In This Episode…
Last week I realised I didn’t have an effective system for capturing my reactive commitments. All I was doing was randomly writing things down on my daily plans or on post it notes without any discipline or structure.
As a result I spent some time defining what a to do list system needed to be able to do for me. In today’s episode, I start looking at potential solutions by reviewing whether a paper based system would work for me.
Episode Show Notes
00:15 – The background to this episode:
- Last week I realised I did not have a system for capturing my reactive commitments (those to myself or to others).
- I was writing things down in random places and on post it notes and things were getting missed.
- In episode 098, I defined what I wanted my to do list system to do for me.
01:27 – Today’s episode was about exploring the viability of using a paper based system for capturing to do’s.
01:41 – I currently use a paper based system for planning my weekly and daily activities as well as for planning my current significant project.
02:27 – A paper based system is likely to consist of a spiral bound (or similar) notebook. It is an approach I have used before for planning and note taking.
04:25 – The advantages of using a notebook is that it aligns with a my paper based system and it is cheap.
04:30 – There are a number of disadvantages:
- If I lost the book I would be screwed!
- I can’t easily prioritise or sort the list without re-writing it.
- I can’t easily reference or search the to list.
04:55 – I don’t think a paper based system is a viable one for me and so will begin exploring electronic/cloud based options.