Current set-up: diary, to do/notes, and Travellers Notebook

I haven't blogged on here for a while (I've been busy writing and editing my novels, as well as writing for Nero's Notes), but I did tell you about my 2019 diary a while back, so I thought, since we're now in the second quarter of 2019, I should update you on how it's going.

I'm pretty much using the same system that I've used in the past, but with a couple of tweaks. I have my main diary/planner, which lives on my desk and never goes anywhere else, I have a running list of 'stuff to do/remember' and I have my Every Day Carry that is usually in my handbag as it's predominantly a wallet.

Main Diary:

This is still the Box Clever Press one I blogged about. This has honestly been one of the best diaries I have ever used! I'm even using the month at a glance pages (and we all know how terrible I am at knowing what they're for!).

So, why is it so good?

What I'm using in 2018... part 1

Hello all! Remember me?? I'm the blogger who used to post a LOT more regularly about stationery...

Where have I been?

Publishing another book for a start... "Lies That Poison" came out in September and I was super-busy getting that ready... then The Wrong Kind of Clouds got re-published as "The Call" this week and I was super-busy with that too!

But, back to stationery... I've just about got sorted with what I'm using next year! This post will be about what I'm using as my planner in 2018.

My Planning System (2017) -Part 3: Putting it all together

Over the last few posts, I've told you what paper-based items I'm using for planning 2017 and given you a bit more detail about each of them. I realise it was a huge amount of information and probably seemed impossible to follow. So, here is a walk-through of what I do each quarter, month, week, day. Some of you might feel that doing something daily, weekly and monthly is over-kill. Quite a bit of me wonders if it isn't too much at times too, but, this is the system that has (mostly) kept me on track for the last 5 years and maybe some of you will find it helps you too. If it doesn't, no problem! Every one's unique.

Dipping my toe into Bullet Journalling...

Hello all you lovely patient people who amazingly still follow this blog, even though I haven't posted anything like as much as I've wanted to recently... It's all The Wrong Kind of Clouds' fault, and my author blog over at www.amandafleet.co.uk!

Anyway, recently, I've been chatting to my lovely friend Helen (*waves*) about my lack of ability to manage my long term plans. I drew up a plan for the year, way back in January, which charted, week by week, what I was hoping to get done. The big problems have been that a) I'm evidently rubbish at guestimating time for projects, b) a whole heap of other stuff came up that I hadn't budgeted for, c) I only put writing plans on it and none of the other life-areas (which were still getting done and still taking up time...) so it wasn't a great representation of life, and d) my levels of productivity and levels of procrastination have swapped roles and I've been b*ggering about too much!

This has really struck home now that Q1 is finished and I'm supposed to be drawing up Q2 plans and thinking about something other than publishing The Wrong Kind of Clouds (which, admittedly, has taken over my life a bit...). I genuinely have no real idea what I'm supposed to be trying to do in Q2, beyond my writing goals and wishing I were a bit thinner and a bit faster at running.

My current planning system (I use the term loosely!) is working okay (ish!) for week to week stuff, but isn't really doing much beyond that and is getting a bit scattered, too. I know how to fix that (and more on that in another post) but I'm really not doing well on my longer-term goals.

So...

I may have a go at a modified version of bullet journalling. Modified in that it will really only be long-term stuff in it and not the daily log aspects.

The sorts of things I think I will have in the notebook are:

• Index
• Year goals for each life area on a LHS with quarterly goals arising from these on the RHS of a spread (one double spread for each life area)
• Monthly goals (broken down into life areas; drawn up month by month, rather than in advance)
• Monthly reviews (done just before drawing up the goals for the next month)
• Quarterly reviews 

There probably won't be any weekly planning in there, because that will still get done in my week + notes diary in my TN, using my long term goals as guidance. That said, if I get into the bullet journalling, maybe I will embrace the whole lot and do yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly and day stuff in there.

Now... just have to choose which of the zillion notebooks I have, to use as my bullet journal!

My Morning Routine

I used to have a well-oiled morning routine that got me out of bed, into the shower, some breakfast inside me, onto my bike and into work ready to start the day. I used the cycle to plan the day ahead so that when I hit my desk, I could empty my head onto paper and then make a cuppa and plan my day, often before most colleagues were in the door.

Then I hit burn-out and was off work. I gained a stress-induced arrhythmia which has stopped me cycling and running. I lost my sense of purpose and any semblance of focus and concentration. Mornings became something that was in that space between getting up and lunch and most days that I tried to plan anything, I was left staring at a piece of paper, with my brain a horrendous combination of spaghetti and echoing emptiness.

However, I've finally managed to climb out of the murk enough to regain a routine. It's not one that will necessarily survive the return to work (whenever that might happen) but it works for me at the moment. It's (mostly) soothing and settling but not always hugely productive...

Once I am up and breakfasted, I try to do the following routine (assuming I don't need to be somewhere before about 10.30 am!):

• Write my morning pages
• Empty my head into the 'brain-dump' reporters' notepad
• Meditate/do some mindful practice
• Make a cup of tea
• Sit at my desk with my brain dump/daily list and my weekly list and my A5 filofax
• Time-box activities into time-slots (and try to remember to double the amount of time I think it will take me to do anything)
• Turn over a 30-minute sand-timer and start the day

Depending on how box-of-frogs-like my head is, the routine can take from 30-60 minutes (or more) but it is a slow, steady rhythm and start to the day.

The Morning Pages
I am still doing these in the Paper Thinks book but have shifted to only writing on the right-hand pages as then I can use something nicer to write with than a biro (the pages have far too much bleed-through to contemplate being able to write on the reverse if I use a proper pen!).

The Paper Thinks book. I added the ribbon to fasten it closed

I found I could spend half the morning faffing about writing the morning-pages, so now I set a time-limit for them of 15 minutes. I still write almost three pages in that time, but the time-limit helps me to stay focussed.

The Reporters' Notebook for a brain dump
Once I have done my morning pages, I then clear my head into a new side in a scrappy reporters' notebook. This is literally a brain-dump and also acts as a scratch-pad over the day. It gets dumped each night, so the fact it is scrappy is fine. I list everything I could do that day. That doesn't mean I will do it, and I feel less guilty than I used to about transferring things to the next day's list of they don't get done.

Not normally this neat - I was playing with a new pen!

The A5 diary
Once I have my daily list, I then plan my day. I usually look at my daily list in conjunction with my weekly list and then allocate things from them onto the day. Because Filofax seem to think that people are less busy/less planned on a weekend, they combine the two days into one column and so I have to resort to a personal-size page with the corner cut off so it will go on the A5 rings. On a weekday, this kind of plan goes into the A5 diary.

Day plan on lined paper

That's my morning routine and it is working reasonably well for me (as long as I don't over-allocate!).

Do others have a morning routine that keeps them on track?

Reflection

Photograph is by Colin Nicol
See his website here
reproduced with permission

I’ve come to realise that the most important part of my weekly planning session is not so much the planning for the days to come, it’s reflecting on what has passed. Why did I clear my list so easily this week? Why did I get almost nothing done this week? It’s only when I stop and think back about why I did or didn’t do things that I can make better plans for the upcoming week/month.

For example, the last few weeks have been less than productive for me, but I know why. I can look at the plans I made with hope and enthusiasm and then look at and understand the reality that followed. Of course, reflection needs to be honest. Sometimes I know I didn’t do something I thought I would because I wasn’t well. Other times I know I didn’t get things done because I spent ages faffing about online, looking at notebooks or filofaxes or a zillion other things. Sometimes I realise I’m not doing something because I’m scared of failure, or because I don’t believe in it.

At other times I can get on and clear a to-do list before lunch and am powering through the day. Knowing why that day was productive is incredibly valuable. Was it because I was full of enthusiasm or energy? Or was it just because the Wi-Fi was off? Knowing that I will write much more (and much better) if I get my backside in the chair and start before 9 a.m. is also valuable knowledge and helps me plan when to do other things, so that my least productive writing time is when I sort the laundry or do the shopping.

I realise I have a very set ‘clock’ and if I schedule the wrong kind of thing into a time slot, I might as well not bother. Running (when I am well enough to do it – I am craving those days!!) is best in the morning, but that’s also when I’m the most creative, so I now know better than to expect creative juices to be flowing after I’ve spent half the morning running/stretching etc. Much better to run and then do chores. I also have a creative lull after lunch, but this is an excellent time to go for a walk (my current saviour as I’m not able to run) and when I come back, I’m often good at editing or making notes for writing.

It’s only because I’ve spent the time thinking about why things have gone well or not that I’ve really become in tune with my rhythm. It doesn’t work 100% of the time and life will always throw spanners (and I can always waste time browsing stationery!) but it genuinely feels like I’m making better plans as a result of taking the time to assess why things have or haven’t worked.

Does anyone else spend time reflecting? Have you found it helps?

My current planning system

In my last post, I described how I think (think) I have reached planner peace and a set-up that is really working for me. I have moved to using a slimline filofax which has necessitated me modifying my set-up a little, though in essence ‘The System’ is the same.

What I use now is a combination of the de Villiers which goes everywhere with me, and a regular-sized filofax which stays at home (currently I’m using the wine Holborn but I do have a selection to choose from!). Let me walk you through what is in each of these, then try to explain The System.

The De Villiers (wallet and planner combination)
From front to back:

• Inside front cover: 10 card slots carrying all my bank and loyalty cards, stamps, donor card etc.
• Plastic fly-leaf with Leuchtturm stick-on pen holder, holding my Zebra diary pen/pencil
• Weekly list for the current week
• Weekly lists for the next three weeks
• Notes Tab
• Three or four sheets of notepaper for scribbling things to remember into (‘capture’ list)
• Diary Tab
• Monthly sheets for the rest of 2014 (4 pages for each month: monthly list, month to view, review)
• Week to view diary for the rest of 2014 (from Paperchase)
• Page for forward planning
• Information Tab
• Personal information sheets
• List of books to look for
• List of maps we have
• Note of my weight and miles run per week
• Addresses Tab
• Address sheets
• Plastic zip-up pencil case with money in
• Inside back cover: paper money in the outer pocket; receipts in the inner one

Left - card slots; right - fly-leaf with pen-holder, weekly sheet

weekly sheet

There are 4 weekly sheets in at a time; review space on reverse of the lists

Monthly list (r); review of previous month (l)

Month to view

Plastic pencil case with coins in

Paper money in back pocket

The Holborn (storage of non-current planning pages)
From front to back:

• Nothing in either the front or back covers
• Plastic fly-leaf
• Page saying, “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger darling” (quote from the film Inception)
• Tab
• General (big) to-do
• Annual plans
• Quarterly plans
• Page(s) for each life area and their goals (mostly too personal to share), with next actions under each goal
• Tab
• Monthly review checklist
• Spent monthly pages (kept only for the purpose of quarterly and yearly reviews – they will get thrown away at the end of the year)
• Tab
• Weekly review checklist
• Weekly sheets – both from the past and the remainder of the year (only four weeks of these are in the de Villiers at any time). Again, all of these will get thrown away at the end of the year.
• Week on two pages from the past (current are in the de Villiers – there are no more than 6 months in the de Villiers at a time)
• Tab
• Other information sheets that I don’t need to carry around with me e.g. peak flow record, notes, log suppliers, things bought for presents over the last few years, maps, packing lists

How do these two binders work together? – The System
The key aspect is the weekly review (though the monthly one is important too).
Each week, I try to do the following:

• Go through the notes pages and make sure everything has been dealt with/filed/sorted one way or another
• Go through my list from the week just past and reflect on what did/didn’t get done and why
• Tick off things in the monthly list; add anything that has come up
• Transfer to the coming week’s list anything left from the one just finishing, starring them to indicate they have already had a week (or more) and not been done
• Transfer the weekly sheet to the Holborn binder and get the next one to go in the de Villiers out (I keep 4 weeks of weekly sheets in the de Villiers)
• Look at the monthly list and the week to view diary and note down in red pen at the bottom of the weekly list any appointments (ignoring work ones!) and things that I need to do like send a birthday card
• Look at the monthly list of big to-do and next actions. Tick off things done and think about what might sensibly be achieved in the next week. Write these into the space at the top half of the page
• Clear my brain of any other to-do into the bottom half of the page
• If I’m feeling adventurous (or mad) I write the day on which I think I will do these next actions and to-do in the space next to them. This may or may not reflect reality!
• Have a quick flick through to the rest of the month (and the following one if it’s near the end of the month) just to check what is coming up

What I try to do when I am not at work (i.e. evenings, days off, weekends):

• Open my binder to the weekly list
• Plan what I can do from it that morning/afternoon/evening
• Do it

What I try to do monthly:

• Look at my weekly and monthly list(s) from that month and reflect on what did/didn’t get done and why
• Take out the finished monthly sheet from the de Villiers and file it in the Holborn
• Transfer anything not done onto the sheet for the following month and star them to indicate they have been carried over
• Look at the lists of big to-do and next actions and the monthly overview and try and think what I might sensibly manage to achieve in the coming month
• Look at that list again and consider removing 20% of it because I know I over-allocate
• Flick through the next six months of diary to remind myself what’s on the radar

Appointments go straight into the week to view diary (if I have them in the de Villiers – I can only carry 6 months of pages so for anything further forward than that, I just put it in the notes section and transfer it at the weekly review; 99% of things can go straight into the pages).

So, that’s The System. When I do all that, I feel more organised than when I don’t. There is then always a danger that I feel over-planned and then go ‘to hang with it all’ and ignore all plans, lists, goals etc. until I’m as organised as a bowl of cooked spaghetti, at which point I start doing The System again!

What do people think? What’s your set-up like (and would you like to do a guest post on it?)?

Planner Peace??

Have I finally got there? Jeez, it’s been like trying to find the end of the rainbow! Anyway, I think (think...) I have finally reached some kind of planner peace. To the point of not even looking at binders on eBay. Well... not every day.

So, what does this planner peace look like?

It looks like my de Villiers still!

I have made a couple of small changes to the set-up but nothing major. Instead of the giant to-do list at the front with a reminder on it to look at my next-actions list, I have gone back to my weekly sheets. These at least were split into ‘next action’ and ‘to-do’ (things that need doing but which aren’t part of a project or goal). The instruction: ‘turn over and look at your next actions’, somewhat as anticipated, didn’t work! I am incapable of turning the page it seems. Even when told to.

Another problem was partly to do with my next actions which were too big and needed breaking down into smaller ones. So, for instance, ‘finish book 6’ was a giant of a next action, whereas ‘finish the scene where x happens...’ was a much easier task! Consequently I have worked on making my next actions things that are achievable in a day/week (so that they can get ticked off the list!).

The weekly page set-up is shown below. Next actions go in the top half. You’ll see that I’m using up cut-down sheets from a non-filofax brand, just to use them up. Next year I will be using glorious, glorious Tomoe River paper (more on that in a future post). In the bottom half of the page I note other non-goal ‘to-do’ and any birthdays or appointments are noted in red at the very bottom of the page (to remind me to go to them or do something about them). Already written in, is a reminder to do the weekly review!
The reverse of the weekly list has space for the weekly review. Sometimes I do this following a set structure; often I just reflect on what did or didn’t get done and why.

Weekly list: next actions at the top, to do below

Review on the reverse; following week on RHS

By going back to the weekly sheets, it forced me to do my weekly reviews and to rewrite onto the following week’s sheet anything not achieved, something that generally spurred me into doing said thing(s)!

The only other change has been to try (try!) and use monthly sheets in as much as I have put highlighter on days I am not at work to try and help me see how much time I have ‘free’ (i.e. not at work) in the month. I’m still not great at working out what level of detail should be on there. I have got as far as marking off work days and birthdays and events such as away for a weekend. It still seems like it’s both too much and too little detail. But putting highlighter on and having a reality check over how many days I have a week/month to get things done in, has made my monthly lists more sensible.

Pink indicates not at work!

In the next post, I will do a review of my planning system as I realise it has changed a little since the last time I posted about it.

Has anyone else found planner peace recently? How long do you think it will last??

Oh. It seems that I’m NOT Superwoman

Huh. Who'd have guessed?

This bolt of enlightenment has come about as a result of doing my monthly review and Q1 review, where I am steadily noting all the things I haven't managed to do from my list of 'next actions' for March and/or Jan-Mar. Partly, this is because I have decided to change the priority of some goals (um, because I wanted to do them more than the other things... like writing book 6 instead of editing book 5; doing anything other than housework). Mostly it is because I have been singularly inept at remembering that I can only spend a minute once.

I hate not being able to tick off things I have achieved, so I am going to try two things for April: allocating time to projects (rather than allocating 'next actions') and returning to time-boxing.

Most of my projects have 'next actions' that are in themselves pretty concrete ("Finish editing book 5") but which can take elastic amounts of time depending on whether my head is in editing mode or not. Some days I can clear the scheduled pages easily; other days it is a real slog. Also, book 6 is bubbling away too vividly to ignore, and if I spend an hour making notes on that, there is an hour less to spend on editing. Likewise, "Tidying the garden" has technically got a concrete end-point (the garden is tidy) but we all know that that scenario is unreachable!

What would be much easier to monitor (and hence feel like I have achieved something) is to allocate time to these projects. Instead of "edit book 5 up to page 300" I will "spend X hours on editing". Similarly, instead of "tidying the border by the lawn" I will "spend Y hours tidying the garden".

The added bonus for this is that it will make me look at how much free time there is in my schedule and be sensible about what I can achieve in it. If there are no free days in a week, it would be impossible to have edited 40 pages of book 5, weeded a large border, planted lots of seeds, finished my report for Rotary, done the housework, read at least one book and written to four friends by the end of it, yet sometimes my weekly 'to do' lists look like that!

Time-boxing has worked well for me (see here) but often ends up failing because I've allocated tasks to the time rather than just allocated the time to a project area. Since I'm ludicrously poor at estimating 'time to completion' on tasks, things have crept into other time-slots and I've ended up feeling over-scheduled, at which point I abandon everything and end up doing nothing.

So, for April, I counted up how many free days I have and converted that into free hours. Then I looked at all my project areas and allocated time to them, rather than tasks.
[Oh, and I made sure that I scheduled time for: catch-up/unexpected things/"mosquito tasks"*]

I have 11 ½ 'free' days in April (yes – this is why you overestimate how much you’re going to get done – you have fewer free days than you think!). Allowing 8 hours per day (possibly an underestimation, but better that way than the other...) that gave me 92 hours to allocate to projects. [I realise this is ignoring evenings which are also technically 'free' and in which I could probably achieve heaps, but I would rather under-allocate and over-achieve than vice versa]

I then started to guesstimate time on an hours per week basis to: Chimwemwe work, writing (encompassing editing and sketching out book 6), writing to friends, running, gardening, housework, reading, and emerging tasks/"mosquito tasks" and quickly clocked up about two hundred hours! Whittling it down to 92 has made me be far more realistic over what I might achieve in April and how many hours per week I will be able to spend on each area!

Having produced my 'hours per project' list for the month, I then spread out the hours per project area over the weeks for April (actually, up to May 4th as I work in Monday to Sunday blocks). I have to say, using a spreadsheet kept me right as I invariably pencilled in more hours than there were free that week and had to start horse-trading with the project areas: a little less of this so I can do a bit more of that...

This up-front effort will hopefully make my weekly/daily scheduling a whole heap easier, as now I just have to time-box the hours for the week into a diary (and use my sand-timers on the day to keep me right). If I manage to achieve a 'next action' I will of course tick that off on the main lists, but if I don't, at least I will have progressed towards it.

Thank heavens for Philofaxy, since as I am back to time-boxing, I need a day per page diary, but as I am trialling this method, I only need a month of it, and can just print off the requisite pages from the diary files. Bless you Steve and Ray!

As well as writing down what time I intend to spend on each area, I am also going to note down how much time I did spend on each area so that May's list might be based on a tad more evidence (I am a scientist after all...).

I'll keep you posted as to how it's working (and show you pictures of the system in progress!).

[*"mosquito tasks" are small, irritating things that don't warrant an individual slot for each task, but which can be lumped together into a 'do all those irritating little things in this hour' slot]

What’s working? What’s not working?

Well, here we are, nearly two weeks into the new year. What’s working in my set-up and what isn’t?

Well, the easiest way to assess this is to look at what I’ve achieved and what I haven’t and to reflect on why.

Week 1: I achieved almost everything on my to-do list for the week. There were two things not ticked off – one lot of exercises which I missed on one day but did the next day and the other was to email a reminder to someone to do something but they are in the middle of a family crisis and, in the grand scheme of things, my reminder was irrelevant (and unkind and thoughtless and so on). Why did I get so much done (and manage to feel smug when doing my weekly review)? Because I made sure that I looked at my planner each day and had it open at the side of me, with un-ticked tick-boxes glowering at me. The thought of them remaining un-ticked was too much for me, so I did the item and ticked with glee.

Week 2: more of a disaster. I haven’t managed my running schedule because I’m injured. Also, I haven’t done other things that I could have done, despite being injured, because I didn’t have my planner open and I wasn’t looking at it. So I just bumbled about, doing things that weren’t all that important and certainly didn’t advance achieving my goals. Lesson to learn from this? Open the planner and look at it. Plan the day. Reward myself with ticks. [Amanda, it's not rocket science!]

I know I can be really bad at this kind of thing. I can faff about unproductively and get absolutely sod-all done at times. I have two sand-timers on my desk to help me tackle this: a 30 min one to help me focus and get on and do things and a 60 minute one to make me stop doing things and move and relax my eyes etc. I usually also have a 2 minute one to de-stress, but I have lent it to a student of mine who needs it more than me at the moment.

But, the sand-timers only work if I use them, much like my planner!

Next week, I will go back to time-boxing. I talked about it here, outlining why it does and doesn’t work for me, but I think I need to kick-start things again.

598 days and counting.

Getting ready for 2014

Ooh... I feel all prepared and organised. Well, somewhat! After some interesting, inspiring and fun discussions with Shadow Wolf over email, I became enthused about getting set up for 2014 so have spent a couple of days preparing things.

Despite still not being 100% sure about my goals and next actions (yep... still working on them), I did know that I needed monthly sheets and weekly sheets and that my weekly sheets needed dividing into ‘next actions’ space and ‘to do’ space (in my head, ‘to do’ are things that need doing like buying stamps, writing to a friend, getting the dry-cleaning, doing the housework, whereas ‘next actions’ are the things I have to do to progress my projects and hence approach achieving my goals). This year I have struggled a bit with ‘to do’ beginning to swamp me and ‘next actions’ getting forgotten and I am determined that this won’t be the case in 2014!

Whereas my homemade week + notes is designed around me and would have been a perfect set-up for 2014, I am also getting annoyed with myself for buying perfectly good diary pages and then printing up my own anyway, so I have decided to stick with the Paperchase week to view (which I reviewed here) and amend it slightly.

My set-up (and I am really hoping that despite all the siren-songs from Red shiny people, I may stay in it!) therefore runs like this:

• Goals to Projects to Next Actions (held in the navy Portland)
• Monthly sheets (all bar the current month held in the navy Portland; current month’s sheet is in the day-to-day binder)
• Weekly sheets (all bar the current month’s weekly sheets held in the navy Portland; current month’s weekly sheets are in the day-to-day binder behind the current monthly sheet)
• Week to view (whole year in the day-to-day binder)

In detail
1. Goals to Projects to Next-Actions
Still a work-in-progress at the moment but I am hoping to map them out over the next few days!

2. Monthly sheets
Still also somewhat a work-in-progress as the next-actions are nowhere to be seen yet. However, the rest has been set up.

sample monthly sheet

I have used lavender-coloured paper and a separate sheet for each month. The month is written across the top then there is a space for writing in all the next-actions and any month-specific to do (like renew the car insurance, etc.). At the bottom is a reminder of all the birthdays that month (covered up in the photograph). You can see November in the picture (fewest birthdays to hide!) and a few things in on the monthly list (but not many! It is for November 2014 after all).
The reverse of these sheets just has ‘Review’ written across the top and will be where the monthly review gets written up.

3. Weekly sheets
These used to work so well for me and I don’t understand why I let them slip. They are effectively the ‘+ notes’ part of the week + notes format, only with space for the weekly review on the reverse.

sample weekly sheet

I have split each week into ‘to do’ and ‘next actions’ as explained earlier. And yes, I have drawn up all the weekly sheets needed for 2014 and in every single one I have written ‘weekly review’ (as well as ‘monthly review’ and ‘quarterly review’ where appropriate). Shown in the photograph is a sample week (with not a lot to do in it yet!). I was going to write all of these out on nice cotton-cream paper but then found a heap of quadrille paper and thought I would use it up (yes, it was Time Manager paper and I trimmed it and re-punched it to fit). In the monthly review, these sheets will get filled up with ‘next actions’. I have put in all the ‘buy card and present for x’ reminders over the whole year too, as well as ‘post card and present to x’ (yes – that level of reminder is needed!)

4. Paperchase Week to View Diary
These pages live in the turquoise Baroque (current day-to-day binder). Since the week to view has to cover both appointments and tick-lists and since my Virgoan/OCD-squeakiness makes me not want to mix these up on the page, I have split every day into two, with appointments to go on the left and tick-lists to go one the right. (This might have taken less time if the lines weren’t all precisely a Today-ruler’s width from the edge of the lines...)

sample week to view

I also realised that I need to make a bit more effort over some habit-tracking. If things aren’t actually written down on a day, I won’t necessarily do them. However, my Virgoan/completer-finisher/OCD-squeakiness makes me determined to tick something off if it appears on a day! Hence, on each day, I have either got ‘core’ or ‘rowing’ (by which I mean rowing like rowing a boat, not rowing like having an argument!) and on Sunday I have to do both, so have both written in, with a small square to tick. No, I’m not joking. All 365 days of 2014 have one or both of these written in.

I became sloppy about doing my weekly reviews last year – probably a major reason why my goals slipped and non-goals-busyness took over. To try and avoid that this year, on every Sunday I have ‘review’ written and there are also indications of when I have more than one to do (monthly and/or quarterly), so I get to tick them off on the day and on the weekly sheets!

Since I am incapable of turning a page to look at the weekly sheets, I will also have their lists on Post-It notes on the weekly pages too. I know – why have the weekly sheets at all if I’m not going to look at them? I don’t know. I need them when I plan the month and I like to have them for the weekly review, but I’m just hopeless at looking at them in the week itself and if I allocate tasks to specific days I tend to overload myself and get frustrated by a lack of flexibility, so I have tasks on the Post-Its and throw them away at the end of the week.

The only other thing I have done to the diary, is the minuscule amount of washi tape you can see. Although I love the idea of washi tape and have a fine collection myself, I can never cope with it on the days of my diary, any more than I really can cope with stickers. Whereas I love seeing what others are doing when they decorate their pages, I think I am too much of a ‘clean-line, no clutter’ person in my diary. So, my concession to washi tape in the diary is to put a little bar of it along the top corner, coded to indicate the month. It makes the page (a little) more interesting but doesn’t swamp the point of the WO2P of showing me what and when I am doing things.

Anyway, that’s my set-up. What about everyone else? Are other people as bonkers as this or am I the only one who finds sitting down and prepping the year like this soothing and reassuring?

Time-boxing

I always have to have a daily diary which has time slots because I tend to use time-boxing for my to-do. Apart from the day that I ricked my back and couldn’t do anything at all for more than five minutes, I usually do a task to completion then tick it off my to-do list. [See here for a nice article on time-boxing]

At the start of the day, I look at my to-do list and then allocate when I am going to do it. Sometimes it’s as loosely allocated as ‘morning’, ‘afternoon’, ‘evening’, but more often it has a specific time blocked out for the task.

Now I know that there are conflicting schools of thought on this – some think you should time-box and some think it’s the worst thing in the world. I think it depends on how your brain works and that there probably isn’t a one-size fits all in any realm of life, never mind time-management. If it works for you, do it. If it doesn’t, don’t.

And to be honest, although I normally time-box it doesn’t always work for me! Here’s some of the reasons why it does; and why it doesn’t.

Why time-boxing does work for me:

1. It holds me to a timetable and I get things done

I can be prone to procrastinating and getting distracted by almost anything, depending on the day and on my mood. I have a 30 minute sand-timer and when I really, really need to get on with something and can feel the twitchiness in me start up, I time-box something into every half-hour (including breaks) and use my sand-timer. Works (almost) every time.

2. It reminds me how many hours there are in a day

When introducing something new (for example, I’ve been trying to incorporate yoga and some strength training etc. into my daily schedule) it makes me more aware that, since all of my time was allocated to something before I introduced the new thing, some of that something has to go – whether that’s watching TV, reading blogs, whatever. It reminds me that there are only 24 hours in a day, however much there is on my list to do and that unless I decide what I’m not doing, I won’t be able to fit in the things I have decided I am doing.

3. It makes me work out where my day has gone

Some weeks I wonder what on earth I have done and then I can look back through my time-boxed, ticked lists and think, “Oh. That’s what I did.”

4. It stops me from over-loading my day

There are times when I see a blank, unboxed day and I think I am Wonderwoman and write a massive to-do list. Unless I time-box it, there is every possibility that my optimism will hugely outweigh my ability and the laws of physics. Time-boxing makes me actually think how long it will actually take to re-paint the house and that half an hour quite probably isn’t enough!

Why time-boxing doesn’t work for me:

1. I can feel too restricted...

…and then I rebel and go ‘sod it all’ and do nothing. Sad but true! If I feel too much like I’m working to a timetable, all the time, it makes me mutiny.

2. Unless I time-box all day it can all go a bit wrong

This can be a major issue for me as I often only time-box the ‘working’ day (whether this is actually at paid work or my writing days) but then assume I will shoe-horn loads of things into the evening. If I don’t time-box the evening, then I forget that in order to do the ‘extra’ I have to remove something else. I should really have the whole day planned out, including the evening, but if I do that, then I end up rebelling (see no. 1 above!).

3. It can be inflexible

If I’ve time-boxed the whole day and then something pops up unexpectedly, then there isn’t enough fluidity in the system to cope. That’s partly why I only schedule my day on the actual day, so that if that day has already gone awry, I can adapt and if the day before went other than planned, I can incorporate that into the new day.

4. My estimates for how long everything takes can be wrong

For example, I always think it will take me half an hour to stretch and shower after a run. It never does. It always takes nearer to 45 minutes (despite the fact I know this, I’m not very good at remembering it when I’m planning the day!). In the same vein, I can expand a task to fill the time I allocated it. Or feel frustrated when the time I allocated has come and gone and I am nowhere near finishing it. Getting the ‘guesstimate’ right comes with practice though (and is helped by noting how long things actually took).

Overall, I work better with time-boxing than not. What do others do?

Five-minute productivity

I hurt my back this morning so doing anything for more than about five minutes has been tricky. After about five minutes I need to move – walk around, stretch, lie on the floor… Anyway, I thought that today would be a write-off as a consequence. I had really wanted to sit and write, but that’s just not going to happen. At least, not write as in ‘disappear down the rabbit-hole and into the world of my book’ kind of writing, which involves total immersion for me, and hence long stretches of sitting. At least, longer than five minutes!

Instead of disappearing down the rabbit-hole, I have been doing a number of five-minute tasks and to my surprise, I have been a lot more productive than I expected to be, just in a different way. 

Things I have done (which I wouldn’t have otherwise) include:

• Sorting out filofax inserts in the ‘stash box’, putting card between different types of insert and labelling it all (I know I’m not using a filofax at the moment, but if/when I move back, this will be useful!)
• Sharpening all my pencils. I keep them in an old jar, with the code “sharpened up, blunt (or propelling pencils) down”. All neatly up now!
• Getting an Ikea six-drawer chest out of a cupboard, tidying it out and sorting sundry stationery out of my desk drawers (where it gets lost) and into the chest, then labelling the drawers with Post-It notes
• Ordering some blackboard paint so that I can paint the fronts of the drawers with it and then label them with chalk
• Slicing up paper into the correct size for my Mulberry binder, ready to print inserts
• Printing next week’s day per page inserts for the Mulberry
• Planning next week’s meals
• Going through the kitchen cupboards and writing a shopping list for tonight’s shopping (which DH will be doing on his own…)
• Cleaning the kitchen (little bit by little bit)
• Cleaning the bathroom (little bit by little bit)
• Emptying all the bins (one by one)
• Writing a blog post (bit by bit)

Etc. etc. etc.

Ready for when the blackboard paint comes...

Sharp, sharp, sharp!

I have been phenomenally more productive than I usually am! I have done each task just for as long as I could, frequently leaving them mid-task to go and do something else that allows my back to move in a different way, whereas normally I would try and tackle a task from start to finish. Of course, I’ve planned or written nary a single word of my book, but at least I’ve done some cleaning!

Maybe that’s the solution, at least to the housework (a task which rates only marginally higher than having root-canal work with no anaesthesia…). Do a task for five minutes, then do something else. I’ll skip the wrecking the back part first though…!