set-up tweaks – modifying how I cope with ‘to-do’

After blundering around in the dark for a while, I have tweaked my set-up. I wasn’t using my filofax very efficiently (um, at all) and I was struck by a post on Philofaxy about people not using their filofax when they were really busy/reaching burn-out and so on. I have been ridiculously busy recently and horrendously disorganised and I have hardly been even looking at my diary, never mind the weekly and monthly plans. In fact, when I finally sat down to do a weekly plan, I realised it had been 6 weeks since I last had and that all of my weekly planning pages were empty and/or had things on them that should have been done that week but which had been ignored and not done. Half of these weekly pages weren’t even IN my filofax and the ‘current’ month list was for April – everything was still in my holding-filofax. [I did this sort-out about two weeks ago!]

I needed to think about why I wasn’t using my filofax so much and what might make me start again and realised one of my main issues was with To-Do lists – I either have everything in front of me and then get annoyed if I have to rewrite anything not done, into the next week pages or, I realise I won’t get it all done and put it on a separate list that I then don’t look at (because it’s not in front of me). At this time of the year, my to-do lists can also terrify me with their colossus-like dimensions!

I have three kinds of tasks to do:

1. things that are advancing projects (‘next actions’)
2. things that are known about well in advance, that need to be done at particular times but which are not linked to a project (birthdays, car-insurance renewal, meter readings and so on)
3. things that are neither of the above but are things that need to be done (usually sooner rather than later)

The problems arise like this:
Most of my projects seem to be big projects and even breaking them down into smaller things to manage them better, the time for them is elastic. For example, I want to finish the first draft of book 6 before I go away on holiday, but I don’t quite know how many scenes I still need to write. I have a rough idea, but not an absolute nailed down one. Even if I did know that I had exactly 8 more scenes to write, some days it flows well and some days it just doesn’t. As a consequence, a ‘next action’ can sit on my to-do list for days or even weeks. Do I have them on a separate Post-It note and keep moving them from week to week? That feels like failure. Do I keep them on a separate list and refer to it when I have time? That would then suffer from the “it isn’t in front of me so it doesn’t exist” issue I have where, despite quite a lot of education, I seem almost totally unable to turn a page to look at what is behind it.

Category 2 is okay as long as I look at my planner – these are all transcribed onto ‘do this week’ sheets and if I look at those sheets, I do them. And there’s the rub! IF I look at them. Often I don’t.

Category 3 can be an ever-increasing list of ‘stuff’ which can end up swamping the important things. I need to do a brain-dump into a to-do list to clear my head sometimes, but there is then a danger that the list turns scary!

I haven’t cracked any of these problems completely, really. What I have done is to have one giant to-do sheet at the very front of my planner, rather than on the weekly pages (since I don’t really have many appointments at the moment).  Everything is going on it. To get around the “it isn’t in front of me so it doesn’t exist” issue, I have added “next-actions” on my to-do list in bold (so I see something that might prompt me to turn to the page behind which lists the next actions!), added the weekly tasks to the to-do list from the weekly sheets (which I have given up on) and added the ever-increasing small to-do things as and when they occur. The hope is that I can see it all (or at least see a prompt to turn the page and look at it, oh over-educated one) and can try and limit how many ‘mosquito tasks’ get added to the list.

I have ‘next actions’ in black at the top, then weekly things in blue, then ‘other stuff’ in pencil underneath. Because there is now a danger of me not actually looking at the diary pages, I also have added any appointments I have for the week to the bottom of the list, in red.

the list!

At the bottom of the page (please don’t laugh) I have a reminder to turn over and look at the next page/reverse of the to-do list so that, although I have run out of space, there may still be things lurking on the other side of the page that I must get on with. Yes, I have a first class honours degree and a PhD and I need a reminder to turn the page. I know my limitations!!

On the next page, I have the next-actions for my current projects (colour-coded).

Next actions

I’m really hoping that this set-up with the to-do at the front, will keep me organised! I’ll let you know!

Betwixt and between – will a slimline de Villiers bridge the gap between pocket and personal?

My planning ‘system’ has fallen apart. I’ve missed half a dozen birthdays in the last month and feel about as organised as a bowl of spaghetti. Planner love is thin on the ground. I’m just not looking at my planner (and we all know that that road leads to hell...).

So what’s gone wrong? Where has the Baroque love gone?

I don’t know. I still love it and in many ways I just think it’s me being fickle rather than there being any major issue, if I’m being honest. I’m certainly not selling either of my Baroques, before you all start asking!

I had the urge to move into a pocket (again!) as my weeks are getting to the point in the year where they are low on appointments and high on ‘things to do’ and a full-sized planner seemed both overkill and underused. And like carrying a brick. The reasoning behind shifting to a pocket was that a DPP in pocket-size might be a better solution for me than WO2P plus Post-It note in personal-size, but then, I just know that being able to carry cards will be an issue unless I have 19mm rings in a pocket. And any regular reader will know how I have struggled even with a 19mm ring binder.

So... I have just bought a slimline de Villiers binder from eBay instead. It has 10 card slots with a vertical pocket behind, two vertical pockets on the other side, and oval rings which measure 16mm in the wider direction and 14mm rings in the narrower.

16mm rings...

I know, I know... I have never made small rings work for me before, but that’s because they have always been small rings in a pocket binder and the problem has been the ring space being taken up with card-holders. But, the de Villiers binder has 10 card slots in the cover, so I wouldn’t have to take up any ring space with card-holders!

The plan is to have a month or two of WO2P diary which I can just swap out of the Baroque, the rest of the year as monthly sheets and possibly a week of DPP (both of which I can print myself), plus the usual notes paper, addresses and other stuff I carry.

The hope is, that by limiting how many weeks of WO2P there are in there, it will force me to do my weekly reviews and then maybe I will start being more organised???

I’ll keep you posted. Review of the binder coming soon.

Review of the Midori MD A5 lined notebook

Two reviews in two days... At this rate, I might actually review all my new notebooks before buying some more...
[ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha... who are you trying to kid ???????]

Anyway, today it is the turn of the Midori MD A5 lined notebook, bought in The Journal Shop’s 20% off everything sale. Again, no affiliation, just a happy customer. As ever, click on any picture for a bigger version.

I bought the Midori MD notebook because I was intrigued. I haven’t got a Midori Traveller Notebook but I have heard good things about the paper and it is the same paper used in these notebooks.

Overview:
It’s a good notebook. The paper is fabulous. I’m not convinced by the bold line across the middle. There are 176 non-numbered pages. The notebook is 149mm x 210mm.

Front cover

Detail:
Cover:
The notebook had a slip-cover of what feels like waxy tissue paper. I’m sure it has a proper name (tell me what it is in the comments if you know it!). Around the outside of that was a label, which was all in Japanese, so I can’t tell you what it says.

Back cover (still in the plastic wrapper)

Waxy tissue paper slip cover

Once you remove the slip cover and loose label, you see the cover of the notebook. It is made of thick cream card, with a small “MD paper Made in Japan” logo embossed in the middle of the RHS. The binding is hard to describe – it looks like an open-weave bandage that has been firmly glued to the spine. Again, this probably has a proper name and again, tell me in the comments what it is if you know it! The pages are bound with thread-stitching.

Front cover with slip-cover tissue paper reflected back

There is no pocket in the back – this is a basic notebook.

Inside:
The first page has a space for putting something – title, picture, whatever. Underneath the space is MD Notebook Made in Japan and the Midori logo. Inevitably, this page is glued to the next (the next being the first lined page of the book) so that the next page doesn’t open out fully. There were two labels (and a blank one) – ‘idea’ and ‘diary’ though I am not sure where they are supposed to go – they are too big for the box-space on the first page and I think the spine is too rough for them.

First page

Labels

The pages have 27 lines with a line-spacing of 7mm, a top margin of 16mm, a bottom margin of 12mm and an inner margin where the lines don’t reach the spine of 2mm. The 14th line down (in the centre of the page) is bold.
I do not know why. Nor do I much care for it. It remains to be seen how much this will piss me off when I use the notebook, but at first glance it’s annoyed me.
The page edges are all squared and extremely smooth-feeling.

Bold central line.

The paper is lovely to write on. Forgive the crumpled look to the pages – I didn’t extract them from the book very well (I was worrying more about the book than the removed pages to be honest!). The book also lies as flat as a bat! The open-weave bandage/thread-stitching binding works a treat! There is a page marker of narrow, dark green ribbon.

Fountain Pen Tests:
The paper was glorious to write on (as you might anticipate, it being Midori and all that). No feathering, nice crisp lines, smooth and not too ‘grabby’ but one of my inks took a while to dry as a consequence of the surface of the paper, so lefties may want to just test out their pen/ink combos.

Fountain pen tests - no feathering...

Almost no bleed-through. When I first did the test I thought there was none at all, but there is a smidgen. It’s better than the Leuchtturm books but still not as good as the Clairefontaine Age Bags (what is??).

...no bleed-through

Overall:
Hmm. Only 3 ½ (out of 5). The paper is delightful to write on, but they are more expensive than my go-to Clairefontaine A5 Age Bag notebooks (about twice the price) and without many more bells and whistles. And that bold line is more irritating than I thought it would be (though it might grow on me).

Review of the Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks

New Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks

I have SO many reviews owing. Let me begin to make amends and review the Leuchtturm 1917 for a start – I bought two of them in The Paperie’s 3 for 2 sale (the 3rd book was the Paper Thinks notebook, reviewed here). No affiliation - just a happy customer.

Overview:
The Leuchtturm notebooks are nicely designed books in my opinion. They have hardback covers (in a series of bright, cheery colours), with ivory/cream paper, numbered pages, a table of contents at the front, detachable pages at the back, an expandable pocket in the back, matching ribbon marker and a vertical elastic closure. The paper is lovely to write on. Notebook size is 208mm x 147mm. There are 249 numbered pages.

Detail:
The Cover:
I bought two – an emerald green cover and a berry red one. I have only opened the berry red (I assume that the innards of the emerald green one will not differ significantly!). The colours are vibrant and intense and a welcome cheer on a rainy May weekend up here in Scotland!

Back cover

The cover is PVU with a leather-effect and no plasticky smell, thankfully. There is no branding on the front or on the spine, and just ‘Leuchtturm1917’ embossed on the back. The cover is rigid.
As a comparison with other notebooks/my filofax, here is the emerald green next to a Sea Green Cartesio notebook...

Leuchtturm on the left, Sea Green Cartesio on the right

... and the berry red next to my pink Baroque filofax...

Inside:
The first page has a space for name and address. Personally, I would prefer just to have the lines and no instructions over what should go there, as I don’t put either my name or my address in most of my notebooks as they never leave my house.

Name/address page; booklet on the left

 There was a small card saying ‘thank you for buying this product’ inside and a leaflet about the notebook and the history of Leuchtturm. There was also a set of stickers for labelling the books (though personally, I have never used these and think they would detract from the exterior of the notebook. I might use one on the inside).

Stickers

After the name/address page is a blank fly-sheet, then there are three pages of index.

First index page

Then a double spread of them

This is followed by a blank side (the reverse of the last index page) then the main notebook.
At the top of every page is “Datum/Date:” and at the foot of every page on the outer corner, is the page number. I like this, as I always number my notebooks and I always produce a list of contents at the start of the book, so for me, this detailing is a bonus. I’m not so convinced about having the date at the top of every page – that might grow on me!

The paper is ivory/cream, with a line-spacing of 6mm. The lining is feint (very light, actually – I like how subtle it is!). The lines go edge to edge of the paper and there is a top margin of 12mm and a bottom margin of 7mm. The outer corners are rounded.

The last few pages of the notebook are perforated so you can remove them (I removed the last page to test how easy this is and also to do the fountain pen tests). Initially, the idea of the last few pages being removable hadn’t appealed, but in fact, these are very subtly perforated so it isn’t obvious that they are, nor would it be easy to accidentally remove them, so if you didn’t want to take out sheets, the book would stay intact. The perforations are incredibly fine and the paper came out okay (though it was a bit of a tug to get it started).

The back, expandable pocket covers the entire back cover and is pretty gusseted – you could cram a lot in here if you wanted to spoil the look of your notebook!!

Pocket in the back. (the white thing on the RHS is the book label)

The ribbon marker is a good match to the cover and to the elastic closure (yes, we all know how picky I am about these things!). It is a relief that this all matches so well on a notebook whose strap-line is “Details make all the difference”!

I personally prefer a horizontal elastic closure so that I can tuck a pen in to it, but if you wanted to carry a pen, Leuchtturm do matching adhesive pen-holders and you could stick one to the cover very easily.

Fountain Pen Tests:
Again, I don’t have as many inked up as normal. I used three italic-nibbed pens (by far my favourite pens to use) plus one standard nib plus a couple of Pilot V5 pens.
The paper was a little bit ‘grabby’ on the italic pens and made them feel a little scratchy, but the non-italic nib flowed smoothly over the page and it was a dream to write on with it. The two Pilot pens were okay (but not my favourite to write with anyway). There was no feathering and ink dried quickly, so lefties would be absolutely fine (assuming my inks are representative).

Crisp - no feathering

Bleed-through:
Hmm. A little disappointing considering they go on about ‘ink-proof’ paper. I could read everything on the other side of the page very easily. I’m not sure if I would want to use fountain pen in the books as a consequence. Maybe. I was expecting better though.

This is looking better than the reality...

Overall:
Gorgeous colour cover and well thought out interior. Good little notebook and one I am sure that I will use for book-plotting/writing. It’s just a shame that there was so much bleed-through with my fountain pens and that the page is a bit grabby on italic nibs.

I would award it **** (out of 5)

More stationery goodies!!!

Having succumbed to the three for two notebooks at The Paperie, I then succumbed to the 20% off everything sale at The Journal Shop.

What arrived today:

• Midori MD Notebook (A5, ruled)
• Large red Moleskine softback notebook (ruled)

Reviews soon!!

New notebooks

New notebooks!! Hurrah!

I know. I need more notebooks like I need another pair of legs or something. But hey. The Paperie were doing 3 for 2 and I just can’t resist. I’ve tried. I really have. But it only lasts about a second and then, somehow, there are three notebooks in my basket and there we go.
(No affiliation, just a happy customer)

Anyway, sorry for the long silences but a) work got busy, b) writing got REALLY busy and c) I went to Malawi again.

But now I’m back and buying more stationery! (Plus ça change!)

What did I get??

Well, the A5 notebook that I am currently writing book #6 in (Ciak, red A5) is suiting me as a size just brilliantly, so I decided I could try out a couple more. I’ve never tried the Leuchtturm 1917 before, so I popped a couple of those in bright colours (berry red and emerald green) in the basket and I had never seen the notebooks by ‘Paper Thinks’ before so I popped in one of them (in blue mist colour).

Paper Thinks first; Leuchtturm another day...

Overview:
The Paper Thinks notebook isn’t a true A5 – it is a little smaller at 13cm x 17cm. The cover is apparently recycled leather (and there is indeed a leather smell to it if you hold it right up to your nose!). The outside is much glossier than leather normally is (though isn’t patent leather). The cover is fairly stiff so you would be able to write in it with the book on your knee etc.
There is very little branding – the front cover is entirely blank; there is Paper Thinks on the spine in a darker blue than the cover and ‘recycled leather’ embossed in the back. The notebook says that it was made in China.

Front cover (still wrapped)

Back cover (still wrapped)

Front cover (unwrapped and now inside as it got really windy!)

Branding on the spine

Inside:
On the inside left cover there is the Paper Thinks logo and web address, and on the RHS there is space for name, phone and ‘in case of emergency’.

Inside

The paper is ivory/cream; the lines do not go edge to edge, but stop 6mm from the outer edge and 8mm from the inner edge. Top margin is 12mm; bottom margin is 8mm; line-spacing is 6mm. There is no elastic closure (either vertical or horizontal) but there is a matching ribbon place-marker. There are 256 pages.
The pages are sewn in and this should make the book lie flat, but it doesn’t (as evidenced by the paper-weights!). With a bit of bending and flexing it’s not bad though.

Back cover:
The back cover has a gusseted envelope/pocket (easiest way to photograph it was to put the paper-weight inside it!) with the gusset made of matching fabric.

Back gusseted envelope/pocket

Fountain pen test:
Hmm. For once, I don’t have many pens inked up! But, I had four and a Sharpie, and here are the results:
The paper is pretty smooth to write on and there was very little feathering.

Fountain pen test

Little feathering

Slightly more feathering with the pink

However, the bleed-through was an EPIC FAIL!
Read it and weep.

EPIC FAIL!

Which is such a shame as otherwise it was a lovely little notebook, but it is now one which will at best be a ‘scribble’ book or a ‘biro only’ one.

Overall:
It’s a nice size. Not quite a true A5 but a reasonable size and aspect ratio combination to be honest. At the 3 for 2 offer, I got all three (the two Leuchtturm and this) for £25.49, making each book £8.50. Expensive enough to be nice; cheap enough (at this price) not to be too precious over it! It’s just a shame that the bleed-through was so awful.

I award it *** overall

Notebook or Filofax?

I have decided that I need to keep more notes for Rotary. Not so much dates of events, as these go straight into my diary, but notes on the talks given, the projects we are working on etc.

But, the questions is, do I go for a notebook (of which I have zillions) or a spare filofax (um, yeah, same thing about the zillions). On the one hand I want something fairly small and neat, but on the other it would be nice to go for something where I can file the pages under different dividers.

As everyone knows, I have a small shop’s worth of notebooks (and filofaxes) so there MUST be something in there to use!

The Options

Having had a look through The Emporium and The Bottom Drawer of my Desk, I have whittled it down to:

• A Cartesio notebook (13cm x 21 cm)
• The pocket flex
• A pocket filofax filled with notepaper which I can transfer to another binder later and file under different topics
• A personal filofax filled with notepaper which I can transfer to another binder later and file under different topics
• A homemade “Midori Traveller” (either with A6 size notebooks in it (by Papelote) or a slightly smaller Field Notes size – I have made both!)

Pros/Cons

The Cartesio

Pros	Cons
Lovely notebook	Not possible to file things separately – continuous book
Lots of great colours	Perhaps a smidgen too big (it has a bigger footprint than my filofax but is thinner)
Good page size
Hard cover so easy to write on out and about

The pocket flex

Pros	Cons
Small and neat	A bit small
Possibility of having different notebooks for different things in the same cover	Horrible paper
Possibility of tearing the pages out and filing them in one of the many unused pocket filofaxes

Pocket Filofax

Pros	Cons
I have lots not in use and would really like to use them	Page size is a bit small
The small ring size would (for once) be a bonus!
I could transfer notes to another unused one (therefore using two!) to file notes

Personal Filofax

Pros	Cons
I have some spare one, not being used	A bit too big and heavy
Page size is about right
I have lots of spare notepaper for them
Pages could be transferred to another one for filing

Homemade “Midori Traveller”

Pros	Cons
Small and neat	Floppy cover
Possibility of having different notebooks for different things in the same cover

If I win a very slimline binder on eBay that I’m looking at then my decision might be made. I would load that up with cotton cream paper and transfer notes to the navy Portland once they were ready for filing. The one I am looking at is very, very slimline (the ring diameter looks like it is less than 10mm!) so it wouldn’t be a giant brick to carry.

If I don’t win it, then I think it will be a close call between the Cartesio and the homemade “Midori”

Keep you posted!

Review of Midori Dainel notebook

The Journal Shop did a 20% off everything offer. Despite all the urges to the contrary, I managed to restrain myself and only bought three notebooks: 1x Midori Dainel A5 (blue cover) and 2x Moleskine soft cover in black (19 x 25 cm – who knows what size that relates to??).

I realise I have never actually reviewed the first Midori Dainel that I bought (purple cover), so let me waste no more time before doing so.

General:
The notebook is a collaboration between Midori and someone in France who makes the cover (who?? Anyone know?) The name ‘Dainel’ means ‘suede’ in French and refers to the cover, which is both coloured and textured like suede. The paper is thread-stitched so that the book will lie flat (with a bit of help); the paper is by Midori. There are 91 pages (presumably it was 92, but it counts 91 because they have ‘stamped’ on one of them).

Cover:
The cover is card, though it is printed to give it a suede-effect look. There is a plastic cover on the outside (removable) with information printed on the back inside cover:

Covers (Still in plastic)

Information panel on inside back cover

I took the plastic covers off and took another picture:

Without covers

Hmm. I’m not convinced I like the feel of the book with or without the plastic cover! Without is a bit better (it feels like the board in Fuzzy Felt if anyone else is old enough to remember that!). The colours are lovely though.

The bottom left of the front cover (right next to the spine) has 'Dainel' embossed in it. Very discreet!

Inside:
There is a ‘stamp’ printed on the first sheet:

'Stamp'

Reverse of the 'stamped' page

Paper:
The paper has lines that don’t go quite to the edges of the page and the ‘lines’ are in fact very closely spaced dots. Line spacing is 6mm. Colour is cream.

Ink test:
Given that the ‘stamp’ from the front page bleeds through so much, I had some trepidation over the ink tests. I did the ink tests on the ‘stamped’ page and turned the book upside down as there was no major reason to indicate that it was ‘the wrong way up’ (the top and bottom margins are the same). I also didn’t want to waste a page doing ink tests when one was already wasted with the ‘stamp’!
Generally, there was no feathering at all. Ink took a while to dry (depending on brand) and there was some bleed-through (though pretty acceptable). The paper is quite thin, though this might be still the same weight as other papers, just rolled/compressed more to make it thinner. I currently have fewer pens inked up than normal, hence the reduced test.

Ink test

Ink test - reverse

Overall:
Nice, slimline notebooks. I’m not sure what to use them for as they aren’t quite thick enough for book-plotting, but no doubt it will find a use eventually!

Best laid schemes...

...gang aft a-gley indeed!

A week ago, I thought I would go back to time-boxing and instead of trying to plan tasks, plan time on projects (and if a task reached completion, I would, of course, tick it off the list). I thought I had 11 ½ free days up to May 4th and I guesstimated 8 hours/day of usable time and drew up a plan on how to spend the hours on different projects.

Oh dear.

Almost immediately it all went wrong.

I found out that I am back to Malawi on the 2nd May, neatly removing some of the days I thought I had. Not only that, but ‘stuff to get done before I go to Malawi’ then started to impinge on other remaining days (sorting out travel medicine seems to be taking up a ridiculous amount of time!).

Then came a couple of unexpected events, taking some more time chunks.

Then came the 8 hours a day issue. I had evidently forgotten that my first day ‘off’ after work (I work part-time) never seems to involve me having my backside in the chair ready to write/edit first thing. I am always slow to get the day started (whatever it is I have planned) for some reason. 8 hours in the day to do stuff? Er... no.

Then came a huge heap of ‘unexpected tasks’ which were either more important or more interesting to do than what I had scheduled. More slippage!

Then came that rebellious tendency I can have. I saw my day carved up into boxes and thought, nope, not doing that.

Then my head intervened with its ‘yes, I know you were just scheduling time and trying not to get swept up in a task, so that other things would get completed, but you’re only 5 pages away from editing the whole of this chapter, so why don’t you just finish it?’ and of course, I did.

It was also pouring with rain so gardening got crossed off the list.
I wasn’t well so running got crossed off the list.

In the picture below, I have my planned day on the LHS and the reality of the day on the RHS.

Let’s just try this all again shall we????

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]