Long Term Tasks/Goals

Talking on a regular basis with a fellow paper organiser/planner user is really good for the soul. It helps you break out of your own comfort zone and gets you thinking about doing things in a different way.

As you know I've been chatting and discussing some of our favourite planner topics with Karine Tovmassian on 'The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Plannerverse' podcast.

A few times Karine has shared with us how she has all of her goals and tasks listed and how she adds them to her weekly task lists.

Personally I have tended to only plan on a weekly basis, with some things (mainly appointments) planned further ahead than that.

With the changes to the seasons finally happening here it gets me shifting gear in to what I should be doing or I need to do outside, and what was a fairly steady winter weekly routine has to be massaged to include new tasks like lawn mowing and other jobs outside etc.

Hearing Karine explain how she has all of her tasks and goals recorded in her organiser has 'kicked my butt' in to thinking I need to start thinking in a similar way, otherwise I am still going to have lots and lots of unfinished jobs and projects that will never in a million years get on to my weekly task list.

So starting this next week I'm going to try and decide how to record all of these miscellaneous tasks/jobs/goals and put them in to some form of order and then prioritise them and start adding them to my weekly list of things to do and start getting some of them crossed off the list.

So how do you plan your long term goals/tasks? Do you have any hints and tips you can share. Please leave them in the comments.

To Do Lists?

How do you structure your To-Do lists.

Do you organise them by category?

Or do you organise them by when they have to be done by?

Or is there some other way?

Please share your ideas in the comments. Thank you

To Do Lists?

Do you use To Do lists? I find my life revolves around lists of various sorts.

But do you have different lists for different things? Or just one main list?

Some of mine are a bit more than a To Do list and I end up with a page of notes just on one topic, I suppose this is taking it to extremes in a way. But it does mean I'm downloading my thoughts and ideas on to paper and not trying to remember everything, because I know that doesn't work!

There are times when my short note on a to do list doesn't make any sense at all the following day/week!! So I've learnt to be a bit more descriptive and specific in my notes, take up more than one line if need be.

How do you record things you need to do?

Folded To-Do page between Weekly pages

I'm setting up my Orchid Aston as my new Life In Scotland Filofax. The heather-purple color reminds me of the Scottish hillsides in August!

While setting things up, I had an idea to fold a lined page lengthwise so I could use it for my weekly lists without obscuring my view of the rest of the week:

My apologies to anyone who has already posted about this, I'm only just now figuring it out!

The reason I normally don't put a page between my weekly pages is I need to see my entire week at once. This way I can have a weekly list, and still see the entire week. By folding the page over, I can still have the entire page for my lists, and use the back of the page to record notes, expenditures, etc.  When the week is over, I can unfold the page to reduce bulk and leave it between the week's pages as a record of what I did.

The photo above and below show a Cotton Cream lined page between Cotton Cream weekly pages. The only problem with this setup is that the holidays in the Cotton Cream weekly pages are printed at the middle of the book, so they are covered up by the half-page.

I also happen to have this year's weekly insert in the white pages, which prints the holidays on the outside of the page, under the day names:

This allows holidays to be visible all week and not covered up by the half page.

I can still easily access the back of the lined page. I could even fold it over the other way for access to that side of the page in the second half of the week.

I'm really liking this setup!

The Tale of Two To-Do lists

For about the last month I've been running two series of To-Do lists. A traditional paper one in my slimline Filofax, and the other using a free app on my iPod Touch and it's also linked to my iMac.

It will not surprise you that about two weeks ago I more or less abandoned using the electronic one, but the paper one continues to work well. The paper one is  quicker, may be not neater (remembering my hand writing!), but it's just so much easier to carry around and use at a glance as a reminder of what I have got to get done this week, or this month.


I've done some of my own pre-printed to-do lists with 'This Week', 'This Month' 'Future Purchases', 'Projects' and 'Do Sometime' in the header. Printed on Personal size sheets these make the job of updating the lists every so often much easier to do.

I am also inclining towards paper only calendars now. Whilst Google Calendar works and I can share it with the rest of the family. I find a paper calendar so much easier to manage and keep up to date. It has become a weekly Sunday evening ritual whilst I'm chatting to my UK radio friends via Skype to sit and up date my diary for the forthcoming week and also up date my Pocket Filofax at the same time.

Do you try to keep dual systems up to date?

To Do Lists - Revisited

I find revisiting previously discussed topics often springs up some new ideas that may not have been discussed before.

This morning for instance Giovani from Brazil sent me a link to an article in the Wall Street Journal - Five Tips for Managing Your To-Do List I found it a very useful article. Take a read for yourself.

The previous articles on To-Do lists on Philofaxy are also worth a revisit.

Have you discovered any new ways of organising your To-Do lists?

To do hints and tips

I know we have covered To-Do lists before. But seeing a post over at Plannerisms prompted me to give you a little update on various ideas on how to use To-Do lists.

I'm a big user of To-Do lists, it's the most frequent page I have to buy or print out depending on the size, I have pre-printed ones for various tasks like 'going away' so I remember all the things to take (power adapters, leads) tasks such as turning of the water, heating etc.

So I was naturally interested in the 'Collection of To-Do Tips' over on Plannerisms. Some of them confirmed my own thoughts on how many things you should have in a to-do list. And to review and update your lists regularly... I must post a calendar reminder to do it at least once a week... sort of a nag alarm!!!

And then this morning Lauren posted a blog entry 'Lists - Oh how I love you so!'  Another big list person! Take a read...

Just off to consolidate my to-do lists.......

Spring Clean Time?

Yes, it is sunny outside, so yes what am I doing sat in-doors in front of my Mac....

Spring has definitely sprung in UK these last couple of days, matching the weather we enjoyed in France over Easter. I find the weather influences my mood and motivation for doing things more than anything else. I'm not feeling too bad about sitting in-doors for a few minutes sharing something with you, because I have a planned out task list for the rest of today..

I saw this post on Lifehacker this morning about Clean Out Your To-Do List for Guilty Free Productivity. It has a lot of good tips in it. I'm not very good at these things, so it was a useful post to prod me in to sorting out my To-Do lists, something I have got down to-do this evening whilst I'm looking after my friends two young children.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that needs a prod to get things sorted out and to take some time out to do a task review every once in a while.

Here are some slightly different To-Do lists to try out

Enjoy your weekend...

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The solution to the small Filofax calendar pages??

A recurring issue we Filofax users have is the page size/ book size ratio. In order to have calendar/ diary pages large enough to write everything we need, the resulting book can be big and sometimes unwieldy. So we try to strike a balance between a small enough book/ big enough page. But often the daily spaces in the weekly planners are still just too small to write everything we need to each day.

But today I read an interesting article that could possibly be the solution. I subscribe to Travisthetrout's blog (http://travisthetrout.wordpress.com/) and yesterday's post has a list of interesting links from this week. One of those articles is "Calendar Or To-Do List? Two Task Management Tools Compared."

Now listen. I've been reading a lot lately about to-do lists. Let me say, some people write about lists like they invented the list. I mean, come on. List-writing is probably the earliest form of human organization in the world. People were using sticks to write inventory lists in cuneiform on mud tablets thousands of years ago. So don't pretend you're being revolutionary about a list.

But this article really is, wow. Especially toward the end of the article, something clicked. Basic premise is, don't schedule your tasks. Huh? Leave white space on your calendar. Um... what?

"Calendar or To Do List?" is about keeping white space on your calendar to effectively gauge your availability for completing your tasks. You write your tasks someplace else OTHER than your calendar. I've been doing the opposite: artificially scheduling tasks in order to have them in front of me at all times.

Andre Kibbe, author of the above-mentioned article, says that's all well and good for those tasks that actually have to be accomplished at that time on that particular day. But for general tasks not tied to a time or day, keep them OFF your calendar, for crying out loud!

I have to admit while I was reading this article and got to the heading When to Use Calendars, I had to roll my eyes. Oh man. Doesn't everybody know when to use a calendar? Actually, no. I didn't.

His message really started to hit home when he mentioned all those little tasks that tend to fill up my day "will be greater in number than what can be crammed into a typical calendar blank." No WONDER my daily spaces are so packed, yet I still feel scattered!

I won't re-write the article here, but go read it if you have time because it could be very useful for those of us struggling with Filofax's small daily spaces.

There's also a link to another article of his about context lists, which is particularly useful for Filofaxers too because we can have as many context lists as we want in our Lists section (or wherever you like to put your lists).

So, thank you to Travisthetrout for pointing it out, and especially to Andre Kibbe for writing this article that really got me thinking in the opposite direction!

Could this be the answer to the age-old Filofax dilemma? Is this the solution to the too-small daily spaces? What do you think?

Writing vs. Doing

The good news: I write all my ideas and things I want to do (sooner or later) in my Filofax. I've virtually eliminated lost information.

The bad news: Writing and doing are two different things. Some things go months or years without getting done. They just sit there on the page. For example, because I don't have much opportunity in the day to just sit and make phone calls, I have pages and pages of unmade calls to people who would be really cool to talk to. But only the urgent calls get made.

The "eh" news: Some of the things I've written down are never going to get done. They just sit there on the page until, one day, I realize they weren't a very good idea in the first place. So it makes me wonder about the value of writing them down in the first place. But maybe procrastination isn't all bad. It gives me a chance NOT to make unwise moves. Gives me time to see the better of them. Kind of like counting to 10 before speaking when you're angry. I guess "eh" isn't so bad after all.

In a recent (July 6, 2006) podcast on 43folders, Merlin Mann outlined two ways to tell whether your system is working. With all credit where credit is due, I'll paraphrase them here, as I wrote them in my own notes (in my Filofax, of course):

1) Your system must support you and your work, not the other way around.

2) Changing your attitudes and habits is what makes any system work or not.

What I like about the Filofax is that it's pretty neutral on both counts. Whether or not your system works depends on how well you set it up based on your self-understanding, as you choose your calendar format, tabs, and what to keep inside them. And your attitudes and habits are up to you...but keeping records and journals in your 'fax sure can help you see where you are and where you want to get to.

The BS

OK, I've eliminated the index cards. I've got everything I can think of on some neat list in some neat Filofax somewhere. So why did I just miss paying a bill on time? Why do I look at a To Do list, even on a little pocket size page, and feel overwhelmed? Who wrote that list, but me? How can I be overwhelmed by a list I wrote of things that I want to do?

So, should I write them all on index cards, because I find them less intimidating when I only have to look at one at a time? Well, I could do that...except that some of them started out on index cards in the first place.

Or, I could cut the BS.

If I have a phone call that's not getting done, is it because I feel awkward talking on the phone for other reasons? Or because I get overfocused sometimes and forget to pick up the phone? Or is it because a phone call isn't the best way for that particular communication, and I need to wait until I see that person in person next week, or see whether I have the person's email address so I can write my thoughts out clearly?

In any case, the list isn't the problem. Me is the problem. My system is as perfect as it's ever going to get. Deal with it.

There, I've said it.

P. S. You can read my notes about the above photo, and view all the philophotos I've posted to this blog on my flickr page.