I have been suffering from the worst case of unmotivation that I’ve ever had in my life. I would really like to just read ALL DAY and not do anything else until Steve comes home. (Okay, maybe I’ll take a few sips of blackberry limeade every now and then.) My friends look at me oddly when I mention how lazy I’ve been feeling because they know me as the unstoppable super-productive person who types really fast, reads 50 books a week (slight exaggeration), works full-time, volunteers, and wrote a book on top of it all. Steve looks at me oddly when I suggest overextending our “fun” budget category to go eat out again because I don’t feel like cooking because I usually love to cook. I’m generally not feeling like myself.

I’m even too lazy to try to analyze why I’m unmotivated, which would probably be the first step to solving this particular problem.

Oh, my work is still getting done — and being done well, if I do say so myself. But let’s just say that the things I don’t have to do (including building out the HTML/CSS for my personal web site) aren’t getting done, and I’m wasting a lot of time gearing myself up to do the things I have to do.

“Do something for five minutes and the momentum will carry you through.” “Make it into a game.” “Set a timer.” “Use Dave Seah’s cool motivational forms to blast through projects.” The usual motivational tricks aren’t working for me. I really do think analyzing why I’m unmotivated should be the first step for real change. But since the thought of analyzing myself makes me tired, I’ve decided to try another form of motivational trickery on myself: Make a cool new form for myself. Better yet, make a form that addresses the main issue of why I need to be working — to earn money!

So — I give you my uncreatively named Week Tracking Sheet v1. Here is an example of it in use with made-up numbers (so you can’t know how poor — or rich — I am… bwa ha ha!):

As a freelance worker, the money I make is split across multiple projects and tracked across multiple Excel spreadsheets. This printable form allows me to consolidate the financial information; after I complete a task, I log how much money I just “made” into a column. At the end of the day, I total it up. At the end of the week, I can look at a grand total to see how I’m doing.

I tried to think of other uses for this form but couldn’t think of any. It would have to be something that you do and could log intermittently throughout the day, I think, with a hard numerical value (time, money, pages?) that you can add up at the end. Maybe for time spent studying? If you have any other creative ideas for how to use this, please share!

And if you’re curious — this did motivate me a little bit more yesterday when I used it. I’ll try to remember to share how I’m doing in the area of motivation during my week update(s).

Download

• Weekly Tracker PDF – weektracker.pdf

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

How to use it with a Junior Rolla/Circa notebook

Print out on 8.5×11″ paper. Trim off right side .25″. Cut in half (at 5.5″ mark). Punch the top part of the form.

I [finally!] revised my Project List Form by swapping the positions of the checkbox and code box. This makes it easier to scan the project titles (which I write starting from the left side in English) and easily see which projects have been completed.

Download

• Project List Form v2 – project-list-v2.pdf
  The PDF is editable in Illustrator, if you’re the kind of person that likes to customize things.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

See my original post for usage notes. I’m leaving the original download up for people who liked the checkboxes on the right.

This comes after my GTD Project List Form v1 post. Take a look if you need some background on the concept of Projects within Getting Things Done and want to see the “parent” or “companion” form that goes along with this one.

Concept

I mentioned before that I had also created a Getting Things Done-inspired Project Detail Form, and here it is:

This fold-out page is formatted to print on 8.5″ x 11″ paper. I Circa-punch the left side and trim the bottom quarter inch off so it lines up with the other pages in my Circa/Rolla organizer. The aqua line isn’t printed — I’ve added it to the screenshot so you can see where I fold the page back.

The left side holds basic project information. In the diagram below…

• Big area for the project name.
• A small area for the project code, which matches up with the project code I assign on the Project List form.
• A big box to write the desired outcome and wildest dream, to help you focus on what you want this project to accomplish.
• There are then several lines for brainstorming action items.

The right fold-out panel is a basic grid layout (1/4″ grid markings), perfect for notes, brainstorming, etc. I’ve already found this helpful for jotting down phone numbers and car service quotes for my “replace clutch” project. It’s also a nice place to write things down and brainstorm when I’m on-the-go and only have my planner with me.

So how does this fit in with GTD? David Allen doesn’t talk about a “project detail sheet” in the book, but he does talk about “project support materials” that should be filed away for easy reference (either digitally, in an email folder or document folder, or physically, in a file folder or other storage unit) that are pulled out when you are working on the project. I think of this project detail sheet as a mini portable project file that I can always have with me in my planner to jot down notes, list the next few actions I think I need to take, and refer to quickly and easily. It’s not for everyone, but I think it will work for me.

I’ve deliberately stressed the brainstorming aspect of this page. As a list-maker type of person, I often get caught up into trying, first of all, to have a “complete” list, and second of all, to completely check off everything on the list. However, for some projects it’s not practical or feasible to create a complete list. This page gives me the freedom to make an incomplete list — to just look a few steps ahead, dream, brainstorm, even — gasp — write the action items out of order. I can quickly grab the Next Action and put it into my “real” to-do list (using Remember the Milk for now), without being afraid that I’ll forget an important step down the road because I already have it captured on this page.

Finally — I’m planning a follow-up post that demonstrates my current workflow using these different forms, and will have more concrete examples on how I use this specific project detail form in that post. Update: Here it is.

Download

• Project Detail Form v1 – project-detail.pdf
  The PDF is editable in Illustrator, if you’re the kind of person that likes to customize things.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Usage notes

• Print landscape on 8.5″ x 11″ paper.
• Can punch the left side. (This was specifically formatted for a Circa/Rolla notebook but may work for other formats.)
• Trim the bottom 1/4″ off if you want it to match the Circa/Rolla Junior size paper.
• Fold the grid back so that it doesn’t overlap the hole punches.
• I file mine in order by project number so that I can quickly reference them from the Project List sheet.

Feedback

If you have any feedback about my GTD forms, I’d love to hear it! Please leave a comment below.

In my previous post about Getting Things Done, I mentioned that I had created forms for keeping track of my projects. As promised, here is my first post about one of my forms — a Project List Form.

Project Concept

A little bit of GTD theory: David Allen defines anything that will take more than one or two steps as a “project.” So a Project could be an actual work project (“Health Spa Web Site”) or a personal project (“Make a quilt”), but it could also be something like “Get clutch fixed on car” because you have to 1) call your friend for a mechanic reference, 2) call the mechanic, and 3) bring the car in.

Allen advises that you have some sort of project master list that you review weekly, to remind you of all the unresolved stuff that you have going on.

Each project might also have support material, which would be the various reference items (such as the mechanic’s business card, or quilt pattern ideas) that you would need to use when working on the project. These materials should be filed away neatly somewhere so that you can pull them out as you are able to work on them.

The Project List Form v1

I designed a very basic project list form, perfect for my Circa/Rolla organizer.

• Three color choices for the header: The headers are color coded similar to my Compact Project Task Cards. I use yellow for personal projects, blue for PixelMill projects, and pink for freelance projects.
• 20 lines for listing projects.
• Each line has a box on the left to allow you to notate a project code. The project code can be referenced on the project detail sheet (another blog on this later), your personal files, or on the Compact Project Task Card.
• A juicy fat checkbox on the right. (I may revise this to be on the left — I think it’s more natural to scan down the list for incomplete projects if the checkbox is closer to the actual project title.)

Download

• Project List Form v1 – project-list.pdf
  The PDF is editable in Illustrator, if you’re the kind of person that likes to customize things.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Usage example and notes

• Each color is on its own page, so there are three pages. You can print out only one page if you want a single color. You can print your own double-sided sheets, but the forms are not designed to line up when double-sided.
• I’ve been using numbers for project detail sheet codes and letters for mini-projects that fit on one of my Compact Project Task Cards.

Okay — so now I owe another blog post about my project detail form. Stay tuned!

Update 6/15: Go to the next part: GTD Project Detail Form v1 is up!

New addition to My Organizer: Compact Project Task Cards. (Download available!)

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been keeping track of my various “projects I’m working on” in the extra margin space of my weekly planner sheets (in the photo above, it’s the space between the day-boxes and the binder rings, under the cards). However, I found myself copying over unfinished projects from week to week. This got annoying.

I thought about Getting Things Done and began to see the wisdom of having a master “project list,” which was essentially what my week-to-week list was. So, I tried using a paper “bookmark” (about the width of the margin) as a project list-keeper. That worked okay, but I found myself having to look up other pieces of paper, emails, and online to-do lists related to each project.

This is about when I started scheming a cooler way to keep track of my projects AND some of the critical to-do’s for each project. Read on to learn about my process and to download/print the form!

The Journey

First stop, of course, was to see if David Seah had anything ready-to-go. The thing that looked most promising was the Task Order Up cards, which I had tried using a few months ago. I liked the discrete nature of the cards — each card was good for one “task” or, in my case, one “project.” But I needed something smaller and simpler that would line up neatly in the inside margin of my planner. I fired up Illustrator and designed a VERY simplistic card.

The card is 2.75″ wide by 2″ high. Since my rollabind rings are 1″ apart, this allows the cards to overlap evenly. The width of the card also fits within my inner “margin” area perfectly. The individual nature of the cards allows me to reorder them, which can help with visual prioritization, and limiting the number of to-do’s on each card keeps the projects from being overwhelming.

With rollabind punches on both sides, I can easily snap the cards into either side of my planner — the photo below shows the cards in place for this week…

– and where they will go for next week:

I have a section of my binder — between my cover sheet and first divider — that was unused, so for now I’m keeping my “on-hold” projects archived there, along with blank cards that I can easily access:

I went through a few different versions before settling on the current version.

Rejected versions:

First, I had a black and white version (photo: upper left) but I found it visually confusing as the project title blended in with the to-do’s when lined up next to each other. Then, I tried multi-colored cards with the project title area left as a white rectangle (photo: right). They looked pretty, but were ultimately impractical because it took too long to cut along the lines (as I’m a perfectionist). I finally settled on the current version — a white card with colored title area. Initially, I tried all blue (photo: bottom left), but thought it looked prettier with multiple colors. The multiple colors now allow me to have cards for personal client work, PixelMill work, and personal projects.

Download:

• Compact Project Task Cards v1 – project-card.pdf
  Printable sheet with 15 cards in red, pink, and yellow.
  

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

How to use it (or, how I’m using it):

Print the sheet (make sure your printer does not try to collapse the PDF to fit “within printer margins”). I’ve printed my cards on normal-weight paper.

Get a paper cutter that can cut multiple sheets of paper.

Slicing diagram:

1. Trim right side by .25″.
2. Trim top by .25″.
3. Trim bottom by .75″ so that total height is 10″.
4. Start slicing off 2″ strips (each strip has blue/pink/yellow).
5. Stack the strips together and slice off 2.75″ chunks to separate the cards.

Finally, punch both sides — left and right — with rollabind/circa punch. The punch should be set at the 1/2″ mark so that the holes are centered vertically on the card. Each card has two holes. Here’s a reference graphic again:

If you overlap the cards, it’s then pretty easy to flip the whole stack at once by grabbing the bottom (or top) card, depending on which way you’re trying to flip them.

The cards can be easily rearranged by priority and transferred to different sections of your binder (I’m keeping “on-hold” projects in a different section). I’m guessing that I’ll keep moving these cards forward in my planner until I complete them; longer projects may take multiple cards that I’ll add in as I complete each card.

Ideas for improvement

I’m going to try out what I have so far, but here are some things that I’m thinking about that may influence a new version:

• Sometimes I’m waiting on something specific from someone else before I can move forward on my task/project, but I forget exactly what. Possible solutions:
  • Use the back of the card for notes.
  • Add the “task item” for the other person but make some sort of mark in the checkbox to denote that I’m waiting on someone else.
• Do I need a way to incorporate due dates? Will wait and see.
• My client proposals usually include a proposed schedule grid, as well as a specific list of deliverables, that I like to print out. Currently they reside in clear folders and are easily accessible from my desk. I’m weighing the idea of adding some sort of reference or numbering system to my projects, and then adding an area in the title bar to reference the project number.

If you try this out and find it useful — or not — I’d love to hear about your experience! Leave a comment!

Doodah suggested that I incorporate the cheering groundhog into the monthly goal tracking forms, and thanks to Illustrator’s Live Trace function (using “Comic” setting), it didn’t take very long (I just had to adjust the paths for the letters and words). You can download the updated PDF or Word document versions on the Monthly Goal Tracker page. The original un-cutsey version is still up there as well.

Just a quick post to say that by request, I’ve put up PDFs that you can download for the weekly and daily pages of my organizing system.

Jump to the update now…

I decided to take some time this morning to make a monthly calendar spread for my new organizer in Illustrator. Similar to my weekly pages, I wasn’t going to put actual dates on the pages, but wanted to have a base layout that I could then fill in. So, basically, I wanted to make a bunch of squares on a page. Sounds simple! Here are the original specs that I had in mind for my calendar layout:

• 8.5″ x 11″ sheet with two calendar layouts; I would cut the page in half, trim the edges (to match the other sheets in my organizer) and then hole-punch it
• Rounded corner squares, 7 across, 5 down, to represent the weekdays of the month; no numbers — I would write them in by hand after printing them
• A rounded corner bar at the top for the month

I recently had seen Veerle’s blog about using the Transform and Distort effect to make dynamic business cards in Illustrator, which was new to me. I was excited about trying out the technique for the calendar layout, because I could see how it would make it much easier to evenly space the squares for the calendar.

Here are the step-by-steps of what I did…

First, create a new 8.5″ x 11″ document in “portrait” orientation. Then, draw a guide to divide the page in half by clicking inside the top ruler, holding, and dragging downwards to the 5.5″ position (on the left ruler). This allows you to easily see the half of the page you want to work with.

Now, select the Rounded Rectangle tool. You could draw a rounded rectangle by hand, but if you want to be more precise, Alt-click (PC) on the page and a dialog box will come up that allows you to enter in your own dimensions. I used 1.05″ x .85″, with a .1″ corner radius. Click OK to create the rectangle.

If you want, you can set the properties of the rectangle. Mine has a white fill with a grey border. Now, move it to the printable edge of your document. I left some room above for the month-bar.

Now we’re ready to apply some Distort and Transform magic! Go to Effect > (Illustrator Effects) Distort & Transform > Transform. Check the “Preview” box and type “6″ copies. Now, start dragging the Move/Horizontal slider to the right. You will see the duplicate copies of the box begin sliding over as well.

Move the slider over until the squares are spaced within your printable area to your satisfaction, then click OK. If you need to, you can manually type in a number if the slider doesn’t go far enough for you.

Now go again to Effect > Distort and Transform > Transform. A warning dialog box will come up — click the “Apply New Effect” button to continue.

The Transform Effect dialog box will come up again. This time, type “4″ copies and move the Vertical slider to the left. When you’re happy with the spacing, click OK.

The beauty of the transform effect is that the copied squares are truly copies of the original object. Any changes you make to the original object will automatically apply to the other copies.

I created a colored bar for the month and typed the days of the week. At this point, I decided that I wanted to have the month actually typed (instead of handwritten), so I added that as well. (See below.) You can create whatever objects and effects you want in Illustrator for the month and weekday headings.

Now you’re ready to create the bottom half of the page. Because of the tight margin at the bottom of the calendar and the printing margins of my printer, I couldn’t just simply duplicate the entire thing at the bottom — I was going to have to flip the copy that I made to be upside-down. First, I copied the squares by clicking on the original square, holding the Alt (PC) key, and Shift-dragging the square down to the bottom half of the page. Holding the Alt key allows you to make a copy by dragging/dropping, and holding the Shift key constrains the movement so that they line up perfectly with the previous object.

Now, let’s flip and copy the header. Select all the header objects (you can group them together if you want), then select the Rotate tool. To make positioning the header easier, click once in the center of the page to set the center of rotation. (You can watch the rulers on the top and left as you move your mouse to find the center of the page.)

Your next click/drag will actually rotate the object. Hold down the Alt/Option key as you drag so that a copy is created. Drag around until the copy of the header is positioned properly.

Here’s what the completed layout looks like:

Now at this point, you could manually select the month names, change them, print, and repeat. But, again, I’m lazy, and I like to find better ways of doing things. I’m not that familiar with Illustrator, but I was fairly certain that there was a feature somewhere that would allow me to have variable text. After some quick searching, I found this Adobe Design Center Tutorial that explained how to create data-driven graphics.

First step is to open the Variables palette. Select the top month field, then click the “Make Text Dynamic” icon at the bottom of the Variables palette. In the dialog box, type a name for the variable — I called mine “Month1.” Repeat for the bottom month field (I called mine “Month2″).

Now, click the “Capture Data Set” button, then go to Save Variable Library in the palette fly-out menu. This will prompt you to save an .xml file.

Note: Before saving the variable library, I found it helpful to select the text and change it (“january” and “february”) and click the Capture Data Set button again, so that I could easily see what I would need to change in the XML file.

Now open the .xml file for editing in your editor of choice. I used a simple text editor.

Here is the code that I modified:

...
<v:sampleDataSet dataSetName="Data Set 1">
<Month1>
<p>january</p>
</Month1>
<Month2>
<p>february</p>
</Month2>
</v:sampleDataSet>
<v:sampleDataSet dataSetName="Data Set 2">
<Month1>
<p>march</p>
</Month1>
<Month2>
<p>april</p>
</Month2>
</v:sampleDataSet>
...

Using the inital data as a guide, copy the XML code and update the “Data Set #,” “Month1,” and “Month2″ variables with the rest of the months.

Save the XML file.

Go back to Illustrator. In the Variables palette, select Load Variable Library. Browse to the XML file and select it, and click OK at the prompt that asks if you want to replace the existing data.

You’ll see that all the data sets show up in the Data Set dropdown. As you select the different data sets, the names of the month change!

At this point, you can choose to print out each page as you change the data set, or do something else fancy with it, perhaps by creating a batched action to save to a PDF or something like that.

If you have a lot of time and if you like things to look neat and pretty, you could create text variables and actually print out the day-numbers as well. I’m lazy, so the thought of having to update an XML file with all the days of the month is not appealing… for some reason I’d rather just hand-write the numbers in.

My history of organizer systems in bulleted list format:

• Early college years: Cheap DayRunner vinyl organizer with calendar refill and address book
• Later college years: Leather DayTimer organizer that weighed about 50 lbs. with binder-ring style calendar, addresses, notepaper, etc., slots for ID and credit cards, zipper pocket, notepad, blah blah blah…
• Briefly: Hand-me-down Palm Pilot from my sister. Spent hours entering stuff into it, then stopped using it because the batteries got used up so quickly.
• Full-time employment years: Yellow legal notepad with tiny printed to-do items listed one after another, crossed off as completed
• Initial self-employed years: Cheap iPads.com calendar notebook with preprinted monthly sheets, weekly spreads, and pages in between each month for tracking expenses (I used it for tracking invoices), notes, etc. Spiral-bound and custom photo and title/text printed on the cover. Low-tech and awesome.
• October 2006 – March 2007: Moleskine-hacked calendar/organizer. iPads.com stopped printing calendars. After dragging myself out of the depths of despair, I designed my own (more details/pictures below).
• Now: Rollabind/Circa system organizer with personally-designed/printed pages. I’m loving it!

I think the Moleskine and Rollabind stuff will be most interesting to readers, so here are some pictures and descriptions:

Moleskine planner hack… I got a large ruled Moleskine and numbered almost all the pages (with the exception of my monthly spread pages).

Pages 1-3: A long list of books I want to read. Handy whenever I went to the library.

Page 4: A list of books I want to buy.

Page 5-92: Calendar.

First, a page (page 5) for my monthly spread. The month/year was written in the upper corner. My dividers were 1″ columns and 7/8″ rows.

After this (pages 6-7) are two blank pages, which I use for tracking what invoices are due and then for jotting down shopping lists and the like, all related to that month. For example, you can see the list of vacuum repair shops that I called in its own box, and my list of projects for the month.

After these two pages is where my weekly view pages come in. The big moleskine has 30 lines, so each day has 10 lines. It took me about an hour to use a ruler and pen and mark out the pages for 6 months, including the monthly-view pages.

At first, I tried putting appointments and events in the left side of each day, and to-do check lists in the right side. (I liked the checkbox system that Mike Rohde discussed.) I began having too many to-do’s and found myself transferring to-dos to other days, so then I tried more of a GTD system — more about that in a bit.

I only created weekly/monthly spreads for October – March, so I added a few pages of simple monthly-view pages to act as placeholders for my next organizer.

I also got some cardstock and cut out a divider with a tab, which I then glued to the page after my extra-month-pages.

The area past the divider (about half of the book) became my to-do lists, shopping lists, GTD lists system.

After trying out GTD for a few weeks, I gave up. Since I work at home, the different contexts were confusing me and I felt like I was using too much paper. I took some of the concepts of GTD (an “inbox” that I process, keeping my calendar pristine by only recording actual appointments) and started using the blank part of my moleskine for a daily project scheduler, borrowing some ideas from David Seah’s “menu of the day” — just not as pretty, not as smart, simpler, more compact, and handwritten:

Click picture for larger version in a new window:

Here’s a close-up of one day:

1. So — the night before, or the morning of, I write down the date.
2. I make a list on the right (lettered) of the various tasks and projects I need to work on. This includes meetings, errands, etc. (I usually refer to Basecamp and the calendar part of my planner to help me.)
3. I mark the hours of the day on the left (the numbers are written on the lines, to help divide the space).
4. Then I write down the corresponding letters of my projects inside the schedule, sort of estimating how long I think tasks will take me and blocking out time for them. If I can do multiple things in one hour, I write the letters next to each other. Unfortunately I often forget to schedule in some time for lunch, as you can see on 1/16 and 1/17.
5. As I complete things, I cross them off on the right, and also make a slash through the corresponding letter on the left. If something gets moved off my list, I put an “x” through the letter (although I don’t necessarily do that on the right side; I’m not very consistent!).

And as you can see, Steve likes to jot things down in my schedule without me realizing it until later…

I also used the blank area of the moleskine for keeping track of other stuff, taking notes, etc.

Circa/Rollabind System

As March approached and my moleskine calendar was coming to its end, I analyzed how it was working for me:

1. I like how I customized it myself.
2. There’s something cool about using a moleskine — the paper is nice, the covers are sturdy, it’s self-contained.
3. I found myself flipping through pages too often to try to find information.
4. It took too much time to hack the moleskine.
5. The moleskine isn’t really “expandable,” which is one thing I really liked about my DayTimer binder system.

I started looking at other options, and was intrigued by my sister’s Circa system (from www.levenger.com). The fact that you could theoretically create your own page layouts and build the binder however you wanted was really appealing. I also got sucked in by the coolness factor of the roladex-style pages — no binder rings to mess with, you just “snap” the pages onto the rings. And, with the purchase of the slightly pricey hole-punch, you can add practically anything to your binder!

So, I went ahead and ordered:

• A black junior notebook from Rollabind Systems
• The Circa desk punch from Levenger
• The Circa Page Finder (a plastic bookmark with ruler markings) from Levenger
• A set of Circa Junior Tab Dividers (still on sale) from Levenger
• Junior size Circa Soft Color Pocket Dividers from Levenger — plastic dividers with a slot to hold papers and stuff

I was very disappointed that the Pocket Dividers were slightly too big! They are just a little too tall in comparison to the junior notebook cover. The weird thing is that the Junior Tab Dividers fit perfectly, so you would think that the junior-sized pocket dividers would be similar, but no! So I ended up putting two of the pocket dividers at the very back of the notebook, where they still stick out slightly on the top and bottom but aren’t as noticeable.

Here’s how I set up my new organizer, from front to back:

• A cardstock cover sheet with my name and “return to” info on it
• A plastic blue divider tab (unlabelled for now)
• A 2007 Compact Calendar, which I reformatted to print out in two columns on a half-sheet, deleted some of the holidays, and added people’s birthdays
• My daily inserts (more below)
• The page finder/bookmark
• My personal-designed weekly calendar pages through the end of 2007 (more below)
• A red tab divider
• Various loose pages for things I need to remember and keep track of…
  • A temporary “contacts” page with harp teacher contact info
  • A basic sheet for keeping track of my Dos Coyotes house account
  • A basic sheet for keeping track of invoices and when they are due
• A green tab divider
• Blank ruled pages
• A pocket divider, which holds my loose daily inserts
• Another pocket divider, which is empty but may theoretically hold receipts and other loose stuff

I Photoshopped together some examples of my daily inserts and calendar pages…

Weekly spread:

Click for bigger view

I print out my weekly calendar page spread and then hand-write in the dates. Then I cut it in half (trim the bottom slightly) and then use my special hole puncher to make the rollabind slots.

The idea is that actual scheduled events go in the boxes… I’ve been using the extra column space for things I need to remember or do.

Daily page insert:

Click for bigger view

My daily page is an 8.5 x 5.5 sheet, folded slightly off center so that the right side doesn’t get in the way of the binder holds.

The left side, obviously, is for me to plan out my day. I’m using the same method I have in my moleskine with listing tasks and then blocking them into my day.

The right side is a personalized health-and-routines tracking thing. I like filling in bubble forms, so I made my own bubble form to help keep track of things I think I should be doing every day (exercising, eating breakfast, etc.) as well as my recommended food servings (because I tend to pig out on carbs and protein and not eat enough fruits and veggies). I need to edit this part of the sheet after I go through my small stack of preprinted ones, because I want to add stuff like “practice harp” and bubbles to fill in for drinking enough water and remove some of the things I don’t need. As I develop better house cleaning routines, I’ll figure out a way to add those, as well.

(I personally thought it was very fun and clever to use food shapes for tracking my food! And yes, I was inspired by Dave’s cool Printable CEO stuff.)

So in my rollabind, I just clip the daily sheet over the weekly sheet and fold in the tracker flap, like this:

Click for bigger view

For now, I’m keeping my page bookmark so that it goes to today’s daily sheet, with the past daily sheets layered on the other side, like this:

Click for bigger view

I’m planning to come up with a monthly spread, because I’m finding that I really need the visual layout of a monthly calendar as well. I also liked the note pages in between each month that I had in my iPads organizer and Moleskine, so I’ll probably add those as well, maybe come up with a form to keep track of invoices and projects…. we’ll see!

So that’s my new organizer. It’s pretty fun.

Update 3/21/2007: I put together a monthly calendar spread in Illustrator (and showed how to do it step-by-step in a recent post), and also cleaned up my weekly/daily pages so that you can download the PDFs.

Download:

• Weekly/Daily organizer PDF pages – calendar-weekly-daily.zip

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Notes:

• You can theoretically open the PDFs in Illustrator and customize them.
• I don’t know how useful the daily pages are to anyone who doesn’t have Illustrator, because the routines and food serving amounts are very specific to me! If you’d like me to customize a form for you, you can hire me. Or, have someone else do it for you.
• If for some reason you’d like to have the original Illustrator files, I could probably come up with a reasonable price. Let me know.

Instructions:

I print the weekly page spread on both sides. So that the box margins are as tight to the edge of the page as possible, I have them aligned towards the middle of the page. This means that when I cut the page in half, I hole-punch the opposite side. For my organizer, I also trim the bottom 1/4″ off so that the pages fit neatly with the rest of the pages. I think this paragraph may be terribly confusing so here is a diagram — the aqua lines show the cuts I make:

For the daily spread, I print it out on one side, then cut it in half horizontally and hole-punch the left side. The dotted line shows the fold that I make.

I hope this is helpful!