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I am a small business Conversation Consultant and public speaker that uses the power of the internet to leverage your success. Productivity in Context is a web magazine focused on Productivity and tools for organizing. Make this your headquarters for improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.

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I have been working on designing my own calendar pages for my Circa organizer for the past three weeks, and the project is progressing nicely. To recap, the calendar is designed for a 5.5″ x 8.5″ format, two pages per week. Click on the pic to see a larger image:

Some of the rationale behind this design was discussed in a previous post regarding how people look at text on a page, and incorporating the “F-shaped” pattern of viewing into the design for optimal information retrieval.

David Allen writes in “Ready for Anything”:

[There are some] things that hold some form of potential fascination and meaning for you, …out there right now, waiting for you to come to their table and play.
[…]
I forget to focus on my friends. I forget to think about giving random presents. I forget, believe it or not, about having fun. I forget about what constructive things I could do given my position with our office staff next week.
[…]
So I put reminders in my personal management system, and I see them in my Weekly Review. This is black-belt personal management for the twenty-first century person: consistently clearing your head, identifying outcomes and actions, organizing and updating lists, to maintain a clear head and a proactive frame of mind.

At the end of the article, Allen asks a question: “What areas of your life have you perhaps neglected more than you would like? How could you build in a reminder to think about them more consistently?”

This Weekly Review Notes field was designed specifically for this purpose. After doing my second Weekly Review with this new system in place, I believe that the design is working well. On the left-hand margin of the left-hand page is the field for the “Big Rocks”, tasks and Projects that need the most attention. Secondary to this I wanted an area to keep an eye on Actions or Topics that I wanted to follow-up on during the Weekly Review. Due to the spine of the organizer that divides the two pages, I believe that there is another “F” pattern that emerges on the right-hand page. This is where I put the Weekly Review reminder field. During the week, as ideas or tasks occur to me, they get recorded in this field for follow-up.

Last week’s notes included “Make time for uploading pics to Flickr” and “Address archive system“, both actions that I had been thinking about sporadically, but hadn’t felt any inspiration about. Then, during my appointment with myself on Friday for the Weekly Review, I spotted them again, and put them on the Next Action list. Sure enough, they showed up on Sunday when I had the correct time and context, and now they are done! It is a very good feeling when a plan comes together, and when I can increase my level of trust in my system.

How do you keep track of these little thoughts? How do you send notes to yourself to see during the Weekly Review? Leave a comment.

Click here to download the Calendar pages.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5wlr3z. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen