Run Kitty Run

    But a time came when I had too many workbooks going all at once and the act of choosing a workbook took as much time as actually working. I got rather frustrated with them and my indecisive nature, so I made up a way to eliminate the choice. First, I made a spreadsheet with the days of the week across the top and put seven rows below them (even though I had six workbooks to choose from). It looked something like this:

  I then chose a workbook for each day of the week (I put my favorite one in twice to fill up all the days). Then I filled in all the rows by moving each entry down and to the left one spot, wrapping as needed. The result ending up looking something like this:                      

    Some features of this included:
       - Everything getting equal exposure
       - Once a task is the main task, you won’t see it for a while

    Now, moving up 14 years to the present, I’m looking to adapt this technique to my own life. The first obvious difference is number of tasks. Back then, I had six things I could do. Now, I have 11 goals and housekeeping tasks. That’s 12 things to fit into seven days.

    This is easily solved by grouping tasks and assigning one task group all even numbers and the other task group all odd numbers. Because there are seven days in a week, the task will alternate. I leave my two most important tasks ungrouped. I created a separate table to help me with this:

    Another problem I have is that some days I have more work time than others. For instance, I work at an office on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I take this into consideration when assigning tasks to days. Smaller and easier tasks are assigned to work days.

    Getting Things Done - Each day I have to complete something towards my main goal of the day. This keeps things moving. But once I start getting tired of the first item, I just move onto the next one. The cycle continues until I use up all my time. 

    The benefits of this system, as elementary as it is, are enormous for anyone working without hard deadlines like me. It makes me work towards all my goals, not just my favorite ones. 

In order to make this simple to implement, I created an Elementary Productivity Planner form. Here is what it looks like (both blank and filled in):

Want a copy of the Elementary Productivity Planner? It comes with a sample and a blank version. 

PDF: Download Here

Numbers: Download Here

I hope to offer an Excel version soon.