day per page scratch pad - a reporter's notebook using a sheet per day. The sheet is divided vertically, with times pencilled in down the LHS and a list of tasks/space for random jottings etc. on the RHS. In the space on the LHS, the day is divided up using time-boxes with each box being labelled with a life-area. The idea is a) that I spread my time over all the different things I want to do and not end up doing just one or two in a week and b) that I work on the next action for that life-area project during that time-block and if I reach the end of it, I tick it off and start on the next one in that life-area. If I don't finish it, I still try to make myself move on when the time-box topic changes. I can frequently allow a task to fill whatever time I have so knowing that I only have an hour or however long does make me concentrate on getting on with it, rather than dawdling about and spending all day on it.

I've liked the set-up well enough to have cut down some Rhodia cahiers (cheaper than the (hateful) Moleskines and MUCH better!), ready to make a full-year home-made diary for next year. More on that soon.

Haas anyone else been making their own diary for the TJ like this?

1 comment:

  1. I love that you know that you won't turn the page and account for it. I also know that I wouldn't turn the page, either, so maybe I should start accounting for that!

    ReplyDelete