I’ve been doing several admin-type things the past few days. Today, I tackled my calendar, modifying Dave Seah’s Compact Calendar 2008 into a two-column half-sheet layout, printing out another year’s worth of monthly calendar sheets and making two-week spreads up to May 31, 2008, then removing older calendar sheets from my organizer and archiving them in a file. I was shocked at how the time has flown!

My planner looks much the same as it did six months ago, except for the additional section for my project lists and project detail sheets. I still love the flexibility of the Circa system and have a strong presentiment that I’ll be keeping to this system for a while! My two-week spreads and daily task/tracker sheets still work very well for me, although I’ve generally stopped using the tracker side of the sheet except for those days when I need some extra motivation to complete my routines. It’s nice to feel that I’ve found a system that finally works for me — at least in this season of my life.

I know that a few others have experimented with new organizers and systems this year, @Stephen, Penguin Girl, and Kate, for example. As the year comes to a close, have you found your organizer working for you? What changes will you make for 2008?

First: Custom Shadow Box business cards, previously mentioned, but here’s the photo. I miscalculated and put the photos on the non-glossy side of the paper, so for the next printing I’ll reverse the card so that the photos end up on the glossy side.

Second: My sister gave me a belated birthday present — a Circa PDA! She also had stacks of colored cards for herself and gave me ten of each color. Thanks, Angela!

The small size of the Circa PDA has me pulling it out instead of squeezing out my junior-size planner out of my purse for random braindumping while on the road, although I still use my planner almost exclusively while I’m at home. I haven’t really pulled together a “system” yet to combine both but will just see what I naturally use the PDA for.

If you use both a notebook and a PDA and have a system, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

I have been suffering from the worst case of unmotivation that I’ve ever had in my life. I would really like to just read ALL DAY and not do anything else until Steve comes home. (Okay, maybe I’ll take a few sips of blackberry limeade every now and then.) My friends look at me oddly when I mention how lazy I’ve been feeling because they know me as the unstoppable super-productive person who types really fast, reads 50 books a week (slight exaggeration), works full-time, volunteers, and wrote a book on top of it all. Steve looks at me oddly when I suggest overextending our “fun” budget category to go eat out again because I don’t feel like cooking because I usually love to cook. I’m generally not feeling like myself.

I’m even too lazy to try to analyze why I’m unmotivated, which would probably be the first step to solving this particular problem.

Oh, my work is still getting done — and being done well, if I do say so myself. But let’s just say that the things I don’t have to do (including building out the HTML/CSS for my personal web site) aren’t getting done, and I’m wasting a lot of time gearing myself up to do the things I have to do.

“Do something for five minutes and the momentum will carry you through.” “Make it into a game.” “Set a timer.” “Use Dave Seah’s cool motivational forms to blast through projects.” The usual motivational tricks aren’t working for me. I really do think analyzing why I’m unmotivated should be the first step for real change. But since the thought of analyzing myself makes me tired, I’ve decided to try another form of motivational trickery on myself: Make a cool new form for myself. Better yet, make a form that addresses the main issue of why I need to be working — to earn money!

So — I give you my uncreatively named Week Tracking Sheet v1. Here is an example of it in use with made-up numbers (so you can’t know how poor — or rich — I am… bwa ha ha!):

As a freelance worker, the money I make is split across multiple projects and tracked across multiple Excel spreadsheets. This printable form allows me to consolidate the financial information; after I complete a task, I log how much money I just “made” into a column. At the end of the day, I total it up. At the end of the week, I can look at a grand total to see how I’m doing.

I tried to think of other uses for this form but couldn’t think of any. It would have to be something that you do and could log intermittently throughout the day, I think, with a hard numerical value (time, money, pages?) that you can add up at the end. Maybe for time spent studying? If you have any other creative ideas for how to use this, please share!

And if you’re curious — this did motivate me a little bit more yesterday when I used it. I’ll try to remember to share how I’m doing in the area of motivation during my week update(s).

Download

• Weekly Tracker PDF - weektracker.pdf

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

How to use it with a Junior Rolla/Circa notebook

Print out on 8.5×11″ paper. Trim off right side .25″. Cut in half (at 5.5″ mark). Punch the top part of the form.

I [finally!] revised my Project List Form by swapping the positions of the checkbox and code box. This makes it easier to scan the project titles (which I write starting from the left side in English) and easily see which projects have been completed.

Download

• Project List Form v2 - project-list-v2.pdf
  The PDF is editable in Illustrator, if you’re the kind of person that likes to customize things.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

See my original post for usage notes. I’m leaving the original download up for people who liked the checkboxes on the right.

Time to finish up my opening series of GTD posts with a description of my workflow — and a tour of my work area to boot!

Work area 2.1

I have an Ikea Jerker desk, obtained frugally from Craigslist. The two swinging shelves are mounted on the outer left side of the desk and hold shared office supply items (Steve’s desk is to the left of my desk).

Going clockwise from left:

• My inbox is a cheap rolling file cart configured to be a printer stand instead. (The bottom shelf holds various flavors of printer paper, manila folders, and clear plastic binder sleeves.) Sometimes the cat ends up in my inbox, and I have to process her by petting her.
• My trusty Circa/Rolla planner is pretty much always right there on my desk — unless I take it out with me.
• My bulletin board mostly holds pictures that make me smile, but is a nice place for pinning up coupons. I tend to forget about coupons that are stuck away in a file folder.
• A Levenger Circa punch is conveniently reachable on the top shelf of my desk. Other things on my top shelf: Various issues of Photoshop and Layers magazines, DOM Scripting, cell phone manual, retired Moleskine, reference binders, sketchbook, envelopes and notecards, and four-shelf paper trays with lined paper, scratch paper, empty clear plastic document sleeves, and postal scale, external hard drive (tucked just out of sight next to paper trays), and scanner (stored vertically).
• My laptop (Dell Inspiron 6000) on the Laptop Elevator.
• The Ikea Jerker desk comes with CD racks that can hang onto the desk (currently empty, acting as headset hangers) and a larger file rack. My file rack currently holds various plastic document sleeves that hold current project support files. I usually have a sleeve for each paid project for the project proposal, schedule, notes from phone conversations, CDs, and any other physical materials that the client has provided. These sleeves are awesome for carrying around with me. Also, because I’m a visual person, I’ll sometimes line up the ones I’m working on neatly on my desk so I can remember what I’m trying to get done.
• Fezzik is our biggest stuffed monkey, and offered to pose for the picture. (He has also been useful in the past as a CPR practice dummy.)

The above photo is pretty basic, and shows how the filing cabinet is conveniently right behind me, so I can quickly spin around and file something or pick something up from the printer. My in-laws gave me the sea otter calendar for Christmas.

GTD Workflow 1.0 and daily routines

On typical mornings, I’ll wake up, make Steve’s lunch and send him off, and then start my morning routine, which generally happens in two stages. The stage that happens first depends on how light it is outside.

• If the alarm went off at 4 am:
  • Read email and blogs
  • Write blog entry
  • [Then continue with 6 am plan...]
• If the alarm went off at 6 am:
  • Exercise (currently running 15-30 minutes every other day depending on how my knee feels)
  • Empty dishwasher
  • Eat breakfast
  • Take vitamin
  • Check what I’m making for dinner, pull out things to defrost if necessary
  • Shower
  • Brush teeth
  • Get dressed
  • Devotional time
  • [Then do first two points of 4 am plan...]

Now I’m ready to start my workday.

I open the filing cabinet and pull out the tickler folder for the day, dump anything inside onto my inbox, and put the folder to the back of the line. The inbox may already have mail or other various items from the previous day. I also set up a tickler tab in Remember the Milk for digital-related stuff, so I check that, too. (I revised my daily planner sheet to include a “tickler” bubble so I remember to do both of the above.)

Processing physical stuff usually goes pretty quickly — most things can get filed into my filing cabinet or otherwise dealt with, and finance-related things all go into the next Wednesday or Saturday tickler folder. Wednesdays and Saturdays are when I process budget-related things.

A “brief” intermission to talk about project management…

Let me break away from my routines to talk about how I manage my projects. At this point, I have four things for keeping track of projects:

• Project Detail Form
• Compact Project Task Cards
• Remember the Milk
• Project List Form

The Project Detail Form acts as my “brainstorming holder” where I can brainstorm ideas in the grid area and brainstorm possible next actions in the action area. In the diagram below, you can see the various possible-next-actions listed on the left. I usually create a Compact Project Task Card for each project as well, noting the project number on the title bar of the task card. Then I write down the next few tasks that I know I need to do. I usually will mark the project detail form item(s) with a dot so that I know those are the things I’m working on next.

Now that I’m also using Remember the Milk, I’ll enter the very next action I need to take into RTM (in this case, “Make favor prototype”).

At this point, I have “make favor prototype” in three places — the Project Detail form, the task card, and RTM. This does seem like overkill; for now, though, they serve different purposes and are working for me.

• The Project Detail form, again, is where I’m initially “brainstorming” everything. I will usually check this page during the weekly review and check things off if necessary. While I’ll sometimes refer to this page to determine my next action, sometimes I come up with next actions that aren’t on this page. It’s more of a capture tool than a true to-do list.
• The Compact Project Task Card, while originally designed to be a limited to-do list and visual prioritizing tool, currently acts more as a visual prioritizing tool and not so much as a to-do list. Again, I may or may not check things off on the card as I do them (I used to, but now I use RTM for that), although I generally will during the weekly review. During my weekly review, I’ll pull out ALL my compact project task cards and sort through them to determine their priority. Having the next and next-next actions on the card is useful to remind me what kinds of things I need to get done, which is why I’ve continued to jot the next couple actions down on the card. Some projects will be put on-hold for the week, and go into a different section of my planner. The projects that are active get layered into my organizer so that I can easily look at them during the week and keep my priorities straight.
• Remember the Milk is my real to-do list. It holds only my next actions for each project and tracks my waiting-for items as well.

Some of my projects are small, and don’t require their own Project Detail Form. In this case, I’ll pull out a Compact Project Task Card and use that to brainstorm the to-do’s. I use a lettering system to mark the small projects and a numbering system to mark the bigger projects. In the diagram below, “Baby Shower” (#5) has its own Project Detail Form, but “Post recipes and photos” (C) only warrants a Compact Project Task Card.

The Project List also is part of the weekly review. If I haven’t done so, I’ll check off completed projects. I have three different project lists — personal projects (yellow), freelance projects (pink), and PixelMill projects (blue). They are color coded and match the colors I use for the Compact Project Task Cards.

One aspect of my system that is still in process is the use of my daily planner sheet.

Before, I would write out all the things I wanted to get done and then plan them into my day, with hour or two-hour blocks for each major task. GTD, however, says that this isn’t ideal because our lives are too unpredictable — “things come up.” I think the GTD mindset (as I interpreted it from reading the book) is about being open to necessary interruptions while still being able to “get things done” by looking at your next actions list and fitting those in as you have the time and energy.

I think necessary interruptions occur frequently for me, but after a few days of leaving this part of my daily page blank and trying to work only from RTM next-action lists, I’m finding that I need the daily focus of writing down at least what I would like to accomplish that day. So, I’m going back to writing down three or four of the bigger tasks (after checking RTM) as well as any scheduled meetings/events onto my daily planner sheet. Some days I use the timeboxing schedule, others I don’t. But overall I’m trying to be a little more flexible and cull out some of the easy next-actions in RTM as I have a few minutes here and there.

This intermission got really long and complicated. Here is a summary:

• Project List form - Used to provide overall project tracking — what Allen would call “open loops.”
• Project Detail form - Used for brainstorming specific bigger projects as a capture tool.
• Compact Project Task card - Used for week-level planning and prioritizing.
• Daily Planner Sheet - Used for day-level planning.
• Remember the Milk - Used to track only “next actions”.

Back to my daily routine…

Okay — so after checking my tickler folder/tab and processing my physical inbox, I go back to RTM and scan my tasks. Sometimes I have tasks that have a due-date on them, or I’ve prioritized them so that they show up at the top of the list. I pick out 3-5 tasks that I hope to accomplish today and write them onto my daily planner sheet.

Then I get started!

As I cross things off on my daily planner sheet, I also check them off in Remember the Milk. Anytime I check something off in RTM, I immediately create a new task for the next action (if necessary, referencing my Project Detail Form or Project Task Card) — or, if I’m waiting for someone, immediately enter another task into my “waiting for” list.

When I finish a task and have 10 or 15 minutes before a scheduled event, I’ll usually try to get something else done from my RTM next-action list that is small and easy… make a phone call, do some quick research, clean something in the house, etc. Otherwise I’ll move on to my next major task.

At the end of the workday, I rejoice over my completed tasks, shrug at the incomplete tasks, and finish filling out my bubbles. I make sure I don’t have any early-morning meetings. Then I practice harp and go make dinner.

My evening routine (which is not quite “habit” yet):

• Do dishes and “shine sink” (a la Flylady)
• Pick up around the house for 5 or 10 minutes
• Put ice packs and bottled water in the freezer for Steve’s lunch
• Pick out what to wear the next day

Whew!

I think that was maybe two or three posts in one, but thanks for reading this far.

Update: Oops! I completely forgot to mention that I use Outlook for managing email. I have lots of subfolders set up for my various projects, and funnel my personal email into one inbox and work email into two others. I’ve been able to keep all inboxes processed and empty so far.

Also … apparently I’ve been added to the Killer GTD Meme list (thanks, Jeroen!). I didn’t know it was going on, so my post doesn’t really follow the rules… and of course I should make the disclaimer that I’m only a week into GTD!

This comes after my GTD Project List Form v1 post. Take a look if you need some background on the concept of Projects within Getting Things Done and want to see the “parent” or “companion” form that goes along with this one.

Concept

I mentioned before that I had also created a Getting Things Done-inspired Project Detail Form, and here it is:

This fold-out page is formatted to print on 8.5″ x 11″ paper. I Circa-punch the left side and trim the bottom quarter inch off so it lines up with the other pages in my Circa/Rolla organizer. The aqua line isn’t printed — I’ve added it to the screenshot so you can see where I fold the page back.

The left side holds basic project information. In the diagram below…

• Big area for the project name.
• A small area for the project code, which matches up with the project code I assign on the Project List form.
• A big box to write the desired outcome and wildest dream, to help you focus on what you want this project to accomplish.
• There are then several lines for brainstorming action items.

The right fold-out panel is a basic grid layout (1/4″ grid markings), perfect for notes, brainstorming, etc. I’ve already found this helpful for jotting down phone numbers and car service quotes for my “replace clutch” project. It’s also a nice place to write things down and brainstorm when I’m on-the-go and only have my planner with me.

So how does this fit in with GTD? David Allen doesn’t talk about a “project detail sheet” in the book, but he does talk about “project support materials” that should be filed away for easy reference (either digitally, in an email folder or document folder, or physically, in a file folder or other storage unit) that are pulled out when you are working on the project. I think of this project detail sheet as a mini portable project file that I can always have with me in my planner to jot down notes, list the next few actions I think I need to take, and refer to quickly and easily. It’s not for everyone, but I think it will work for me.

I’ve deliberately stressed the brainstorming aspect of this page. As a list-maker type of person, I often get caught up into trying, first of all, to have a “complete” list, and second of all, to completely check off everything on the list. However, for some projects it’s not practical or feasible to create a complete list. This page gives me the freedom to make an incomplete list — to just look a few steps ahead, dream, brainstorm, even — gasp — write the action items out of order. I can quickly grab the Next Action and put it into my “real” to-do list (using Remember the Milk for now), without being afraid that I’ll forget an important step down the road because I already have it captured on this page.

Finally — I’m planning a follow-up post that demonstrates my current workflow using these different forms, and will have more concrete examples on how I use this specific project detail form in that post. Update: Here it is.

Download

• Project Detail Form v1 - project-detail.pdf
  The PDF is editable in Illustrator, if you’re the kind of person that likes to customize things.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Usage notes

• Print landscape on 8.5″ x 11″ paper.
• Can punch the left side. (This was specifically formatted for a Circa/Rolla notebook but may work for other formats.)
• Trim the bottom 1/4″ off if you want it to match the Circa/Rolla Junior size paper.
• Fold the grid back so that it doesn’t overlap the hole punches.
• I file mine in order by project number so that I can quickly reference them from the Project List sheet.

Feedback

If you have any feedback about my GTD forms, I’d love to hear it! Please leave a comment below.

In my previous post about Getting Things Done, I mentioned that I had created forms for keeping track of my projects. As promised, here is my first post about one of my forms — a Project List Form.

Project Concept

A little bit of GTD theory: David Allen defines anything that will take more than one or two steps as a “project.” So a Project could be an actual work project (”Health Spa Web Site”) or a personal project (”Make a quilt”), but it could also be something like “Get clutch fixed on car” because you have to 1) call your friend for a mechanic reference, 2) call the mechanic, and 3) bring the car in.

Allen advises that you have some sort of project master list that you review weekly, to remind you of all the unresolved stuff that you have going on.

Each project might also have support material, which would be the various reference items (such as the mechanic’s business card, or quilt pattern ideas) that you would need to use when working on the project. These materials should be filed away neatly somewhere so that you can pull them out as you are able to work on them.

The Project List Form v1

I designed a very basic project list form, perfect for my Circa/Rolla organizer.

• Three color choices for the header: The headers are color coded similar to my Compact Project Task Cards. I use yellow for personal projects, blue for PixelMill projects, and pink for freelance projects.
• 20 lines for listing projects.
• Each line has a box on the left to allow you to notate a project code. The project code can be referenced on the project detail sheet (another blog on this later), your personal files, or on the Compact Project Task Card.
• A juicy fat checkbox on the right. (I may revise this to be on the left — I think it’s more natural to scan down the list for incomplete projects if the checkbox is closer to the actual project title.)

Download

• Project List Form v1 - project-list.pdf
  The PDF is editable in Illustrator, if you’re the kind of person that likes to customize things.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Usage example and notes

• Each color is on its own page, so there are three pages. You can print out only one page if you want a single color. You can print your own double-sided sheets, but the forms are not designed to line up when double-sided.
• I’ve been using numbers for project detail sheet codes and letters for mini-projects that fit on one of my Compact Project Task Cards.

Okay — so now I owe another blog post about my project detail form. Stay tuned!

Update 6/15: Go to the next part: GTD Project Detail Form v1 is up!

One of my weekend projects was to revise my Efficient Grocery Shopping List and make it fit a half-sheet of paper so that I could put it into my organizer. I also wanted to somehow incorporate a different grocery store list for the local food co-op, which I’ve started going to more often to purchase a larger variety of organic and locally-grown/produced foods.

The result — a two-sided compact grocery shopping list, created in Excel.

Click for larger view.

By printing the spreadsheet on both sides of a sheet of paper, I can cut the paper in half and have a two-sided grocery list; one side for my local Safeway, the other side for the food co-op. When planning my weekly grocery shopping list (or biweekly, as the case may be), I can fill out the items that I need from both stores and only bring one list around town.

The half-sheet size means that I can Circa-punch the sheet and put it into my organizer. The page has space at the bottom of the half-sheet, which I can use to sketch out the week’s menu (I used to do this in the wide right margin of the original sheet).

I’ve updated my original Excel spreadsheet to include both the original full-size spreadsheet as well as a second spreadsheet for the two-sided/two-store version. You are more than welcome to download the spreadsheet and tweak it for your own use.

Download:

• Compact Efficient Grocery List PDF - groceries-half.pdf
• Efficient Grocery List and Compact Grocery List Excel Workbook v2- groceries.xls
  Two spreadsheets in the same workbook - one with the original full-size one-store spreadsheet, one for the half-sheet two-side printout.
  

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Notes:

• When printing, be sure to check the “fit to page” option so the spreadsheet compresses to a one-page printout.
• Print out a few copies of the half-sheet, then return the paper to the printer to print more on the other side of the paper. Cut the paper in half — if you’ve printed it right, you should end up with a two-sided half-sheet.

It has been three months since I began using My New Organizer.

To review, here are the specs of my organizer and the current order of my pages:

• Rolla/Circa junior-sized notebook with tab dividers. Black plastic covers.
• Day Runner plastic card holder (currently unused)
• Day Runner plastic pouch (currently unused)
• Cardstock cover sheet w/ contact info
• On-hold and extra Compact Project Task Cards
• Blue divider tab
• Archived daily sheets (I pull these out and file them once a week)
• Red divider tab
• Printable CEO Compact Calendar, hacked to be half-sheet two-column format with birthdays
• Monthly and two-week spread calendar sheets
  • Two-week spread has small boxes for each day on the far left/right margins of the spread, as I usually don’t have many appointments
  • Inside margin is blank for notes, to-do’s, etc.
• Levenger page bookmark/ruler to mark current week
• Today’s fold-out daily sheet, for listing to-do’s, timeboxing, and tracking health/routines
• This week’s Project Task Cards, layered and prioritized (depending on which side of the two-week spread I’m on, this may show before the daily sheet)
• Green divider tab
• Monthly Goal Tracker sheet (with cheering groundhog)
• Miscellaneous pages with notes, lists, and other reference items
• Orange divider tab
• Blank notepaper
• Blue Levenger pocket divider for stuff (currently holding some photos)
• Clear Levenger pocket divider for stuff (currently empty)
• Back cover

The Day Runner card holder and pouch are new. Initially I was thinking that I would use my organizer as a wallet replacement, and keep cards and spare change in the Day Runner card holder and pouch. However, I’ve found that I’ve been loath to make my currently slim and svelte planner bulky and un-flat. Then, I found a tiny pocket zip wallet for $5 at a thrift store (nice-quality leather!) and have been using that instead, so the pockets and pouch haven’t been used. I might transfer some of my infrequently used plastic cards (health insurance card, car insurance card) to the planner instead; those would also be the cards that I’d be most likely to need with my planner instead of just my mini-wallet.

The two-week spread and daily-sheet combo is still working out great for me. The daily sheet has a generous blank area for planning out my day’s tasks and making other notes throughout the day (phone numbers, notes from conversations, etc.). The health/routines fold-out is still great for reminding me to take care of myself and work on the things I know I should be working on (practicing harp, blogging, etc.).

Compact Project Task Cards are still in use. For now, I’m not going to make any revisions to them. Working with some of Mike Rohde/Bill Westerman’s checkbox symbol ideas, I’m putting a dot in the checkbox if it’s an item waiting on someone else, then cross it out if they’ve completed it and write my next action (if not already written down) onto the card. I use a single slash when my task is completed, of course.

Further developments:

• I’m working on a compact version of my efficient grocery list spreadsheet that will fit into my planner, hopefully will have that done today or tomorrow, so expect a post soon.
• I checked out Getting Things Done from the library and will re-read it (I skimmed it in about an hour last time while at my sister’s house), so there may be some impact to my organizer if I implement more things. I think my life is getting busy enough again where I need to be more disciplined at having a “brain-dump” area and writing all of my to-do’s down. I’m also thinking about implementing different contexts again, but define specific contexts that would be more useful for me — i.e., @bike (for local errands), @car (for other errands). Before I get too far ahead of myself, though, I should really read the book more carefully this time around!

New addition to My Organizer: Compact Project Task Cards. (Download available!)

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been keeping track of my various “projects I’m working on” in the extra margin space of my weekly planner sheets (in the photo above, it’s the space between the day-boxes and the binder rings, under the cards). However, I found myself copying over unfinished projects from week to week. This got annoying.

I thought about Getting Things Done and began to see the wisdom of having a master “project list,” which was essentially what my week-to-week list was. So, I tried using a paper “bookmark” (about the width of the margin) as a project list-keeper. That worked okay, but I found myself having to look up other pieces of paper, emails, and online to-do lists related to each project.

This is about when I started scheming a cooler way to keep track of my projects AND some of the critical to-do’s for each project. Read on to learn about my process and to download/print the form!

The Journey

First stop, of course, was to see if David Seah had anything ready-to-go. The thing that looked most promising was the Task Order Up cards, which I had tried using a few months ago. I liked the discrete nature of the cards — each card was good for one “task” or, in my case, one “project.” But I needed something smaller and simpler that would line up neatly in the inside margin of my planner. I fired up Illustrator and designed a VERY simplistic card.

The card is 2.75″ wide by 2″ high. Since my rollabind rings are 1″ apart, this allows the cards to overlap evenly. The width of the card also fits within my inner “margin” area perfectly. The individual nature of the cards allows me to reorder them, which can help with visual prioritization, and limiting the number of to-do’s on each card keeps the projects from being overwhelming.

With rollabind punches on both sides, I can easily snap the cards into either side of my planner — the photo below shows the cards in place for this week…

– and where they will go for next week:

I have a section of my binder — between my cover sheet and first divider — that was unused, so for now I’m keeping my “on-hold” projects archived there, along with blank cards that I can easily access:

I went through a few different versions before settling on the current version.

Rejected versions:

First, I had a black and white version (photo: upper left) but I found it visually confusing as the project title blended in with the to-do’s when lined up next to each other. Then, I tried multi-colored cards with the project title area left as a white rectangle (photo: right). They looked pretty, but were ultimately impractical because it took too long to cut along the lines (as I’m a perfectionist). I finally settled on the current version — a white card with colored title area. Initially, I tried all blue (photo: bottom left), but thought it looked prettier with multiple colors. The multiple colors now allow me to have cards for personal client work, PixelMill work, and personal projects.

Download:

• Compact Project Task Cards v1 - project-card.pdf
  Printable sheet with 15 cards in red, pink, and yellow.
  

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

How to use it (or, how I’m using it):

Print the sheet (make sure your printer does not try to collapse the PDF to fit “within printer margins”). I’ve printed my cards on normal-weight paper.

Get a paper cutter that can cut multiple sheets of paper.

Slicing diagram:

1. Trim right side by .25″.
2. Trim top by .25″.
3. Trim bottom by .75″ so that total height is 10″.
4. Start slicing off 2″ strips (each strip has blue/pink/yellow).
5. Stack the strips together and slice off 2.75″ chunks to separate the cards.

Finally, punch both sides — left and right — with rollabind/circa punch. The punch should be set at the 1/2″ mark so that the holes are centered vertically on the card. Each card has two holes. Here’s a reference graphic again:

If you overlap the cards, it’s then pretty easy to flip the whole stack at once by grabbing the bottom (or top) card, depending on which way you’re trying to flip them.

The cards can be easily rearranged by priority and transferred to different sections of your binder (I’m keeping “on-hold” projects in a different section). I’m guessing that I’ll keep moving these cards forward in my planner until I complete them; longer projects may take multiple cards that I’ll add in as I complete each card.

Ideas for improvement

I’m going to try out what I have so far, but here are some things that I’m thinking about that may influence a new version:

• Sometimes I’m waiting on something specific from someone else before I can move forward on my task/project, but I forget exactly what. Possible solutions:
  • Use the back of the card for notes.
  • Add the “task item” for the other person but make some sort of mark in the checkbox to denote that I’m waiting on someone else.
• Do I need a way to incorporate due dates? Will wait and see.
• My client proposals usually include a proposed schedule grid, as well as a specific list of deliverables, that I like to print out. Currently they reside in clear folders and are easily accessible from my desk. I’m weighing the idea of adding some sort of reference or numbering system to my projects, and then adding an area in the title bar to reference the project number.

If you try this out and find it useful — or not — I’d love to hear about your experience! Leave a comment!