Welcome back! It's good to see you again. Please note that I am now publishing all new material at my hub site: In Context Blog

Here is a short video that I made (pardon the roughness!) about my Next Action Tracking tools:

Shortly I will revise my “How I do GTD” post with the new tools and tactics that I am learning from David Allen’s new book, “Making it all work”.

Stay tuned.

The lovely bride and I were at a home-goods-type store last week and I saw a cool notepad. They wanted $10 for it, only about 50 pages. Heh. I figured I could make it myself, and that you would appreciate it if I shared it with you.

Here it is, the “Note to Self”:

Isn’t that fun? I loved the category “Hopelessly Random”! You can download a PDF copy below. Enjoy!!

Updated for 2010!

Get your 2010 GTD Calendar here

A revolution in calendar design, that you can print for yourself!

What exactly should a calendar do? And how should you use it to get the most out of your day?

Rule number 1: Your GTD Calendar should not work against you.

Your calendar should be your guide, a map or a directory to get you through your day. The layout of the information should be designed to work with your natural viewing habits. It needs to help you, not hurt you.

Rule number 2: Your GTD Calendar is not a ‘to-do’ list.

A calendar is a tool that is supposed to tell you where you need to be and when you need to be there, or when something is scheduled to happen.

For those of you familiar with David Allen’s Getting Things Done productivity system, you know that only three things are to be entered into your calendar. Three things. That’s it.

1. Time-specific actions

“Time-specific actions” are, simply put, appointments or meetings. These are the things that have to happen at, you guessed it, a specific time.

2. Day-specific actions

“Day-specific actions” are things that need to get done on a certain day, but not at a pre-arranged time. For example, you may need to print out the latest sales figures sometime on Thursday, because you have a meeting to review those figures at 9:00 am Friday. “Print sales figures” goes into the calendar for Thursday as an Action, while “Sales Meeting” goes into the calendar for Friday as an Event.

3. Day-specific information

“Day-specific information” consists of things that you need to know on a certain day, such as directions to a meeting, what your spouse is doing that day, or where to find contact information for a call you need to make. It can also serve as a pointer to a Reference File or something on your Waiting For list.

Putting Raw Data Into the GTD Calendar Pages

Read more about the 2010 GTD Calendar…

I just saw a remarkable post at Jack Cheng’s blog about the Chronotebook that he is using.Jack has some good insights about how a notebook can be used:

Start with the simplest thing imaginable: a blank sheet of paper. Add a rows of lines and it becomes a notebook. Add a grid instead and it becomes an drawing pad for architects. Add a few tiny boxes and it turns into a to-do list. Put in dates and you’ve got a calendar.

But as they teach you in your high-school econ class, everything has a cost. For each function or feature you add, you lose a purpose. A blank sheet that could’ve been used in a million different ways can now only be used for a few. Artists aren’t going to buy a calendar if they’re looking for something to sketch on. Writers aren’t going to pick up to-do lists to use as a journal. This isn’t a bad thing per se—by narrowing down on a purpose, a blank sheet of paper can become more useful and relevant to certain people.

Increasing the relevance of all of your tools is a good idea, right? But what if you could increase that relevance by broadening the usefulness? Take a look at this:

Now this is a remarkable idea. For visual thinkers, mind-mapping is often a very valuable tool. I have also found that visual thinkers like myself often have trouble with “standard” calendar or day-planner formats.

Apparently this notebook is only available in the Muji store in NY City. But, in the comments to this post, one of the readers mentioned that this is something you could make DIY, just get a blank notebook and draw a circle in the middle of the page!

The commenters also point to a few other, related items, like:

• a cool whiteboard that uses this same idea, with an actual clock in the middle - TaskWatch.
• a circular-format yearly calendar - Once more around the sun.

I am just getting into mind-mapping as a tool for planning, and will have a review of the Buzan iMind Map program shortly. If any of you take an interest in this method of planning daily tasks, I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment!