Everyday Systems

I've been talking for ages about coding up an online habit calendar where you can tick success/failure/exempt for every habit-day and have it light up in green/red/yellow. Well, someone has kinda sorta done something like this:

http://www.joesgoals.com/

I think I'm still going to go ahead with my own version if I every get the time because I think the habit traffic light paradigm is more useful than binary smiley/frowny faces. The multi-faces option "joe" provides is neat, but I think a dangerous temptation to make up for bad days by extra virtue on others (self-revenge cycle).

Reinhard

That's a pretty sweet application!

It's an excellent idea. Something like that would be well suited to the Everyday paradigm.

I have been using Excel to track my progress on my daily tasks.

Here is an older version of my schedule. Please talk to me before using this for anything but personal use. (I am planning on doing a blog posting about it sometime in the future).

http://reiddurbin.com/public_post_area/my_schedule.xls

Thanks!
Reid

I like it... Excel is by far my favorite microsoft program.

Good luck with "entrepreneur!" Looking forward to the blog.

I've been doing something similar with index cards for the last couple months that I'll report on soon.

One of the tricky things associated with scoring virtues/goals, is that they're not really interchangeable commodities. If you run every day but never do spanish, it's a very different outcome than if you do each half and half. Maybe scoring by goal/column as well as by day row would give you a good handle on this. My personal approach is not to even include a regular goal unless I am reasonable confident I can achieve it (and all the others). But I'll go into that more when I report on my index card system.

Todoing is a subject that utterly fascinates me. It used to fascinate me even though I was terrible at it, but now I've gotten rather good.

Reinhard

I use this to manage time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_things_done

It settles the do "you run but do not practice Spanish" issue by prioritizing and breaking everything into smaller goals.

Interesting... I've seen the abbreviation GTD all over the place, and I even bothered to find out what it stands for, but I didn't know it referred to a specific book and methodology. Thanks for the link, will have to do further research.

GTD is fairly simple. That Wiki actually contains more than enough info to implement. I use the GMail strategy myself.

Reinhard, I'm a HUGE fan of Getting Things Done... I've been putting it into practice for about 6 years or so.

You can learn all about it by visiting www.davidco.com.

I've heard you mention Merlin Mann and 43folders.com before, and he's a huge proponent of the GTD system.

Check it out... I think that you'll like it.

Hi Jim,

I've heard of GTD and I must have read something about it at some point, though it doesn't seem to have stuck because all I can remember is what the initials stand for. I probably just didn't give it enough time.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take another look. Now that I'm branching out into the field, more or less, I should at least have some idea what other people have done already.

Reinhard

I'm astonished, reading (more carefully, this time) the wikkipedia article that hlidskjalf linked to above, at how will my chain of self command maps to the GTD 43 folders filing system (I'd seen the 43 folders site, but somehow managed to avoid discovering what it referred to).

OK, time to spend some more quality time with this concept... Ordering the book from amazon.com.

Reinhard

Yep, the Chain of Self-Command will map perfectly....

David's "Tickler" (i.e. 43 Folders) system is one of my favorites, and I use it every day religiously. It's the equivalent to mailing yourself something.

Let's say that you get something in your in box, but you don't need to do anything with it at the moment. However, it will become relevant to you again on January 28th...

Well, you just drop the item in the folder labeled "January 28th", and "poof", when you open up the folder on the morning of January 28th, there it is...

Cool stuff...

His concepts are the best work flow management principles that I've ever worked with. Hope you like them.

Jim