A Touch of Paper

With my new role come a lot of recording, now that I do not have a tablet PC (and the fact that tablet PC’s are not ’there’ yet) I am using a paper diary. Now thoes of you who know me, no I have not gone mad! To be honest it feels good to be writing again, I have a nice A5 diary with plently of blank paper it it. A monthly calendar to mark anything down I need to and sections for tasks and projects. Since I try to use the Getting Things Done methadology I am using some print outs to support this. The Diary has the following sections:

First Section - Lined paper for notes

Second Section - Weekly Calendar (Was monthly but needed more granularity) I use post it tabs to mark the current week.

Third Section - Next Action, this follows the GTD methodology and has Work, Home and errends.

Fourth Section - Projects list, this is to review weekly - Project outlines, this is a more details breakdown for a project to allow action lists to be created out of. Also I keep any notes for a project behind these.

Fifth Section - Agendas, what I have to speak to people about when I see them next.

Sixth Section - General Reference and my contacts list. A dumping ground for important bits that I need every now and again.

The hardest part about this whole process is getting into the habit of reviewing the lists weekly for updates and making sure I reference them during the day for outstanding. I have found my self thinking during the day that I have to do something, and later looking at my action lists and it is there for me to do. I need to ’trust’ the system more. That is a big point in the GTD books. The forms and pages that I use come from http://www.diyplanner.com/ I have created my own weekly view which I need to refine, once done I will put it up for others to use.