Hello

Jeffrey Windsor jeff@12easypieces.com http://12easypieces.com December 13, 2007 Dear Friend, If you’re reading this, you’ve downloaded my Poet’s Weekly Planner (for scholars, writers, parents, and dreamers), you lucky, lucky person. You probably came from 43Folders, because I haven’t posted this anywhere else yet, because I’m really not ready to make this public. But it seemed useful for the discussion, and I decided to make it available to you, because you’re special and you’re worth it. Mama always loved you best. Eventually, I’ll probably put some Creative Commons license on it, but not yet. For now, it’s mine and I’m keeping all rights. Grrrrr. I need to finish it up and write some explanation before I get to that point. Plus, if you served an LDS mission in the 1980s or 1990s you might recognize that it is, in some respects, a shameless rip off of the blue1 cardstock planner you carried for two years. I’m not sure I have the legal rights do distribute it (though I suspect I do, now that I’ve made some changes). So you are welcome to use it, but if I catch you selling it or redistributing it, I will be very displeased. Here’s the quick and dirty: each month, I print up at least four copies, duplex. I punch them into my letter-size Circa notebook and mark the dates. In my weekly review, I fill in my “hardlandscape” items, and I use the back to list the projects I plan to advance this week. Each day, I make a plan for stuff to do today on a single notecard, sometimes following the advice of Reinhard Engels’ daily foot soldier cards. and sometimes just making an unstructured list. I also have the standard collection of project and context lists on a Pocket Dock-It page in my Circa. The combination of my Weekly Planner and a daily note card works for me. A word or two on the columns on the back: “new” gets a checkmark if the project is new this week. “Q” is sometimes used to indicate which Covey-style quadrant that the item falls in, or sometimes I use “Q” for something else that seems intelligent at the time (like, how long I plan to work on it, or a priority number). “Q” is sufficiently lacking in specificity to mean whatever I want it to mean. “Due” is for a due date, if any. “View” is pretty cool, if I may say so myself. In my weekly review, I circle the days in “View” I plan to work on that project, say for instance Mo, We, and Fr. This allows me to do a lightweight, quick-and-dirty plan for each day of the week and I can scan down and see if I’ve overfilled any one day (which I always do). I can also allow myself the freedom of not working on a project on the days that are uncircled. At the end of the day, I fill in the circles scantron-style to show I did the work (or leave them blank if I didn’t do anything). I can easily track how successful I am in a) planning, b) work, and c) which days slide off the rails. “View” is exceptionally brilliant. Or, at least I think so; that’s why it’s my planner. Regarding the non-obvious features on the front: “Track” on the top line is to give me a place to measure one of my weekly goals. This goal is a do-or-don’t-do kind, like (as it is for me this 1 Blue was for English at least; Portuguese was in white and I think Spanish was yellow. week) “be in bed by 11PM.” If I’m in bed by 11PM, I get to mark off the day. If not, I don’t. This encourages Seinfeld-type, don’t-break-the-chain thinking. Some weeks I leave this blank and I feel no guilt about that. 2 Goals 1, 2, and 3 at the top relate to the two rows at the bottom of the sheet. Each week I choose up to three goals with some numeric component. There at the top of the sheet, I write the action and the metric, for instance I’ll put “Revise (pages)” or “Grade (papers),” thus planning to revise X number of pages or grading Y number of papers. In the boxes at the bottom of the sheet, I mark the goal for the day in the grey box, and the actual result in the unshaded one. So I might set a goal for Monday for 3 pages revised and 5 papers graded, but achieve only 2 pages revised and 4 papers graded. On Tuesdays I teach, and the hours in class and commuting cut into the time I have to accomplish other tasks, like revising and grading. So I’ll set lower goals for that day (which is why I have boxes for each day rather than one week-long goal) and have the opportunity to fully accomplish my own lowered standards. Lower standards: woohoo. I have all 24 hours listed so I can do a Fiore Unschedule whenever I want. That’s what the boxes for “Work” and “Play” are for. tracking my guilt-free play and my quality work. If you haven’t read Fiore’s The Now Habit you should quit trying to get organized and read the book first. In fact, if you’re reading this and you haven’t read the book, you should check it out from your library, call in sick to work, and read it today. There’s an infinity symbol at the top of each day for all-day items. The three blank lines near the bottom are not for to-do lists. They’re for one-off items that must be performed in the future. That gives me a place to write down a reminder about what I need to do tomorrow. For example, on Tuesday I might put “Call Roddy re meeting,” so I’ll call him the day before our meeting. Most useful, however, is to use those lines for parking on a downhill slope. Finally, the giant “W” at the top of the page. My last name is Windsor. And it’s a Weekly planner. I used to have a sheet for daily plans which had a giant “D” at the top, but I stopped using those and the “W” remains. There you have it, an overlong and occasionally incoherent description of my system, and a copy of my homemade tool. Here’s the take-away: my Poet’s Weekly Planner works for me because I designed it meself to meet me own needs, me hearty. Your needs are likely different, and while you might be swayed by the Helvetica-y loveliness that seems surprisingly lacking in most other weekly planners, it’s shockingly easy to design your own. Still, I’d love to hear your ideas. Shoot me an email with your thoughts, complaints, or ideas. I’d love to be even more efficient and organized. And if it turns out that what the world most needs is a slightly genericized version of my Poet’s Weekly Planner, who am I to deny the world' Let me know what you think. Sincerely yours, Jeffrey Windsor I feel no guilt about ignoring most of the features of the Weekly Planner when my life is too hectic. Yeah, there’s a lot of crap here, but it’s about what works for me, and I like having options. 2 W Sunday " 5a 6a 7a 8a 9a 10a 11a noon 1p 2p 3p 4p 5p 6p 7p 8p 9p 10p 11p mid 1a 2a 3a 4a work play Poet!s Weekly Planner (for scholars, writers, parents, and dreamers) Week of: Goal 1: Monday " 5a 6a 7a 8a 9a 10a 11a noon 1p 2p 3p 4p 5p 6p 7p 8p 9p 10p 11p mid 1a 2a 3a 4a work play work play work play work play Tuesday Goal 2: Wednesday Thursday " 5a 6a 7a 8a 9a 10a 11a noon 1p 2p 3p 4p 5p 6p 7p 8p 9p 10p 11p mid 1a 2a 3a 4a work play work play Track:! Goal 3: Friday Saturday Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa goals results Form updated 12/03 Active Projects or other things that deserve my valuable attention to do 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Notes 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Su Su Su Su Su Su Su Su Mo Mo Mo Mo Mo Mo Mo Mo Tu Tu Tu Tu Tu Tu Tu Tu We We We We We We We We Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Fr Fr Fr Fr Fr Fr Fr Fr Sa Sa Sa Sa Sa Sa Sa Sa Su Su Su Su Su Mo Mo Mo Mo Mo Su Mo Tu Tu Tu Tu Tu Tu We We We We We We Su Mo Tu We Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Su Fr Fr Fr Fr Fr Fr Fr Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Sa Sa Sa Sa Sa Sa Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa new Q due view Notes Ideas