There's no place like home

I'm reading Getting Things Done by Dave Allen and starting to work on getting my Stuff organized. I'm also reading DIYPlanner, David Seah and 43Folders again.

Over at 43Folders they just posted a recap of their Getting Things Done 'Greatest Hits'.

I'm going to try and get to the office supply store in the next day or so and really start cleaning and organizing my Stuff!

It's been a long time since I blogged about productivity (mine) and getting things done. I have been using my planner, but not as much as I should. I decided that part of the problem was that it was too small (the rings anyway) and that I needed a bigger one.

So as a reward to myself for at least continuing to use it in some manner I bought a nice red leather Franklin Covey binder on eBay for about $20. (This thing retails for about $90.) It's got huge rings in it so I can stuff it full of pages.

I have loosely made a New Years resolution to try and get more organized in my work flow, on my desk at home (it's a huge mess) and in my wood shop at home (another mess).

I have started by building a large wall mounted tool box to store all my woodworking hand tools in. That should clean up a lot of my shop mess.

Then I need to work on my desk (I've decided to eBay or throw away most of the crap on it.)

For the productivity end I have decided to re-read the books I have read and finish the ones I started before. I've also started looking at the web sites I found in the past and have discovered that Dave Seah has been a busy little beaver! He's got some nifty looking new forms to try out for scheduling my day and getting things done!

I really like the new Emergent Task Planner, and am going to play with it a bit. If I really find it useful I'll make a version in the classic size so I can use it in my planner.

He has a nice series that he calls The Printable CEO. I'll have to look over the rest of them again and see what might help me out.

My real problem is that I like to procrastinate. I'm lazy and I know it. I'd rather distract myself with other fun things than really buckle down and get things done.

So I need to get myself motivated. We'll have to see how I manage that.

WTF is a HipsterPDA v3 you ask? And why do I care that it launched?

Well, I'll tell you.

Recently I started using the DIY Planner paper planner forms to start trying to organize my life some more. (See this.)

I was having some fun using OpenOffice Draw to develop some new templates (see this and this) and posting them on the DIY Planner forums for others to use.

Douglas Johnston (the developer of the DIY Planner) and I started a little back and forth about would I be interested in helping him develop some OpenOffice Draw templates for the up coming new version of the HipsterPDA.

I figured why not? It would be a nice way to give a bit back to Doug since I think his DIY Planner forms are so awesome.

So Doug had me whip out a template for blank cards with tabs and one for the HipsterPDA cover so you can edit it and add your own graphics and such. It was pretty fun and I got to learn about Adobe Illustrator and more about OpenOffice Draw!

You can go get them on the official page for the HipsterPDA v3!

I don't use the HipsterPDA, though I think it's kind of cool, I prefer the 5.5"x8.5" Classic size pages. Apparently the HipsterPDA started out over at the 43 Folders site and the official HipsterPDA site is here.

I have tweaked the Sysadmin Daily Planner page a little to make it look more like the DIY Planner V3 format.

I also made it a 2-Up file, so I can print it on my duplexing (gotta love duplexing) printer and then just chop the pages in half and punch them.

Here is the new file.

All the other pages I have made are still here. I still need to make it a Mambo section, or make a pretty index page. Some day.

I'll be tweaking the other pages too and most likely 2-Uping them.

Doug over at DIY Planner has also asked me to help on the V3 widget kit! I feel honored!

I'm having too much fun with OpenOffice Draw creating new templates to use in my DIY Planner.

I made two more this weekend - A Meal Planner template and an Expenses template.

The Meal Planner template is for planning a week's work of dinners. It has space for the main dish, what cookbook it's from and what page it's on. It also has space for a vegetable and dessert.

The Expenses template is just a simple form to record business expenses so I don't forget to turn them in for reimbursment.

You can see all my templates here. It's just a bare directory listing at this point.

Found a link on the DIY Planner site to David Seah's Printable CEO pages. These are not 100% applicable to me, but they are pretty cool.

Unfortunately they are all 8.5 x 11 pages, but I might take the Destruct-o-matic Progress Tracker page and roll it into 5.5 x 8.5 size. The Destruct-o-matic is a video game-like version of a progress tracking form. It makes it fun to use and thus you are more likely to use it.

He also has a neat idea he calls the "Pickle Jar". You write your ideas down on a small piece of paper and stick them in a jar. This gets them out of your head, so you can focus on what you are supposed to be doing. You can go back and visit the jar later.

I'm reading the O'Reilly book Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas A. Limoncelli and it's pretty good. I'm going to have to phase into it, but I think it will turn into a good system for me.

One of the illustrations in the book is a page for a day planner that is a combined daily schedule and To-Do list.

The DIY Planner set didn't have a page like that, so I made one! (OpenOffice Draw is pretty slick.)

Here is a thumbnail of the page I made:


Here is the pdf of the form.

I like it.