Tuesday 08 August 2006

The Accidental Cultist Part 3: "To Do" Gone Wild

It's no secret to those who know me that I am a person who gets giddy over organization. I want everything to have its place and for it to be in said place All. The. Time. I want people to be on time, I want people to respond to emails within 24 hours, and I want people to know exactly where their Tax ID number is when I ask for it. Sometimes i have to remind myself that most people do not want the same things I do because I get really frustrated and pissy when someone forgets or misplaces or double-books. If they were just as organized as I am, that wouldn't have happened! How do I work 4-5 projects at a time? It is 10% intelligence, 5% talent, 10% luck... and the rest (you do the math) is organization. When people complain about having too much to do, I have to bite my tongue to keep from giving them a lecture on how to get on track and be an organizational junkie like me...

Consider this my official, one-time-offer "un-biting of the tongue" as I reveal the secrets of Isahrai's organizational madness. It's all about the Miquelrius.

And the paper clips.

And the index cards.

And Sunday mornings.

And checkboxes, lots of check boxes.

Whoa... It may seem like you might need an organizational flow chart to understand how I organize my life! Nope, it really is very simple. There was a time when I spent far too much time focused on managing my tasks; I would waste valuable work minutes creating game plans, organizing the priorities on my To Do list, and navigating between 5 different organizational tools - iCal, a Handspring Visor, a journal, the scraps of paper in my wallet, and my Mail program. (Productivity expert, Merlin Mann, recently podcasted on this exact phenomena of wasting your life trying to get productive with "It's Just a Cup.") The multiple filing systems of tasks caused a lot of confusion and required an hour of analysis every night.

When I moved to Mexico, I tossed my organization system because, "Dude, I live on the beach. I'm going to live by the rise and setting of the sun..." Or not. I am working more than I ever did in the States and have a lot more clients to handle. And of course, I also have to remember to schedule time for beach trips, pozole, dinners at De Donde Eres, and Spanish lessons. I wanted to find a new way to track and plan my balancing act between living the expatriate dream and working enough to pay medical bills.

Speaking of medical bills, my organizational scheme also has to include recording my diet, sleeping (non)habits, vitals, and drug intake so that my doctors can scour over them once a month to try and figure out what exactly they are doing wrong in their attempts to kill me. I used to have a food journal and a medicine journal in the Visor but my PDA didn't make the cut when I packed my bags and ran away to Mexico. For my first year, I had a separate notebook for tracking my food and exercise and another for my meds and vitals. Add my writing journal and a daily planner and that's 4 notebooks. Not very streamlined, eh? I usually only took my writing journal with me when I left the house so I was left trying to remember to write down everything when I got home. Good luck with that, Isahrai. 7 years of narcotics and a friendly little mental illness called schizophrenia makes my memory about as reliable as... damnit, I forgot the metaphor I was going to use.

Time to think of a new plan.

Enter the Miquelrius 4x6" graph-lined journal. Sure, Moleskines are beautiful and sophisticated and were supposedly good enough for my fellow crazy man, Van Gogh, but they are almost *too* sophisticated for me. I needed a notebook that I wouldn't feel bad about scrawling my god-awful hurried penmanship or about shoving in my beach bag. Miquelrius journals have flexible "leather-look" covers, are cheaper, and are the perfect size in both interior and exterior dimensions. The pages are thick enough that my favorite ink pen - the Zebra Sarasa 0.7 - doesn't bleed through and the binding lasts the entire duration of my 200-page abuse.

So here's how I use the Miquelrius to keep myself in line...

Every Sunday morning I take 30 minutes to review the previous week and to begin planning my next week. I do a quick flip through of all the daily pages of the past week to make sure there aren't any stray unfinished tasks. I then do a wrap-up analysis of my week by consulting the first page of each week's section. On this page, I have written a list of the broader projects that I will focus on throughout the week (whereas specific tasks are outlined on each day's page). I have a large checkbox in front of each broad goal. I make one of four notations in each of the checkboxes.

Checkmark = project completed
"P" = significant progress has been made on the project
--> = the project has been pushed forward to the next week without progress
"X" = the project has been deleted

Once I've assessed the previous week, I move on to the future. I create a new "week" page and then a double-page entry (2 facing pages) for every day. On the right hand side page, I use a ruler and pencil to block off the page for my daily food and medicine intake. I monitor my water and coffee consumption at the top of the page, have sections for all of the 6 mini-meals I am supposed to eat according to my doctor but never do, and leave space at the bottom to note exercise, meds, sleep, and relevant health notes. I initially would just fill all of this in as I go but that made it difficult to gauge my day at a glance if I had written it all in without any format or white space to split the day up. I also got very good at stretching out my description of a meal if I only ate once in a day, hoping my doctor's wouldn't notice. I started getting depressed when I actually wrote down the amount of meds I was taking in longhand form so I developed symbols and abbreviations so I can summarize my intake in one line of numbers and symbols separated by slash marks. It makes my daily acknowledgment of cancer and mental illness much easier to bear.

On the left hand side of each day's entry pages, I have two lists, one beginning at the top and one working its way from the bottom up. The top list is for work tasks, the bottom is for personal. On Sundays I fill in all the tasks I know of (there are some things I do every day or every week - and yes, I have to still write them down to remember). I also take all the unfinished tasks from the previous week and assign them to a day. As the week progresses, I continue adding small tasks to the professional and personal lists. I have the same set of notations for the checkboxes on my daily pages as my weekly page except that I don't use the "progress" signifier as the items on my daily pages are short tasks. If a task requires me to make contact with someone via telephone, I write "LM" in the box for "left message" if I didn't actually talk to them. This way I can feel good about myself, knowing that I tried to do the task but know to still move it forward to the next day for followup. I make a circle "checkbox" to demarcate timely events - like meeting someone somewhere or a video conference at a certain time. This way they stand out so I can know with the shortest glance that I have some place to be. Before I go to bed, I quickly address all the tasks that haven't been completed yet, by either moving them forward to the next day or deleting them. If timely events or long range tasks come up that won't be addressed in that week, I write those on the bottom of my "week" page to be pushed forward when I do my week in review the following Sunday.

But wait, didn't I say something about paper clips? And index cards? And a free watch to anyone who reads the entirety of this monstrosity of a posting? Yes, yes, and nice try but no. The paper clips are easy. I use 4. One paper clip attaches to the bottom corner of my "week" page so I can turn to it quickly to gain focus on my week. One paper clip attaches to the top corner of the right hand page of the specific day I am on. The other two paper clips help organize the other purposes of my all-in-one Miquelrius.

In the front of my journal, I clip 3-4 index cards. One card keeps a running grocery/shopping list. I cross things off as I get them and just keep filling up the card until I can't fit anything more. This helps to save paper, makes sure I always have my list with me, and helps me to remember to buy red peppers. Yes, I buy red peppers every single freaking time I am at the market but I have still forgotten three times and had to go back. Remember, people. I'm on drugs. Another card has lists of possible Quixoticisms and other article ideas for publications I write for. I have a "let it go" card which is where I write non-nice things so I won't actually say them. No, you can not see that card. And then I have a "I wish" card because a girl has to have dreams. I use the paper clip to keep these cards and any receipts or other needed slips of paper conveniently attached.

In the back of my journal, I have another 4 blank index cards to whip out to brainstorm big ideas, write down directions, or make any other kind of notes. These also save me from having to rip a page out of my bound journal when someone needs a piece of paper. I hate doing that.

But wait! There's more!

If you flip my journal over and pretend the last page is the first page, it's like a completely different notebook. On the last-first page, I have a list of frequently used and emergency phone numbers. This has come in handy in the past few weeks as my cell phone has been on the fritz. After this, I have several pages of quotes, impressions, and various ramblings for creative writing pieces I am working on. I do have a committed Miquelrius journal that I use solely for writing. I take this with me when I go to Casa Cafe for coffee or to the beach for an afternoon. But if I'm just running around town or going somewhere where I won't be dedicating time to writing, I will write any sudden flashes of inspiration in the back of my organizational notebook. It beats writing on receipts that are invariably lost. Whenever I make a new entry into this section of my journal, I move the paper clip there so I know to look at it later when I get home.

And that's it in an elephant-sized nutshell.

A few months ago, I ran out of my Miquelrius journals and had a bit of a meltdown. I wanted to try and find a notebook locally that could serve the same purpose but found it impossible. Most of the notebooks had too few pages and I couldn't warm up to the wide-ruled pages. The bindings were weak or they were spiral-bound. I did a bit of research online to see what other people use, considering switching to an online-based organizational tool or going "unbound" with the popular Hipster PDA. I was surprised and amused to discover that my personal system echoed many of the practices of David Allen's Getting Things Done (expounded upon greatly on Merlin Mann's 43 Folders) and was also in many ways a carbon copy of Bill Westerman's tongue-in-cheek take on GTD - "GSD" - right down to the Miquelrius notebook and checkboxes. (I had joined a cult movement without even realizing it!) I finally broke down and ordered the Miquelrius from the States and having them shipped down. The guy at the post office probably thought I was having a seizure when I madly ripped open the package before I even left the window. No, I wasn't having a seizure. I was just inappropriately delirious with happiness. But if I had had a seizure, I had my Miquelrius notebook in hand to make a note of it.

posted on Mexico time @ 22.20 (menos o mas) | link to this Quixoticism | comments (5)