Records of Practices

This article maintains a record of self management practices that I have tried and know that they work, or don't. By keeping this record, I can save myself time and effort in trying the same old things again and again.

Techniques that I use now

Updated on 15/9/2020

I use virtual Kanban boards to keep track of all of my tasks and commitments. One board implements Getting Things Done. I open this board everyday when I work, and whenever I have any idea of new tasks that I don't know how to process, I will throw them into the inbox list of my board.

For each project, I keep an entry in the Getting Things Done board, and create a separated board for it.

I still maintain an Excel spreadsheet and a folder for each project, where I keep the backlog, record of how much time I spend on a task, and other documents related to the project.

• I might move the record of time spending on each session to the taskboard as well.

I maintains an Excel file that keeps track of the time I spend on working, both deep and shallow work, every day. By using Excel, I visualize and do some calculation easily.

I still use bullet journal for recording my daily thoughts and progress.

Regarding planning, every week, I select the projects that I am going to focus on. That's it.

Techniques that did not work

Keeping elaborated collections of notebooks to manage tasks and projects

In this technique, I maintain a collection of digital or physical notebooks where I keep track of my list of projects, my notes for each project, and my other task lists. For instance, I can have one notebook for keeping the list of projects, another one to keep track of the list of tasks for each project and notes related to it.

This technique fails because of the complexity of the system, which prevents me from adding more commitments to the system. Moreover, because of the fragmented nature of keeping multiple notebooks, I am not able to get a clear picture of what is going on in my life, and usually waste a lot of time trying to review my week and do the planning, without getting anything interesting actually done.

Using paper-based planner

Paper-based planner are interesting to look at, but I found that they are limiting. The template that they provide do not fit my need, and I ended up treating the planner as a toy so that I can collect more widget instead of trying to do the work.

Traveller's notebook

I like the idea of having multiple notebooks for different purposes at the same time, and there is nothing wrong with it. However, the traveller's notebook has the same problem as the paper-based planner, in the sense that I wasted so much time trying to find the widget for the notebook instead of using the notebook to complement my life.

Moreover, the practice of keeping multiple notebooks for task management is also complex and cumbersome, and does not work with the agile nature of tasks and projects.

Pure bullet journal approach

By pure bullet journal, I mean using the journal for everything, particularly the project and task management.

In general, I realized that if I try to keep a dynamic task list or doing some calculation in a physical journal, I am going to have a bad time, and I will not continue to use the technique. It is just too much work and not practical.

Extensive planning

The idea of planning everything from six month down to this month, this week, this day, sounds like a good idea. I think I learned this one from the One Thing. However, in practice, it did not work well for me, and produced wishful thinking instead of real, actionable plan.

Nowadays, I follow a more Getting Things Done approach, when all the tasks are captured. However, I also rely on limited planning, to prioritize the tasks on my lists every day or every week.