We Ask, You Answer: Your Quirky System

surfmadpig says on February 11th, 2008 at 8:59 am

well, a moleskine agenda and post-it notes are all I need, personally.

Royal8 says on February 11th, 2008 at 9:09 am

It is amazing this has come up; I just pitched everything over the weekend. It’s going to sound more like a system than one tool but I am covering what I carry.

I am down to one hard cover bound notebook 8.5 x 11 for daily use. It is 7/16″ thick and college ruled. It also doubles as a file folder for a few loose sheets. I only carry this item for meetings or when traveling, otherwise it sits on my desk for daily use. …It all goes in here in sequential order…

For pocket notes or to hand out I have come full circle and I am back to using business cards. They are so inexpensive and have my contact info on them – why carry anything else?

For my own mobile notes, contact information and internet, I carry a Blackberry Curve connected to Google Apps with Google Notebook.

To round it all out – It is not fancy but I also carry a pocket Zebra F-301 to replace all my stolen space pens. Also I like it’s shape a bit more and they are three dollars for two.

Mark says on February 11th, 2008 at 9:34 am

Twenty-seven years of a home grown ToDo program. In the early 80’s I wrote a system where I could enter in tasks and other information into a Radio Shack Model 100 while coming home on BART. At home, a program running on my RS Model I, would query the Model 100 for that days information, plug it into a database kept on dual 90K 5 inch floppies. The next morning, it would generate a list of Todo’s and related information to a sheet of paper I could fold into thirds and put into a suit coat pocket.

Over the years, I’ve done similar systems in Dbase III, Toolbook, Visual Basic, Perl, PHP and most recently, Ajax. I never fully finish them, but get them so they work “good enough” for me.

Someday…I’ll actually finish one, sell it to Google for billions and retire.

I’m the hobbyist programmer equivalent of the guy who builds an airplane in his basement, knowing he’ll never be able to get it out of the house.

Travors says on February 11th, 2008 at 9:42 am

My Fisher Space Pen, as silly as it sounds. I like writing with it so much that whenever I forget to bring it into work I don’t take as many notes.

Sacha Chua says on February 11th, 2008 at 10:35 am

Emacs. Yes, I run my life using a decades-old text editor. In fact, I’m writing a book about it, and have written chapters on managing your schedule, tasks, and notes. I just love the way I can keep tweaking it to fit the way I work, and how that motivates me to keep improving the way I work… =)

Jim Menard says on February 11th, 2008 at 10:51 am

I use a personal customized Wiki with a to-do list inside it. Actually, I have two Wiki/to-do lists: one for work and one for personal use. The Wikis are inside Emacs, a powerful programmer’s editor, that I’ve used for years. Emacs also has a calendar, diary mode, and lots more tools for productivity.

Jim Menard says on February 11th, 2008 at 10:52 am

I almost forgot: when away from the computer and my beloved Emacs, I carry a small notebook and a cheap mechanical pencil. That way, I’ll never forget anything. When I get back to the computer, I add anything from the notebook into my Wiki.

Konum says on February 11th, 2008 at 10:55 am

I use my Sony Ericsson w950i calendar to remember little things i always forget to do and to schedule a bit my day like getting up or turn off the pc to do something different (don’t have to be useful but different :P) I also take notes of different things with it or store non-critical info i may need at any time. It has turned quite an useful tool for me.

Clara Dessaulles says on February 11th, 2008 at 11:01 am

I simlpy use a Word doc for my ongoing project list and next actions list. I leave space to write new items manually during the day and I erase and add new items once a day ( my own version of a “daily review”).

For now I simply e-mail it to myself to make the newest version available from work and home but I might switch to Google docs to make even easier.

Thursday says on February 11th, 2008 at 11:06 am

I practically live on Remember the Milk. I use to-do lists to track everything. When I’m away from my desk I use a Moleskine (unlined Cahiers are my preference — they fit in my pockets with no trouble). I’ve tried many different systems, but this combination is simple enough that I don’t trip up.

ash says on February 11th, 2008 at 11:06 am

my favorite notebook. I write everything down – university notes, to-do-lists, thoughts and ideas, funny quotes …

and: gmail. my inbox is my to do list.
that’s it!

Bill Hilton says on February 11th, 2008 at 11:46 am

My pile system for paperwork.

It’s based on the idea that in any given period the time spent designing and maintaining an organised filing system is on average greater than the time spent ferreting through a random pile of stuff to find what you need.

So I have two large boxes next to my desk. In one goes work related documents (invoices, timesheets). Personal docs (bills, bank statements) go in the other. When the boxes start to overflow, I spend five minutes going through them and binning non-essential stuff.

Once a year I take the work-related box to my accountant, who turns it into a set of accounts.

Many of my colleagues spend hours messing around with filing systems and still lose stuff. I rarely lose anything and can find 99% of everything within 20 seconds.

Tom Dillon says on February 11th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

I keep two paper pads, one for work, work for home. A line for each item, with a few lines in between as needed. And a circle in the left margin.

I put a check in the circle when the item is completed. The first half of a check when I’m fully started on an extensive item. An X on a cancelled one. And a T to indicate that an item has been transferred to a new sheet, which I create when a sheet, usually the work one, gets more than half or two thirds completed.

If I have a client with a lot of work items, I’ll create a sheet for that client and point to it from the master sheet ( O Lots of work for Bugtussle International ).

Even though I’m a database developer and have written a DB to handle this, I find this more convenient. I do, however, use an Excel spreadsheet, which includes priority, urgency, time to complete and deadline when I have a big enough project.

d.a. says on February 11th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Toodledo.com and googledocs. For quick notes on interesting stuff, I use the “notes” gadget on my Google home page, then transfer to an appropriate doc later.

Veteran Military Wife at Life Lessons of a Military Wife says on February 11th, 2008 at 1:58 pm

Small spiral notebook and 3×5 calendar organizer in my purse…digital voice recorder..save stuff as drafts in my email folder to retrieve later and the yahoo calendar so my hubby can see if there are any scheduling conflicts and vice versa.

David says on February 11th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

When I am out I ALWAYS have a pen and a little pocket notebook to jot things down as they come to mind.

For my daily task list I use a $0.79 8.5/11 spiral notebook. For everything else I use Microsoft OneNote. I keep eveything in it. I write my blog posts, my home inventory, use it for note taking (love the screen capture feature), working on two books and all my notes are in it, and TONS of other stuff.

I like it because it auto saves everything as I type. It allows multiple notebooks. Each notebook has its own section, and each setion has pages and subpages. The other cool thing is multiple users can use a single notebook. My wife has it on her laptop and we have ahousehold notebook that each of us can access and update with things like home inventory, grocery lists, household to dos, etc.

PhilHair says on February 11th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

For work, one tool has done me a world of good: YeahWrite, a word processor/ journal/ whatever from yeahwrite.com. This product is shareware, inexpensive (at $19.00), very lightweight (about 1 MB), and adequate for most minor word processing jobs. It includes a spell checker. Although it is not currently under development, it works across the Windows platform from Win 3.1 to Win 9X to Win XP. (Haven’t tried Vista yet). It eschews the concept of directories and files, and instead uses tabbed folders and documents. Documents and folders are searchable for fixed text.

How does this help me “Get Things Done”? First, I keep a journal, one entry per day to record my actions, calls, and hours. Since each document is effectively a text document (sorry, no tables) I can keep a free form description of my actions. Second, I keep other documents, such as procedures, newsletters, evaluations, and so on as separate documents, each in its own tab. In addition, I also keep my notes from a previous job (for reference) as a separate filing cabinet (a metaphor for a different subject or user). When necessary I can copy from a document and paste into a Word document: it’s not perfect, but as long as I use only the most basic formatting (bold, underline, italics, justification) there is no problem in transferring. More complex formatting (such as superscript, subscript, bullets, and numbered items) don’t transfer.

All in all, this has worked very well for me, and there are a number of features that I do not use that might work well for others. I would definitely recommend it.

Christina says on February 11th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

Two things.

If I am out in public and without paper to jot down a reminder or a note to myself, I call my home number from my cell and leave a message for myself.

This isn’t very unusual but if I have a really early meeting or appointment, I’ll put a post it note over the digits of my clock radio so that when the alarm goes off in the am, I don’t simply look over and hit the snooze button. I do the same with notes on the inside of the door of my apartment to ensure I remember to take that library book or file folder with me as I’m leaving for my meeting or my daily errands.

Joel says on February 11th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

An 8.5″ x 12″ sheet of cardboard, that used to belong to a notebook. And various sheets of paper on top of it, which I think of as “The Stack.”

The core of it is a pile of scratch paper, with one sheet folded over the top of these so that I can quickly flip to wherever I need.

In front of the scratch paper goes some reference material (periodic table, the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, maybe a lifehack.org article I’m working on implementing this week, etc.), and in front of that, a few contextualized “to do” sheets.

Tickets have found their way into the “to do” stack from time to time (movie, parking…), and I use post-it notes to attach them to normal-sized sheets; often, the post-it or sheet have important information (directions to the theater, or the applicable law that says the ticket is bogus).

Behind the scratch paper is my mobile inbox, which gets emptied to my work or home inbox when I arrive.

adora says on February 11th, 2008 at 3:25 pm

5-color highlighters! I use them for groceries list, to-do list and highlighting important points in books of course.

Many people had praise its use on groceries list. Here’s how I do it. I have a note pad on the fridge where I write the items I need whenever I think them up. Before I go shopping on Saturday mornings, I highlight the items by colors. Green for produce; Pink for meat, Blue for frozen, Orange for bakery and deli; Yellow for other stuff on the shelves. I save time by not having to rewrite the items by sections. When I’m at the particular section at the store, I pick up all the items in that color so I don’t have to walk extra miles.

For to-do list. They are coded by threat level. Pink is extremely urgent, orange is ASAP. Yellow is within the week, etc.

Ezra Hilyer says on February 11th, 2008 at 4:08 pm

I use a Moleskine squared notebook, pilot G2 mini, and a Daytimer Desk with 1 page-per day. Thats about it.
Keeps me going everyday!
-ezra – http://www.straypoetry.com

PhilHair says on February 11th, 2008 at 4:28 pm

Post-It (R) Digital Notes (www.3m.com/us/office/postit/digital/digital_notes.html), developed by 3M, is a useful tool for handling repeated tasks throughout the day. In my job, I must check the server room, view email, remind other people to do things, as well as perform actions on a hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly basis. I also remind myself to have lunch, take pills, and do things before going home. GTD refers to these as the “hard landscape”. This product gives me the ability to have “sticky notes” with alarms on them. The current version requires Windows with .NET framework 2.0, and it does have some minor bugs that the developers are “working on” — have no fear, this product is being actively developed.

This product allows me to create notes (with optional alarms) which I can put on the desktop or (my preference) “Memoboards” with tabs. I’ve been using this product and its predecessors for about 10 years, and it is very good for its purpose: to remind me to do things at specific times, and to nag me until I get them done. Please note that there plenty of competing products. Outlook has a feature like this; there are competing products, some free. For my kind of work, having a tool like this keeps me from forgetting to do things.

Eric Spitzfaden says on February 11th, 2008 at 4:28 pm

PocketMod – from http://www.pocketmod.com.

Actually, I just fold blank paper the way described at PocketMod.com. This makes a neat, pocket sized 8 page mini notebook. I use one page for the grocery list, one page for the health food store list, one page for home repairs items. One page for a work ToDo. This leaves a few blank other pages for other lists..

I keep the list in my shirt pocket with a pen or in my ckeckbook with the calendar.

I keep a pocket month-at-a-glance calendar. For the last 3 years, I have been able to pick one up for free from another business in my building. They give them away at their front desk. The calendar has a plastic cover with a clear window in the front. In the front I keep my a quick glance schedule of items that reoccur every week.

The pocketmod doesn’t have much room, but that’s the point of a todo list. Anything needing more room than that goes on the calendar or gets it’s own file folder.

At work I have a place on my shelf where I keep project folders. They are the simple pocket folders that you can pick up at the office supply store. I use the manila folder labels to put the project name on the cover, near the fold in the folder. That way I can easily see name of the project.

Like “Royal8″, I also keep a journal style notebook near the phone to document phone calls and meetings.

So there are 4 components to my system:

1) PocketMod type mini-notebook
2) Pocket Calendar
3) Project pocket-folders
4) Journal.

-Eric

Rebecca Hansen says on February 11th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

After only 3 weeks, I can’t even imagine living without Remember The Milk!

Other than that, I use old-fashioned, tried and true 3×5 cards. They’re the best.

Anna says on February 11th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

Along with the already mentioned digital Post-It notes, I am also heavily dependant on my Rainlendar to keep track of my schedule. I also use Weather Watcher to help with planning my fun events, and JabRef to organize publications.

Dan says on February 11th, 2008 at 5:49 pm

Over the Holidays I resolved to implement a new system I call Getting Things Done Together (GTDT).

First, I migrated both my wife’s calendar and my own from Palm Calendar to Google Calendar. Then I reorganized these into four shared calendars: Me, Her, Family and our daughter. I also set up a sync mechanism using GooSync and SyncML to keep the Treos up to date.

Finally, we talk things over each Sunday evening to see how the week will go. The benefit is that we now have visibility with each other’s schedules. Case in point: we’re both averaging at least two workouts a week — not bad for a family with a one year old.

I’m trying to do something like this with ToDo lists (memos really), but this isn’t possible yet with Google Notebook.

Matt Griffith says on February 11th, 2008 at 7:34 pm

A 3×5 index card and a paper clip – each night I write down all tomorrow’s tasks on a 3×5 and use a paper clip to bind the day’s paperwork (a bill, prescription, mail, what have you).

I can abuse the index card all I want, and at the end of the day, I throw it away (after I transcribe any necessary items off of it onto the next day’s list)

Kaizer says on February 11th, 2008 at 11:58 pm

I just use coloured markers and the skin on my forearm.
By the end of the day it’s like one massive tattoo.
And God help me when it’s humid. The notes run.
Kaizer

E. Slasher says on February 12th, 2008 at 8:33 am

I just use my Nokia smart phone. It has a task list, a calendar, a contacts database, a post it app, a simple notepad and a decent web browser. It also syncs with my work and home computers for backup in case it fails or someone preys it out of my cold dead hands…

Pearl Alexander says on February 12th, 2008 at 9:08 am

I work at a school where there’s lots of extra one-sided copies of unused worksheets laying around. I recycle them using the blank side.

I cut those sheets up into 8 small squares using a paper cutter, and that becomes my GTD stack of Next Action papers. Each note gets one next action, the date, and a context, i.e home, work, etc. These are clipped into my calendar.

Clipped on top of that is a paper folded into a little book ala PocketMod with nothing printed on it because I’m lazy.

In that little book goes my To Buy, Waiting For, Someday/Maybe, Calls/Emails, and Ideas lists. I process the whole thing in my Weekly Review. Works great.

antiknijn says on February 12th, 2008 at 11:41 am

WikidPad!
http://wikidpad.python-hosting.com/

It’s a wiki-like system with built-in todo functionality. I basically log thoughts and actions in a journal structure (one wiki page per day), and it auto-gathers todo items on separate pages for me.

Plus: it’s all written in Python and extensible by writing your own plugins, so it can also nurture the inner geek :-)

Pouncy says on February 13th, 2008 at 12:22 am

I work out of my home and take college classes online. My husband has invaded our computer room and made it his own, so my office is my laptop on the kitchen counter. The magnetic whiteboard I have in the kitchen helps me keep track of tons of things and is as flexible as my ability to draw straight lines is!

futbolaktif says on February 13th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

very good..thnx

V.S. says on February 17th, 2008 at 12:40 am

I prefer putting my todo list on a whiteboard, too. There have been times I couldn’t, and I’ve limped along but the wall-mounted whiteboard works much better for me. I’ve never lost the wall and if I ever do I assume my todo list will probably be preempted anyway.

I lose notebooks and PDAs and it’s a pain to boot the computer just to figure out what I’m doing, but the whiteboard is always there.

Right now I use two — the big one is mounted in the hall and other people put tasks they need from me on it. The right side is updated every week with meetings and other scheduled events. The rest of it is covered in todos. Old ones get erased, new ones get added. At any given time one marker is the “main” marker and it gets velcroed up so as to be the most convenient marker for people to grab. This provides a sense of how long a task has been up on the board. Red is reserved for things that are on fire. The rest of the colors are kept in a cup nearby, so that circles, stars, priority numbers and the like can be used as necessary.

The smaller whiteboard is next to my desk. I break it up into odd sized chunks for active projects. Each chunk contains the name of a project and the next 2-10 steps for each project all in one color. Each project gets it’s own color. Random (non-project connected) todos go in unallocated portions of the board. I usually have a strategy note in one corner of the board (”do next 5 steps of project A, then beat out the next thing for project B” or “everything with a red dot by it”) and sometimes a piece sectioned out for things that absolutely have to happen today (when they do have to happen today).

The ong term project list and the goals list live on the computer, with paper backups in the files, but the whiteboard is really my favorite medium for dealing with the daily task list.

Force Flow says on February 17th, 2008 at 10:33 pm

Even though I’m a tech through and through, most of the stuff I use is decidedly low-tech.

For keeping track of my to-do list, I use post-it notes, which are stuck all over the place. You can instantly tell how busy I am by the number of post-it notes stuck everywhere.

Why post-its? It’s easy to scrible something down, they’re easy to manage, and it’s satisfying to crumple one up and say “done”.

When I’m on the move, I always keep a folded up piece of paper in my pocket as well as a pen if I need to jot something down. Far faster and easier than trying to deal with a PDA or blackberry.

If I have meetings and/or scheduled events, those get their own special post-it, as well as get marked in my Outlook calender.

Liz says on May 7th, 2008 at 4:41 pm

I love the yahoo widget “due.”

http://widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/due

It’s very simple, but it keeps me organized. I also have a moleskine calendar. I bought the one that has the days of the week on the left page, and an empty lined page on the right. I keep grocery lists/ ideas/ notes/ phone numbers/ comments/ poems/ whatever on the blank page, and its connected to the schedule for my week.

V says on August 1st, 2008 at 2:12 am

Palm for on the run, KirbyAlarmPro is just the best for everything else!