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Mobile analogue or hybrid organisational and time-management system
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Posted by Franz Grieser
Dec 28, 2018 at 01:00 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
>Using Google Calendar, all it would take is swapping those two hourly
>blocks in the weekly template for the week. The nice thing about GCal is
>that it asks you whether you want to make the change only for this event
>only or for all the following recurring events, meaning that you’d end
>up with an accurate record of this week, but next week’s (etc.) ideal
>pattern would remain intact.
>
>Ultimately this is all about using a system (in my case implemented in
>GCal) to manage a limited resource and its specific allocations, to
>protect each allocation, and to impose discipline upon myself by
>enforcing planning, prioritisation, and reminders (which again can be
>set up in GCal).
>
>This ability to display and toggle multiple calendars as overlays on
>each other in GCal is a really powerful tool.
I’ll do that in Outlook.It supports overlaying calendars (right now, I have 2 overlaying calendars, adding a third one for time blocking is a matter of a few mouse clicks); for time blocking I will not use recurring events but copy&paste “event blocks”.
Posted by Amontillado
Dec 29, 2018 at 04:56 AM
What a cool thread!
I don’t think of my organizational stuff as hybrid, but I’m also never without 3x5 cards. It bugs me when I start to deplete a spiral notebook. With index cards, I can always just pack a few along. I am (almost) never without 3x5 cards and a pen. This is inelegant, but part of my usual attire - https://www.rainwriter.com/Rite-in-the-Rain-C991T-Index-Card-Wallet-p/ritr-c991t.htm . Otherwise, a Levenger pocket briefcase is in my shirt pocket - https://www.levenger.com/men-s-22937/pocket-briefcases-22944/luxe-midnight-shirt-pocket-briefcase-16302.aspx .
Although they might get bunged up in Rite in the Rain card wallet, I used to keep my cards in several categories in the pocket briefcase by putting the smallest post-it index tabs on cards that served as dividers. Worked great, but I really only need two categories - blank cards in reserve, and cards I’ve recorded something on. Blank on the top of the stack, used on the bottom. There’s never too many to just flip through.
Come to think of it, I also carry a pen and cards in a Yellow Birch Outfitters PocKit Organizer, which is just the thing for the cargo pockets I’ve found I can’t live without - https://yellowbirchoutfitters.com/collections/get-organized/products/the-pockit-edc-pocket-organizer-classic-carry-coyote-brown
Bic Cristal pens fit the loop in the Rite in the Rain device and in the PocKit organizer better than more elegant writing devices, except they are too long. Fortunately, if you score a groove on a Bic pen, they will snap off at any length you want. Snip off the ink tube appropriately, which works fine even if you cut through the ink. A few seconds with fine grit sandpaper will leave the cut off tube looking like it came that way, then super glue the plug from the snapped-off stub back into place. Now you’ve got a custom length pen. My inspiration for that came from the sage known as Shortypen - http://www.shortypen.com/shorty/shortypen/.
The depleting resource concept is great. I see it could enhance a recent tagging method I’ve started using in OmniFocus. Apologies if I’ve already posted this idea.
Tasks in folders, projects, and subtasks in OmniFocus is a critically nice feature, but adding alternate hierarchies with tags makes the day longer in a good way. It’s like having an extra hour or two.
One tag hierarchy is location so I can see what I’m supposed to do at a site that may be associated with more than one project.
Another tag hierarchy is under a tag I called Agenda, and that is for tasks that have my priority. Currently I’m using subtags for Morning, Lunch, Afternoon, and Evening, but tags for 8-9, 9-10, etc. could work well. I may have to try that. As it is, I’ve been paying more attention to the Agenda tag tree than my calendar. When the alarm goes off in the morning, I grab my iPad and reset the Agenda tree tags.
Deadlines and due dates are poisonous. I respect and implement them as possible, but the key to getting any good out of a hundred to-do items is to control triage. Managers and bosses set due dates, I execute tasks and sort the bodies. In other words, a due date means nothing if it flouts reality. You can’t let anyone else control your task list.
Finally, regarding e-ink, you can find demos of full motion, flicker-free video on e-ink. Most implementations of e-ink are laggy and blinky, but I don’t think that means fast and smooth e-ink displays aren’t possible. Nobody will want 4-bit grayscale video, but for a writing device, it should be practical, or at least possibly practical. I have hope.
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 29, 2018 at 12:39 PM
Amontillado wrote:
>This is inelegant, but part of my
>usual attire -
>https://www.rainwriter.com/Rite-in-the-Rain-C991T-Index-Card-Wallet-p/ritr-c991t.htm
>. Otherwise, a Levenger pocket briefcase is in my shirt pocket -
>https://www.levenger.com/men-s-22937/pocket-briefcases-22944/luxe-midnight-shirt-pocket-briefcase-16302.aspx
Your index card paraphernalia look positively classy compared to the stuff I went for at the cheap end:
A6 Small 6 Part Expanding File Folder Stud Wallet Case Tab Organiser
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00HLM6WGQ/
OSCO Acrylic Index Box
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002P85E92/
Unfortunately the paper index card system didn’t work out for me, and as for my note-taking system, I’m back to looking at setting up a Dokuwiki instead.
Occasionally I have moments of doubt when I think “Should I just go back to an entirely paper-based system for everything?”, as I used to be a lot more productive back when I was reading hard copy books and writing with a real pen into real notebooks.
But then reality steps in, as most of my reading and note-taking is done electronically now, and the search function and cross-platform availability are so very handy, and I don’t want to carry both my laptop (and other electronic gadgets) and my paper-based system around, and the cloud and automatic backups take the pressure off from having to worry about losing stuff.
But the doubt still persists…
Posted by 22111
Dec 29, 2018 at 01:32 PM
“That’s an interesting concept: Starting with “a limited amount of 40 hours per week for work” and distributing them to what needs to be done. Until now, I have gone the opposite way: What needs to be done is done - ending up with 45+ hr work weeks. For the next years I was looking for a system to stop work taking over ever bigger amounts of life time.”
Well, that’s the difference between lavishly-taxpayer-paid, and self-employed professionals (who must really deliver for what they’ll eventually get). I have found a means for not getting overwhelmed by my work: I invariably use week-ends for lose-ends (never understood why Americans split Sat/Sun in their calendars anyway), and if that comes to bother me, well, then it will have obviously been my own fault (or some urgency: well, that’s “fate” or something like that then - of course, with enough financial means = personnel…).
Also, the elephant in the room, for self-management, is the fact that entering data in today’s mobile devices takes 5 times the time (at least) as does taking notes on a sheet of paper (incl. the time to copy to new sheets here and then), and not speaking of the sharply different degree of urgency between the two media.
And since those sheets of paper tend to get ugly quickly, in the ancient times people experimented with cardboard cards, put into scale panels (there was even some mobile version from some German manufacturer (Novo GmbH, Bonn)), but that was up to around 30 years ago, and today, people trying to use cardboard cards invariably get stuck by the fact that it’s a lot of manual fuss to get some general view of things, or even worse, they lack that general overview most of the time.
Those latter problems will be resolved whenever there will be reliable speech input into 1-key (to display the app) plus 1-tap (into the field-in-question) accessible iPad pidgeonhole (like spreadsheets) apps. And there’s of course the remaining problem that Apple doesn’t want to sell another, modern tablet which gets into your interior jacket pocket, as the old “Mini” did - not every man wanting to walk the streets with a bag anymore (what was it called again, that Seventies’ song with all sorts of disguised men: cowboys, some larger-than-life Indian / plumber, etc.); those days are over, and thus, current iPads are suboptimal I dare say.
Posted by washere
Mar 14, 2019 at 07:35 PM
This looks similar to previous similar devices to write on, I’m not recommending nor buying before release and reading user reviews though, still pretty cheap:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mobiscribe-the-e-ink-notepad