Viewing Category: ThinkingTools
A few days ago I posted the latest progress on the Day Grid Balancer forms, a line of inquiry that has attracted very high-quality commentary from you all. Special kudos go to John Ballantrae for using Tarot cards as a tool for design reflection. Instead of using the cards to "read me", he used them to reflect on the direction that the Day Grid Balancer might go. Despite what you might believe or not believe about the "psychic power" of Tarot Cards, the symbolism nevertheless does span a variety of human desires and anxieties; just by considering the interpretations of each drawn card, one can gain some insight by seeing how the symbolism might fit with the situation on your mind.
John posted his video tarot card reading for everyone to see, and in his 12-minute video he came up with several interesting insights. One that resonated was the sense of anxiety and frustration that is driving the development of the Day Balance Grid; he suggested that perhaps focusing on that would provide some new direction. It is very true that I have been feeling that I've not been keeping balanced, and that I was potentially forgetting important things. I had started to write up everything that was on my mind, which works fine when I'm doing it for other people. This time, though, I was stuck. The thought of seeing all those unfinished tasks and unfulfilled dreams was incredibly demotivating. Nevertheless, it had to be done.
When I went to re-watch John's video, the first three minutes suddenly stood out to me. He's doing nothing but shuffling his cards as he's explaining his approach to the reading. It's rather mesmerizing to see someone who is adept with cards shuffle and spread a deck, and several thoughts came to mind regarding the appeal of a card-based form factor:
- There is something cool about manipulating a deck of cards so much that they become familiar friends. John's Tarot deck is obviously well-used, and he's quite familiar with how it handles.
- Tarot cards use strong symbolic language that carry the power of self-reflection in them. The Rider-Waite Deck, with its illustrations of the various meanings of each card, is particularly fascinating to look at.
- Physically, cards are very easy to group, sort, and flip through. This is a huge boon to organization, and you don't have to rewrite anything.
I also just happen to like cards. A few years ago I had made something called the Task Order Up! that included index card versions of task cards, though the system was originally conceived in the spirit of order checks and check rails used at fast food restaurants. This system assigned a card to each task, which you could then array in front of your desk so your coworkers could see what you had going on. You could also prioritize task cards by putting them all the way on the side. But really, the driving force behind the Task Order Up! was that I thought check rails are cool, and I built the process around that.
card stacks versus to-do lists
What I have so far is a deck of personalized task cards for everything I had going on. Instead of standardizing the look-and-feel of each card (as they are in the Task Order Up!), I am allowing them to have individuality. My thinking is that the cards will take on greater representative power the more I scribble and draw on them.
One issue I had come across in the use of my Emergent Task Planner was that I had so many outstanding tasks that it was getting hard to review them all. I am going to make this easier in the next design by reverting to the "right hand side for notes" layout; this will allow me to fold the "to-do" list backwards so I can transcribe it more easily into the next day's task list. However, even in this case I'm forced to retranscribe data, which is a design no-no in my productivity form philosophy. With index cards, I can keep a master list in the form of a hand-held card deck.
Previously, I have maintained a master list electronically. For example, I recently used Google Tasks with Google Calendar. Results were mixed; Google Tasks is a little simplistic at the moment. An even older system I have used was a text editor to-do list, but since this is a local file I can't share with other computers. However, web-based to-do lists have the requirement that I am connected to the Internet, which limits the places where I can access them.
The advantage of electronic media over paper, of course, is the ease of reordering data. However, electronic media suffers when it comes to direct manipulation of overlapping data; there is a lot of clicking and dragging of the mouse, which is slow and makes comparison of data sets cumbersome. Cards do not have this disadvantage, and their tactile qualities make manipulating them a pleasure. They naturally lend themselves to manipulation; when you're dealt a hand of cards, the first thing you do is order them according to your strategic intent. Cards can be grouped, stacked, stuck together, taped, glued, and shuffled. Cards are also more pictorial, more solid, and make soothing noises as you shuffle them. Cards also afford a far richer repertoire of physical manipulation than the mouse, which I think is more helpful when thinking (I don't have any kind of citation for that, unfortunately).
design and process
I sat down with a blank pack of index cards and wrote out everything that I could think of that I needed to do.
I am starting to develop a visual vocabulary for the different kinds of tasks. Some cards are reminder cards that I will come across when I want to keep something on my mind. The "WAAH I'M FAT" card, for example, reminds me that I want to do something about that. There are some cards that I've marked with a symbol that means this moves you toward completing a strategic goal, and there's another symbol that means this supports other things you are doing. Some cards just have the names of people and projects on them. Some of them are process cards that describe how to do the laundry, and assign point values to the card.
There are lots of ordering and prioritization possibilties with a deck of cards. I can extract cards to prioritize tasks, putting them on the top of the deck. I can also group cards with small clamps or paper clips, which gives me a sense of the magnitude of a multi-step project. I can sequence cards in the order they need to be done. I just started this on Sunday, but already I find it comforting to know that everything that's on my mind is in this deck; I've found myself just shuffling through it seeing what was in there. It is like a portable version of my pickle jar. And I haven't even scratched the surface of the gaming possibilities around a custom-designed deck of cards. Collectible Color Card Task Management Gaming, anyone? Balance your Day by trying to get a Three-Of-A-Kind or Straight Flush? Unique Cards, with Webkinz-style Card Tracking and Social Media Integration via 43Things? Oh, my goodness.
Right now, the process I'm using is very simple: I'm just writing down stuff on index cards as they come to mind. The designs are sparse, but are already functionally evolving into distinct uses. When a task is completed, I'll pull the card from the deck and retire it. There are all sorts of neat index card hacks out there that could help as well. There's a nifty index card board on Unclutterer, for example, and Levenger makes those sweet index card holders and docks. However, what I'm more interested in doing is making a deck of beautiful, personalized cards that can be manipulated in my hands. We'll see where this goes.
I've been redesigning the prototype Day Grid Balancer based on the excellent feedback on draft 1. The overall consensus was that while the color and grid were very playful and attractive, their use as a day-to-day tool was limited. And confusing, because my categories don't line up with other people's categories. What seemed to work, though, was the idea of weekly balance. I guess the name of the form will have to change eventually, but the implication for right now is that this creates a LOT OF ROOM to play with on the left-hand side.
I was thinking of biorhythms, DNA spirals, and other patterns, so I drafted a version of the balance grid that, well, is kind of a mess but might give y'all some ideas in brainstorming an approach to make the thing work. I think there needs to be some kind of auxiliary marking within the grid itself, and some obvious place to leave notes, but I haven't gotten that far ahead. I'm planning on printing this out and just scribbling it on it sometime to see if anything pops up.
Thoughts? Here's a editable PDF file to play with, saved with Adobe Illustrator CS3. Creative Commons license applies, as before.
It's been a week since I first started trying the new day grid balancer form, and in practice I found that it didn't quite mesh well with my expectations. Partly this may be due to the long weekend and the surprise visit of one of my best friends, which meant that I didn't adhere to the daily schedule I'm striving to put into place. Even when factoring that in, I think I can still say with confidence that there are several aspects I didn't like about the form:
- Filling out the little day balance grid was confusing because my categories didn't quite fit what I was really doing. They are not named quite right, even for me.
- I wasn't quite clear on what kind of things I should list. In hindsight I see I was mixing up several categories of task: things I want to "make time" to do, scheduled meetings, and ongoing projects. The sheet is also a little cramped for writing any more than a few words per item, though perhaps this is a good thing.
- I had a tendency to just want to use the day balance grid to just check things off to try to complete the figure, instead of noting time.
In short, I wasn't very clear myself on how I wanted to use the form, and this might also be due to imprecise expectations. On the other hand, I also knew that the first week run was unlikely to be quite right, which is why I'm doing this review. There were some useful insights:
- There's something kind of fun about the day balance grid that I like. People have commented it reminds them of Tetris® in its shapes, and perhaps that gives rise to the expectation of fun.
- Merely checking off a box does make me aware of the other areas I could be balancing, which I think is a good thing. The current design of the sheet, however, doesn't leverage this very powerfully. Perhaps a single larger diagram is the way to go.
- Having notes on what I did every day to achieve balance is very helpful in remembering what I did.
- My mindset was that of achieving balance through completion, not through doing. This may be because I feel I am bootstrapping a lot of projects to get new work lined up, and I perceive a long sequence of intermediate steps that will take time to complete. In other words, I'm "finish fixated".
That last point regarding completing versus doing is somewhat subtle; I'm thinking that some actions are inherently good because it is about the time spent in the process itself, and other actions are good because they "finish" something that needed finishing. For example, I'm told that fishing is quite relaxing, and that it is not about actually catching a fish and (as I used to presume) getting to eat it. If one is results-focused, then spending lots of time fishing and not catching any fish would be a big waste of time. However, for someone who enjoys the experience of fishing itself, the entire point is to be immersed in the pleasure of the activity itself.
So there are at least two elements of balance that I should be considering:
- Maintaining a healthy variety of achievements, which lead to balance of multiple prerequisites for security and happiness. This the working assumption behind the design of the current form.
- Remembering to engage in both immersive and results-oriented experiences. This is a distinction that is probably important to note.
So what should this form even do?
And even more important is to decide exactly what this form delivers. I'm not really sure yet. If I look inward to see what it is that's really on my mind, it's that I transform myself into a higher-performing version of myself so I can get my languishing projects done. Just about all these projects are related to either creating new business machinery or creating new ways of interacting with people en masse, which is also beneficial to me. The net result I expect from completion of these projects is more opportunity, both financially and socially.
So why even worry about balance when there's so much to do? The assumption I am testing is whether balance leads to consistent productivity. My gut says that this is part of it, and I keep coming across mentions on other blogs and books that seem to confirm this. Consistent productivity in my case is a matter of maintaining consistent momentum and motivation. I know certain activities inspire and energize me, and I know others drain me. When I am not getting things done AND not constantly exposed people energy pre-mixed with optimism, my motivation wanes.
If I leave this balance issue up to chance, then it's pretty likely that I'll have inconsistent days of productivity. This may actually be an acceptable choice, but I am also feeling that time is short and I need to get my ass in gear. Hence, the creation of a new form to help me track what I'm doing and improve my mindfulness. Improving mindfulness is, perhaps, the main point behind this form.
I'll probably take a second pass at this in the coming week. I'm also very curious about other people's experiences using the form. Feel free to leave a comment, and I'll try to address the feedback as much as possible in the second draft.
Pursue Tangible Results to Achieve Greater Goals
The Concrete Goals Tracker (CGT) is the original Printable CEO™ form, created one evening in 2005 to alleviate my desire to have a "trusted personal CEO" that would tell me what to do. I figured since I couldn't hire anyone to do the job, I might be able to go the cheap route and print one up on paper :-)
Designed for Minimal Tracking Effort
The idea is pretty simple: every time you complete something on the "worth doing" task list, you award yourself points. ONLY things you've done that produce tangible benefits are worth points, and the point scale is weighted so the most goal-directed criteria earn the most. Goal-supporting achievements, which tend to happen more frequently, are weighted less. It's up to you whether a task "counts" or not toward your goal. You can even award multiple points for a single task if it makes sense to you...try your best to optimize!
The list shown here is designed to create a successful freelance practice, based on the idea that "showing and talking about your work leads to more work". It lists categories of tasks that can be framed as being productive relative to your overall goal. For a freelancer, that's making stuff and showing it to people, and also talking to people constantly so you are on their mind. It all pays off when you get that check. There's a small business version too in the downloads section.
As you accomplish various goal-related items throughout the day, fill in the appropriate bubble to log the points. At the end of the day, you will see how well you did (or didn't). Each CGT form tracks an entire week, so you will see how you did every day, and week-by-week...and most importantly, what you did to move yourself along your path. Since the items on the task list award points only for tangible results, you will have made actual progress.
The theory behind the form itself is described more in the original 2005 post on the Printable CEO and the followup Making of the Printable CEO; there is a good bit of video game design psychology embedded in this paper form.
Overall Application
The CGT has evolved into a bunch of other forms that help visualize different aspects of my workday, and I no longer use it daily because it actually did its job: it got me focused on some processes that actually deliver meaningful result; all I had to do was focus not on what they were, but how I could tell if I was on the right path or not, and whether my daily output was really helping me forward. The idea is pretty simple: by focusing on making things that people can see and counting what you've done in a simple daily manner, you plant the seeds for daily progress. This is a high level guidance tool, much like the way a good manager will tell you what she needs and you pick your own way of making that happen without a lot of micromanagement. With luck, this is a form you use to get started in a new direction, and then you will pretty much know what you need to be doing. I haven't heard much feedback about it lately, but the general impression I have is that people use it for 2 weeks to six months, then move on.
The concept is translatable to different fields too. For example, there was also some interest from a magazine, so I created a small business edition based on that.
Make New Year's Resolutions Printable Lists with the Editable Versions
There are "write-your-own" PDFs with suggested methodology for how I put together a good "worth doing" list, which is an art in itself. I've written instructions on how to create new year's resolutions using these forms. By using the make-your-own printable versions of the CGT, you can put together a pretty decent goal tracking kit using either 8.5x11 paper, index cards for you Hipster users, or mini-book formats (pocketmod compatible, even). There is also an editable Excel version.
Note: You'll need to use Acrobat Reader to modify the text fields in the editable PDF versions.
Download 2009 Concrete Goals Tracker Printable Forms
3x5" Index Card Printable Formats
PocketMod / MiniBook Format
Editable Excel Goals Tracker
- Download Editable Excel version. It isn't pretty, but it gets the job done. Use to create your own variations in points. Note that this is not an interactive calculator or tracker spreadsheet as is.
For an overview of all the forms available, visit The Printable CEO™ Series Page. Enjoy!
Official Compact Calendar Page: http://davidseah.com/page/compact-calendar
About the Compact Calendar
Updated 2009 Calendar (USA and other contributors) Now Available!
I find myself doing more project planning these days, so I dusted off my old compact calendar from several years ago. It's just a simple printable calendar created using Excel's date functions and presented like a candy bar o' time, but the design justification runs more deeply than you might think.
» Impatient people: skip to 2009 COMPACT CALENDAR DOWNLOAD
The Candy Bar Theory of Calendar Design
I evolved this technique while still working at ActiveEdge, when I was doing a lot of on-the-fly estimating for proposals and production. The problem with traditional calendar design is that they chunk time in months, not continuous days. I generally am thinking of things like:
- How many days are available, including weekends?
- When are critical deliverables?
- How much calendar time is needed to finish a task?
- What are the specific days we have to work around?
One way to do this is to use a long timeline, like a Gantt chart. All the days line up one after the other in a long horizontal format, which makes it easy to see how long something takes; distance is directly equatable to duration. The drawback of the Gantt chart is its lack of compactness.
How To Use the Compact Calendar
Download the Microsoft Excel templates (they are .XLT files) and double-click them to open. If you're using a Mac, you may have to open them manually from Excel. Select the "Calendar" worksheet and print it out. If you don't need the entire date range, you may also select just a few rows; just make sure you choose "print selection" from Excel's print dialog box.
When I'm doing impromptu planning, I just circle dates and underline ranges, writing notes in the empty space on the right. It is basically a form of doodling your schedule. I find it's a great planning tool in meetings too; just whip out a few of these sheets out at a client meeting to do a quick thumbnail schedule on-the-spot.
The advantages of the Compact Calendar:
The days are all packed together visually, so "distance" corresponds directly to time. This makes visually estimating how much time you need much easier, an visual advantage shared with the Gantt chart.
The calendar for an entire year can fit on a single piece of paper, with plenty of room for notes. You can also just print out a section of it, for short projects, by using the "print selection" feature of Excel and it should retain the headers.
It still largely retains the monthly calendar format, with days of the week in columns, so it's a bit easier to use than a Gantt chart.
Saturdays and Sundays are shaded differently, so we are not as tempted to plan our work schedule on them.
It's easy to count weeks too. "Unit weeks" tend to be the building blocks of longer-term projects.
You're forced to break up project tasks to fit into each 5-day work period. Gantt charts, by comparison, tend to draw long lines through the weekend because that's what lines want to do. Even if you don't work on the weekend, from a visual perspective it seems to imply that you should be working. This has always bugged me, from the perspective of visual gestalt and information design.
Because we retain the days of the week in the same column, it's easy to mark recurring events that are tied to them. "Oh, every Friday we have a company meeting." Easy to see where they'll be; not so on the Gantt chart.
The main drawback of the Compact Calendar is that you can't easily show dependencies or overlapping tasks. It's also not so good for detailed planning. For those cases, I would use my Excel spreadsheet version of the Gantt chart, which is much prettier than the ones that come out of Microsoft Project.
Another drawback of this approach is that it's hard to shift tasks around, but you know what? Project is terrible at that too; it's a glorified outliner with pretensions toward being a resource allocation tool, and it isn't very competent in either role. To be fair, I haven't looked at the more recent versions of Project. I have a license of it that I should install to see how it's evolved...but I digress.
Printing the Compact Calendar
It's an Excel spreadsheet template. Unzip CompactCalendar.zip and double-click the resulting CompactCalendar.xlt file to open a new copy of it.
Then print it out as-is. I keep a few printouts handy in case I need to do some on-the-fly planning. I will then go back and make an "official" version for distribution.
Anyway, there's three worksheets in the Excel file: Instructions, Calendar, and Tables. Usage notes are written in the Instructions sheet for your reference. Calendar is the actual sheet itself, and Tables contains the Holiday Lookup Table that highlights the right days in the Calendar sheet.
If you'd like to modify the calendar, download the latest year (2009). It's much easier than before:
If you need to change the year, just modify the year at the upper right of the blue calendar header. In other words, change 2009 to 2010 or whatever year. Thanks to the help of several readers, the calendar will automagically reformat.
You can add holidays to the HolidayTable on the Tables worksheet. This table is an Excel Named Range, so make sure that if you expand the table, you redefine the range. If you change the year, you'll have to change the holidays in this table too.
There are two conditional formats in use: one that makes the background of the day blue for the first day of the month, and another that makes the day number itself bold and blue for holidays in the Holiday Table.
If you don't need the entire year, you can select the range of rows you want, then when you print check "Selection" in the "Print What" part of the Print dialog box. The headers will print automatically at the top of the sheet, and it will also print a little larger. Useful for shorter projects.
Compact Calendar Workflow
Here's an example of the calendar in use...click the photo to zoom in!
In general, I use printouts as a thinking calendar, doodling in estimated times and circling dates, dependencies, and deliverables. You can see how I use lines to connect with the notes on the right side of the paper.
At client meetings I can use the calendar to note other dependencies, deliverables, and ask about company meetings and other potential conflicts like vacations. It's a lot easier to pass the sheet around than a laptop; people can contemplate paper more easily.
After I get things worked out, I will sometimes make a "clean" version of the schedule using a new sheet and give it to the client to photocopy.
When I'm managing other people in person, sometimes I'll use the Compact Calendar to quickly note their deliverables and the dates on this sheet. I'll also sometimes point out dependencies, and then they have this sheet they can just stick up on the wall and follow. I find that people just need to know when something is due so they can tackle the work; if they have to read a detailed spec or the proposal to find this critical information just slows things down. Specifics of course matter, but that's a post for another day.
Download the Calendar Template
INSTRUCTIONS
Download using the link below, unzip the archive. In the Excel folder, you'll see files named something like CompactCalendar.xlt. This is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet template.
Double-click the file (Windows) and a new spreadsheet will be created based on the template.
Print it out, or annotate the calendar within Excel. Again, I just print them out; you could make a fancier "production calendar" too and print that instead, if you're that type of person.
Optionally you can copy the .xlt file into your Microsoft Excel templates folder. This gives you the ability to create new calendars using Excel's New Document command.
US Version
Download USA 2008 by Dave Seah
Includes Sun-Sat and Mon-Sun (w/ ISO8601 week numbers) versions in ZIP archive. You can also download the PDF Sun-Sat and PDF Mon-Sun versions too!
Download USA 2009 by Dave Seah
Includes Sun-Sat and Mon-Sun (w/ ISO8601 week numbers) versions in ZIP archive. You can also download the PDF Sun-Sat and PDF Mon-Sun versions too!
2009 International Calendars
If you've made a version of the Compact Calendar for your locale and would like to share, put it on a page on your own website and I'll link it here! I no longer host other people's files, because it puts the support burden on me to maintain them.
Argentina 2009 via Jeroen Sangers
Austria 2009 by Ronald
Australia 2009 by Working Solo
Australia/NSW 2009 by Diane (direct file download)
Canada 2009 by andryou
Chile 2009 via Jeroen Sangers
Chile 2009 by Gabriel
China (PRC) 2009 by iWorm
Colombia 2009 via Jeroen Sangers
Colombia 2009 by Javier Ferrand
Denmark 2009 by henrik
Ecuador 2009 via Jeroen Sangers
Estonia 2009 by Eero
France 2009 by Tisseurdetoile
Germany 2009 by Lennart Groetzbach
Guatemala 2009 via Jeroen Sangers
Greece 2009 by Gerasimos Tsiamalos
Hong Kong 2009 by Catus Lee
Indonesia 2009 by Eka
Italy 2009 by Luca Magnani
Italy 2009 by Strategie Vincenti
Japan 2009 by Yoshiomi KURISU
Libya 2009 by Dino
Malaysia 2009 by Fred
Mexico 2009 via Jeroen Sangers
Netherlands 2009 by Pieter
New Zealand 2009 by Jon Pawley
Peru 2009 via Jeroen Sangers
Phillipines 2009 by Arvin Pedregosa
Poland 2009 by Mizo
Poland 2009 by Jaason
Portugal 2009 by Miguel Alho
Romania 2009 by Andrei Neculau
Russia 2009 by Ivan Bulychev
Serbia 2009 by Goran Anicic
Singapore 2009 by John Spencer Tan
Slovakia 2009 by Uzivatel
South Africa 2009 by Jason Bagley
South Africa 2009 by Peter
Spain 2009 by Jeroen Sangers
Sweden 2009 by David Fredin
Taiwan 2009 by yuanlin
United Kingdom 2009 by gregnbaker.com (box-net download, unchecked)
Uruguay 2009 via Jeroen Sangers
Venezula 2009 via Jeroen Sangers
OTHER VERSIONS
OTHER TOOLS
You can find more printable productivity tools on The Printable CEO™ Series page.
