I wanted to nail down a particular topic for this post, but I think I just have to get the ideas and discoveries I’ve been saving up out of my system and can be a bit more organized (irony there) in the future.

I’m always trying to minimize administrative time in planning the day and strike the right balance between flexibility in schedule and clear goals for different periods of time. In other words, I don’t want to let my days be swept away simply because I haven’t decided on what to do with them, but I don’t want to be so inflexible that I can’t adapt to the changing circumstances of life (and mine change a lot).

It’s my opinion, as you can tell from the tagline of my blog*, that the way I plan should reflect reality and help me achieve my goals regardless of technicalities. To that end, I’ve actually stopped planning the week in as much detail as before. I used to decide which tasks I would do each day, but this week I just picked the tasks I wanted to do this week and decided that I would review the list each day and allocate some tasks to the day at the start of it (or the evening before) if I knew I would have time. Things that had particular deadlines could of course be scheduled, but there were many things I wasn’t getting done the other way anyway…so why spend time on it if it wouldn’t help much?

And so far, so good. I’ve been using Simpleology’s little “Start My Day” feature, and that’s been kind of cool. You start with a brain dump and get out all the morning thoughts (surprisingly helpful!), then you pick what you want to do at all, what you maybe want to do, and what you can dump. Then for the things you want to do, you decide if you want to do them today or schedule them for later. When scheduling for later they can be added to your other task management systems or calendars (I use reQall and Google Calendar). This actually makes sense and makes Simpleology act as something different than a task management system - it’s more like a temporary place that you put your tasks while they’re active, and it helps you have a bit more information about them than a task manager or simple list may store. I can also see which tasks I keep adding as part of the brain dump, and if I keep thinking about them, then I can see that perhaps I need to take care of them. It’s also nice to add stuff and then immediately dump it, so I mentally filter things into actionable and non-actionable items.

I don’t remember to start my day every day, but I figure that’s alright. It does help, especially on weekends and times when I don’t have a defined routine to follow. On workdays, I often don’t need it as much, since I structure my workweek specifically so that I don’t have to think too much (I’ll write about that separately).

Ahh, that felt good, and there you have it. That’s where I’m at currently, and it is saving a bit of time. By the way, I also use Gmail’s Tasks feature to keep track of the things I will do each day and the tasks for the week. So Gmail Tasks is a subset of reQall, and Simpleology is a subset of the Gmail Tasks list.

I’m considering switching to Wunderlist instead of Gmail Tasks, but I have to learn more about it first. I’m all for keeping things simple and fast, and Gmail Tasks is fast and can be managed almost entirely with keyboard shortcuts. That’s going to be hard to beat.

* At the time of writing, the tagline was: Why follow systems that work for other people when your life isn’t the same? I’ve picked and chosen from different systems, but I still beat my own path, and this is my blog about organization, time management, and planning.