Far out, this is a holy grail I have been searching for - FOR. YEARS. - yeah, yeah, I know that grammar sucks, but I needed to make that point abundantly clear. I have always wanted a planner I could use to help set goals, to help me record my thoughts, and to be more productive. I remember a course I did years ago, at Tarmoola I think, making it 1995-1998. The guy was all about goal-setting. He journaled everything, and seemed to really have his shit together. I remember next to none of it now, other than how it made me feel - which is that I need such a tool myself.
So I have fart-arsed around with a number of things. I have my timesheet file now, which is a massive piece of information, going back years, and covering everywhere I have been, meeting planning, budget planning, and much more. It is good and I like having it. I also use Microsoft To-Do, which is not a bad tool for getting tasks down, and delegating them. But of course, the thing with this software is that it is too easy to ignore, or forget about, often leaving tasks months overdue. There are numerous packages on the market that seem to have a lot of bells and whistles, but I want something that doesn't take more time to set up than doing the bloody tasks it is there to manage. So is this truly a holy grail, and something that does not exist? Is the answer simply better self-management and discipline for me? Who knows.
Anyway, yesterday I saw reference to a very cool Kickstarter project, that I ended up supporting, planning for it to be a festive season gift. While there, I did what I have done 86 million times before, and searched for to-do, productivity, and the like. As usual, SFA came up. But then I tried a different couple of words, and all of a sudden, there was quite a list of journals, goal-setters, planners etc. that looked promising. I spent some time sieving through them all, and came up with a short-list of five. I figure I might try one or two and see how we go.
So I ended up with the Mal Paper one, the daily goal setter. It looks interesting, with lots of nice prompts, a lot of space for planning and reflection, and it smells really nice, which is a bonus! My only initial concern is that it is going to be a fair bit of work keeping up with this. But I need prompts to help me keep disciplined. So I am going to muck around with it and start putting some plans together, in order to kick off on October 1st with this new daily goal setting approach. If I get through the first quarter and love it, I might even look at some of the other items they have on offer.
The other day I saw an article on Forbes (link and extract below), with some useful for tips to managing ones to-do list, so that you focus time and energy on important tasks. What they talk about hit a nerve, because it's exactly what I do (the not-so-productive approach that is...). Worth having a look if this kind of thing interests you:
Forbes To-Do List Planning Article
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