For the most recent version of this form, go to the Productivity Tools page

As I wrote earlier, I’m going to be using the Task Progress Tracker to provide continuity for the various project folders I have going. As I was looking at my old version of the form, there were a few improvements I wanted to make:

• I recalled an email request lay May about creating a Power User Version, without the description at the top, more lines, and an area for an outcome near the end. Sounded like a good idea.
• There was a person (unfortunately, I can’t find the reference) who mentioned he had used the TPT as a kind of project summary sheet for new projects at his company. A more streamlined sheet, I thought, might help him and others out.

• The recent comments about problems with laser printers has been on my mind, so I figured I would make my new version laser printer friendly.

• There were unused areas of the form that I didn’t use, nor have I heard of anyone really using them, so I wanted to strip them out for a cleaner look.

• The visual vocabulary for the various Printable CEO forms has been refined somewhat since the very first forms, so why not clean up the overall look?

<

p>So I spent about 90 minutes cleaning up this form, and it’s now available for download. If you’re not familiar with the TPT, you might want to read more about the philosophy behind the design. The basic idea is that this is a form of To Do list that takes time-spent into account, allowing you to have a sense of progress even when you can’t check off that DONE box right away.

Notes: Designing for Laser Printers

For those of you using laser printers, I’d like to know if this form appears usable to you. In general I made all the text use 100% black, and used finer line weights instead of tone to control visual contrast.

Where I’m using tone is in the halftoned 25% gray backgrounds. This shouldn’t bug too many people, though on lower-resolution laser printers some of the label text may look a little ragged.

I may not have chosen exactly the right value for a decent halftone—the ideal value depends on the halftoning algorithm and the default line screen that your laser printer uses—so short of spitting out a giant 1-bit TIFF file this will probably have to do.

One nice thing about laser printers is that you can generally print black & white detail much smaller and still retain sharpness. Yay!

Download the Power User Edition of the Task Progress Tracker

» Download Task Progress Tracker TPT02 Power User Edition » PCEO-TPT02-PowerUserBW.pdf

Feedback is, as always, most welcome! Enjoy!

I’m starting a lot of projects this week, and my office is short by about 50 square feet of working surface area to manage them all. I’m feeling a little bit panicky.

I find that if I write out what I’m going to do, then the panic goes away. Usually I do this for other people, but today I need to lean on myself to get my head clear. Let’s see what comes out.

(more…)

The Productivity Show, a podcast out of Australia that, mentions The Emergent Task Timer about 25 minutes in. Many, many other interesting tools mentioned, in a very energetic format. It’s really great to hear what other people are doing with all these productivity tools in the context of improving their lives and their companies; Jodie Miners impressed me with the bubbly energy with which she rattled off an incredible unbroken string of acronyms that would have stunned an average person at 10 paces. I think I will have to find a bunch of productivity / paper geeks in the greater Boston area. That would be AWESOME!

Thanks for the mention, guys, and for the insight into what I should be doing to make the ETT and Printable CEO a little easier to explain (I really need to write that press kit).