Pocket Diary Moleskine Hack

By Gaz under Personal Growth

Jumping on the GTD Bandwagon, I’m posting the details of the paper based two-thirds of my GTD system. Inspired by the hyalineskies GTD system, itself based on the pigpog PDA. It’s implemented with a Moleskine Pocket Diary, along with a few extra bits and pieces…

I use a number of markers to keep track of “interesting” pages:

The Moleskine itself, bookdarts and pen all came from Barnes & Noble. The pen is particularly interesting as it comes from a set of flat bookmark pens sold in a cd jewel case as a set of 7 for $4.95. Only a few millimetres thick, I can clip it directly to the current Inbox page and close the Moleskine around it quite comfortably.

As the ribbon moves through the book to mark the passing of days, I find that some of the pages it has passed through are left unused, so rather than keeping a separate Moleskine for Next Actions and @Context Lists, I make use of those Spare Pages.

Day Pages

Entitled with yyyy.mm.dd on the page for that day in the planner (redundant, but helps with finding reusable pages later).

Day Page entries look like this (bear in mind that the Moleskine Planner has times of the working day on the left of each page):

h [ ] Appointment

Where:

h             - hour of the day
[ ]           - completion check box
                [ ] = open task, [X] = cancelled, [/] = completed,
                [\\] = forwarded, ![ ] = prioritised, - = non-actionable item
Appointment   - appointment description

Appointments and commitments in my calendar “hard landscape” are written on such a Day Page. Once a page has appointments, it can’t be reused for anything else (that is, it can’t become a Spare Page). Tickler items that have no specific time are entered at the bottom of the page though, so that page might become a Spare Page after all (if it contains just a single tickler on the last line I’ll reuse it for an Inbox page later).

Inbox Page

The first unused page before the ribbon (I don’t know about you, but I’m usually too busy with a hangover on New Years day to worry about meeting appointments — 1/1 will be my first Inbox page).

Inbox Page entries look like this:

[ ] dd/mm TASK                                      Wait?

Where:

dd/mm         - date task entered
TASK          - task description
Wait?         - question mark followed by waitee shows that the action is
                stalled on them (e.g. ?Frank)

I quickly jot tasks that come to mind on this page. My pen is clipped on the current Inbox page, and when the page is full I process all the tasks on it as soon as I can. Then I can use the next Spare Page for continued Inbox Page items, and move the pen to mark it, crossing out the old processed Inbox Page as I go.

During Inbox processing, I tick the task checkbox when completing or refiling that task under a Project or Context Page (see later).

Context Pages

Entitled with “@Context” (e.g. @Frank, @Office, @Computer, @Phone, @Errand), and marked with a bookdart. I skipped my first weekly review this year, so that by the time I arrived at the end of my second week, I had enough Spare Pages to create all the Context Pages I needed to process my Inbox. There are a handful of Notes pages near the back of the planner had my hard landscape been too busy to leave enough Spare Pages.

Context Page entries look like this:

[ ] dd/mm TASK                             (dd/mm~i) Wait?

Where the new part is:

(dd/mm~i)     - forwarded tasks refer to page of original (this is a diary,
                so pages are numbered dd/mm) along with iteration count

When the page is full, I use the next suitable Spare Page and forward unticked tasks to the new page, and move the book dart that marks it, crossing out the old processed Context Page as I go. As tasks are forwarded, the iteration count is incremented and dd/mm set to the page of the previous iteration.

If the iteration count starts to get much above 2 or 3, then I can see that the associated task is stubborn for some reason, and try to figure out why I’m not doing it, and what I can do to make it more accessible.

Someday/Maybe Page

During my first weekly review, I put this title on the last ‘Notes’ page near the back of the planner, and copied across all the relevant projects from last year’s planner.

[ ] dd/mm TASK

If a Someday/Maybe task becomes a live project, I tick the completion box and create a new Project Page for it.

Project Pages

Entitled with “Blah Project” (e.g. New World Order Project). The first few projects can go on the remaining Notes pages at the back of the planner until there are enough Spare Pages before the ribbon to put to use.

Project Page entries look just like Context Page entries. However, where a Context Page captures one-shot tasks that can be tackled in that context, a Project Page captures the next few tasks required to advance that project. I mark Project Pages with a coloured paperclip to distinguish them from bookdart marked Context Pages.

Using the Lists

Day-to-Day

First thing in the morning, I look at Today’s page incase there are any appointments or ticklers I need to address today (I’ll probably sneak a look at the next few days too to prepare myself for appointments and ticklers coming over the horizon soon). I also look through unprocessed Inbox Page entries for anything that looks easy to tick off.

When deciding what to do next, I scan through the Context Pages, stopping at any that might contain tasks I can tackle for a quick review. I also scan through all the Project Pages to see if they might contain tasks I can tackle today. Effectively, this means looking at all the pages with either a bookdart or paperclip marker… I only have about a dozen at any given time, so it only takes a minute to do the whole thing.

I add Inbox entries to the current Inbox Page whenever they occur to me, in the knowledge that they will be categorised properly when I next process my Inbox.

Appointments with a specific time are added to the appropriate Day Page as soon as I get them, creating a new one if necessary by writing the yyyy.mm.dd title at the top. Tickler items get written at the bottom of the appropriate planner page, so that when that page is behind the ribbon it still has a chance at becoming a Spare Page.

Weekly Review

At least once a week (I try to keep an hour clear on Sunday evening, and mark it as a tickler in my Moleskine to give me a nice checkbox to tick when I’m done), I go through the following process:

Mental Sweep:

anything on my mind gets written as an Inbox Page entry. I leaf through my active Context and Project Pages to jog my memory for anything I might otherwise forget.

Process Inbox:

go through the unprocessed Inbox Page entries, crossing off any I don’t care about after all, tackling others if they will take less than 2 minutes, or else filing them under the appropriate Context or Project Page (creating new ones as necessary).

Review Projects:

go through all active Project Pages (paperclips) making sure they all have some next actions, or indeed if I still want to work on them at all!

Review Someday/Maybe:

create projects or context items from any entries here I want to commit to now.

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