In my review yesterday of Circa notebooks, I promised I would explain how I use a Circa notebook to keep track of all of my projects and tasks. This approach works for me, and if you’re struggling to keep track of a lot of tasks, projects and information, you might want to give this a try.
I have divided my Circa notebook with tabs into four sections: Work, household, personal and notes.
Work is for all of my projects and tasks that are related to my job. Household covers everything related to my family and home life — paying bills, cutting the grass, etc. Personal is for a handful of projects that don’t directly involve my family or my job, including this blog, my efforts at writing fiction and exercise plans. The notes section is for taking notes when I’m in meetings or wherever — it’s just a handy place to store that stuff until I file it.
Pretty much every task and project in my life can be put into the work, household or personal categories. Each section has a page that’s titled “Projects and Tasks: Work” (or Household, or Personal). That page, and most of the 8½ x 11 pages in my notebook are annotation quarter-inch sheets from Levenger, though I might occasionally put in other types of paper depending on my need.
On the first sheet of each section, I write a list of all of projects and all the individual tasks, usually one per line. Projects I highlight with a orange highlighter, tasks don’t get any highlighting. (By projects I just mean anything that’s going to take more than one action to complete.) I use a pencil for all of this, making it easier to go back and make changes. The annotation column makes it easy to add little notes later on, like a “waiting for” status. That gives me one sheet of paper in the “Work,” “Household,” and “Personal” categories that list all of the projects I’ve taken on, plus any individual tasks that don’t fall into a particular project.
Following that first page in each section, I have one page for each project. Individual tasks for that project are listed top to bottom. I include important details, like deadlines, here. Many of my projects don’t have enough tasks to require a full page, but with all that space I can make notes, do a little informal brainstorming and planning, and record reference information such as phone numbers or web sites.
As I complete projects and tasks I cross them off the summary sheet for each section. Individual project sheets can be recycled or filed away as projects are finished. Periodically I replace the cover sheet when it gets filled up, but this OK. Rewriting that list of projects and tasks forces me to re-assess them, and perhaps scratch off items that are no longer relevant.
Finally, in the front of the notebook, I have one of Levenger’s compact size Things to Do sheets. I put a new one in each day, write the date at the top, and list all of the tasks I want to get done that day. I’ll draw those tasks from my various project pages in the notebook, but also add emergent tasks as they arise during the day. At the end of the day I figure out where any undone tasks need to go — maybe on the next day’s list, maybe on a project page some place — and then recycle it.
The beauty of this system, I’m discovering, is that I can add more pages or extra reference information for individual projects. I could add more tabbed dividers if I found it useful to further subdivide the notebook. For instance, I’m considering adding a tab for MarkTzk.com to keep track of post ideas, design enhancements, the editorial calendar and so forth.
I’m sure I’ll continue to enhance and tweak this system. But I don’t see myself changing this anytime soon. Having everything written down in one place gives me considerable peace of mind.
What do you think, would this work for you? How do you organize your tasks and projects?
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Interesting and informative! I just got a bunch of Circa stuff last month, and I’m so enjoying using the notebooks to organize everything in my life, from recipes to addresses to To Dos.
Yours is an interesting and unique system; I’ve been using the To-Do lists for my tasks and projects, but the unfinished To Dos get a little unwieldy. I think I might try out your system and see how that works for me.
Hi Mark!
I was wondering if you are still using this system and how it’s working for you.
After having Circa since October, I’m finally ready to move forward and re-think my to-dos, which are a bit hairy right now. I was wondering: when you write your list of projects and tasks on the first page, are you writing the tasks for the projects on that page? Or is that what the project sheet is for?
Also, what about the daily stuff you do–i.e. post, check feedburner, exercise, etc. Do you find it useful to track these at all or put them on a To Do List?
Thanks for writing this post; it really got me started on Circa!
Hi Anne-Marie –
Yes, I am still using this system. I have experimented with some other online tools in the interim, but I keep coming back to this as what works for me and I’ve stopped experimenting. I find the process of working things out on paper very useful for me, and having it all in one place keeps me organized.
To answer your question, I write the list of tasks associated with a project on the project sheet. Sometimes I’ll have a single task that’s not associated with a larger project (say ‘Pay visa bill’), in which case there’s no project page and I just write that single task on the main ‘Household’ project list sheet.
To keep track of daily to-dos, each day I use one of Levenger’s to-do list sheets (the little ones), which I keep in the front of my Circa notebook. I go through my projects and tasks and transfer items from there onto the daily to-do list. I can also add emergent tasks to that to-do list during the day and if they don’t get done, place them on an appropriate project sheet. This process acts as a daily mini-review, which is helpful in keeping everything on track.
Hope this makes sense, and I’m glad this post was so helpful for you.
Hi again–
Thanks for the clarification–I can really visualize your system now. The example of the Visa bill was a good one–before I was wondering about “tasks without projects”. Maybe because I make a project out of everything ;-D
I’m going to overhaul my To-Do’s this weekend and test drive your system this week. I’ll keep you posted!