26 Jul 07 12:37 Update: You can get to the 2007 version of the forms here.

I recently posted about my version of David Seah’s Emergent Task Timer/Task Planner. I’ve had a request to post the pdf of my form, and Dave’s given his go-head. In fact, he’s linking to my “mod”:

I’ve been thinking of adding a timeblock line to the Emergent Task Time itself, but I like this solution better. Sweet!

With that kind of praise, how can I resist? So, here goes.

First, a nice image of what the blank form would look like:

I’ve got two pdf versions, one with the times filled in (0800 - 2100 hrs), and one with just blank times. Astute readers will notice that there’s actually two rows of dots before the 0800 start time - that’s because I like to give myself the possibility of starting work as early as 7:30, like that’s going to happen often ;)

GTD Wannabe’s Time Tracker

• 2006-09-27 #5 (with hours) (pdf)
• 2006-09-27 #5 (no hours) (pdf)

Enjoy :)

I keep forgetting about Feedburner, and the fact that they keep track of how many people (maybe) are reading my blog through RSS feeders. I just did a quick look, and I almost fell out of my chair! I’m recently up to just over 500 subscribers!!!!

I want to thank each and every one of you. I keep debating whether or not I want to keep pouring time into the blog, and this kind of validation makes me glad that I’m still sticking with it.

For your amusement, here’s what my stats look like. You can see a very nice linear progression from when I first started blogging just over a year ago. And also, you can see how many of you are using each kind of feed reader.

Anyway, enjoy the pretty pictures. And feel free to use the comment thread to give me suggestions on how to improve the blog. What do you like? What do you dislike? Of course, no guarantees that I’ll follow all of them :)

I’m a big big fan of David Seah, who has created a series of productivity templates, also known as really cool forms for tracking what you’re supposed to be doing, what you’re actually doing, and maybe even how much fun you can have doing it.

His latest oeuvre is called the The Printable CEO™ VI.1: Emergent Task Planning form, which builds on two of his previous forms, one for a daily menu of stuff to do today, and one for tracking exactly what you have been doing today. The latter one, called the Emergent Task Timer, is one that I’ve been using a lot for the past couple of months. Absolutely love it.

But then he goes and comes out with the Emergent Task Planning form, with a place for tracking how much time you spend on the things you want to do, plus a nice notes area. It looked pretty cool, and I tried it out. Unfortunately, I kept getting lost - I kept losing track of exactly when I was, and when I was working, or not working, or what. The time bubbles on the left side are sized so that you can plan on how big a chunk of time you want to have for a particular task, e.g., 15 minutes blocks in one column, 30 minutes, in another, etc. Also having two places to fill in dots didn’t help me too much; in fact, it was more of a hindrance. Finally, the lunch/dinner thing - there’s a few comments on his post about the fact that not everybody eats at the same intervals ;)

Anyway, I liked the new form, but I really liked the old form, but I didn’t want to go back to the old form, because I had fallen in love with the notes section (and space for scheduling) and even the portrait view of the new form. What’s a girl to do?

Well, since I had a serious deadline, I decided that this was the prime time to design my own form. Enter Visio. Yeah, it sucks sometimes, and crashes more often than not for me, but it’s “reasonably” stable ;) I was able to create a marriage of the ETT and ETP forms, and now I’m in productivity tracking heaven.

I commented about it on Dave’s post about the new form, and he suggested I put up a picture for interested readers. So, here it is. You can compare the picture below (reddish notes added afterwards for your edification) with Dave’s explanation on how he uses his form.

And if this kind of form isn’t up your alley, don’t despair. Dave’s got a form for, I think, almost every kind of productivity strategy! Check out his Printable CEO(tm) Series.

Update [27 Sep 06]: I’ve posted the pdf form(s) for my version of the ETT/ETP in part deux.

I’ve been particularly terrible lately at getting any work done. Sure, I’ve cleaned my registry, defragged all my hard drives, my palm is up to date with new sudoku games, my ipod is all nicely updated (including a couple of games), etc. etc. etc. But work? Nope. Nada. Nil. Zilch.

I was reading through my RSS feeds (as I tend to do several times a day), and saw a post on LifeHack.org about “Getting into the Flow”, which links to a post on Michael Buffington’s blog. It’s all about trying to get into the flow, and what works for him. One of the comments points out that the software program (Windows only) called Temptation Blocker is a good thing - you block certain software, say, my RSS feed reader for several hours, or until a specific time of day. Hmmmm, maybe I really do need that.

But then, when it comes down to finding the software, I had no joy. The page that everyone links to, namely WebJillion.com just comes up blank. I don’t know if this is just temporary, or what, but I was determined to find me a copy of Temptation Blocker. I eventually discovered that you can download it over at SourceForge, just follow this link.

So, if you’re struggling with not getting anything thing done, maybe you too should check out this program :)

Categories: GTD

I received an interesting question by email the other day about using EverNote for tasks/next actions and how to prioritize them. The sender asked:

Hi, quick question for you. How do you manage priorities with evernote to do template? I also found it that it is easier to just put in tasks without templates, because once the task is checked to be completed, it does not change its number so when there are many tasks written and completed it becomes cluttered. Isn’t it easier just to write them in a separate line with say a bullet and then just cross them out and move them lower.

How are you managing your to dos present day ?

If anyone is experiencing similar difficulty, here is my response:

I don’t use EN for managing my day-to-day task list, it’s more useful as “project support material”. ; For the past few months, I’ve been using a text-based system, with a text file, some perl scripts, and some DOS batch goodness. I’ve started blogging about it – see here: http://gtdwannabe.blogspot.com/2006/09/text-fetish-todotxt-format-aka-na.html

Even before my text fetish, I was using Outlook for most task management, although I tended to duplicate by also writing tasks down in EN. For that, I used a template, similar to the To Do with Dates template. I discussed this in my blog ages ago – see: http://gtdwannabe.blogspot.com/2005/07/using-evernote-with-gtd.html

However, there’s an even better template out there right now, that might help you out. Zack has created a To Do template with enough functionality that you can get it to show/hide done/undone, as well as segregate the done/undone items. It’s really very cHowever, there’s an even betterool, and I’ve actually moved to it. (I tend to use these templates when I’m brainstorming what needs to be done for a particular project, and then, when I’m ready to do individual next actions, they get put into my text system.) See: http://gtdwannabe.blogspot.com/2006/08/zachs-evernote-templates.html for my discussion of Zack’s templates. Follow the link to his page and look for one called “UpdateList…”

Categories: GTD, evernote