My diary management

Hi! How's your new year going?

Mine is going well thank you! Especially now I am over the cold that slowed me down over my Christmas and New Year holiday. Hurrah!

So, last week I talked about how I have moved my to-do list over to workflowy (one week in and it's working out well so far!).

Today, I want to mention the progression of my diary management over the last couple of years and how I am working on perfecting that. I am also tracking where I spend my time, and I'll blog about that next. I am aiming for a super efficient 2012, and there's always room for improvement!

Up until Feb 2011 I kept track of my commitments with a traditional week-to-view diary. I had been using that type of diary for a good few years (always a silver WHSmith diary. It became a tradition every December to buy one). As the year went by the pages would become more dog eared, and I liked that. This year I haven't bought one, but I kind of feel I should just because I am so used to see it sitting in it's place on my desk!

However, as my work, commitments and areas of interest progressed I knew I needed to take it to the next level, which for me was Google Calendar.

This felt so clean! And I could account for time hour by hour. And all those hours to fill! Whooohooo!

I devised a multi coloured calendar. Each colour representing a different task; social, work, running, time off, blogging etc.

And this is what the result was. Ta da!! So many colours, so pretty! ;)

BUT after a couple of months of this type of diary management I could see it's flaws. 

Yes, I could account for every hour, but as you can see, some days involved jumping from task to task. And more often than not, the tasks took longer than the time I had allocated for it. And then I would have to jiggle things about and it became a bit much really. I also hadn't given myself any room for maneuver. 

So, I had a think and devised a new type of schedule which allowed longer for each task so I wasn't jumping about so much, plus I gave myself more room and flexibility by introducing Leeway Days! 

Leeways days are time I reserved in my diary and keep empty as I've learnt that something unexpected will come up each week, it could be an event, work, or perhaps I need more time to work on something. Or just have some time off! It's handy to have some time in reserve if something needs to be juggled about or re-scheduled. 

These leeway days have been a really beneficial addition. I highly recommend them. 

These first few months of this year are looking to be busy ones already, and I'm looking forward to them and seeing what 2012 brings. 

And if you are looking for some events to fill up your diary with, you won't go wrong with these social media get togethers in Birmingham:

Birmingham Girl Geeks

Website

Twitter

Saturday 21st January

2.30-5.30pm

at Urban Coffee, Church Street, Bham

A meet up for geeky girls and women in Birmingham. And men can come too! Just grab a girl and put your name down. You can come there with me if you want!

I'll be doing a short talk there about social media and the 4am Project. 

Wordpress Birmingham Meet Ups

Website

Twitter

Wednesday 11th Jan (and monthly thereafter)

6.30-11pm

at The Old Joint Stock, 4 Temple Row, Birmingham

WordPress Birmingham (UK) is a monthly meetup group based in Birmingham, UK (unsurprisingly), aimed at bringing together WordPress designers, developers and site owners.

And not forgetting of course......!

Birmingham Social Media Cafe

Website

Twitter

Friday 27th Jan (and every last Friday of the year)

10am-midday

at Birmingham Town Hall, Victoria Square, Birmingham

The Birmingham Social Media Cafe is a place for people interested in social media to gather, get acquainted, chat, plot, scheme and share!

There we go!

How do you manage your diary? Any tips to share? :)

Say hello on twitter: @karenstrunks

Tackling to-do's with Workflowy

In an on-going endeavour to manage and fine tune my to-do list I've made a few changes in the last year or so.

This is how I used to keep track of my to-do's. Each had it's own little post it note. Periodically I would go through it and re-arrange into order of importance and put priorities at the top.

It worked. I got things done. I just had to manage/juggle 100's of bits of paper and they would often end up scattered over my desk and made it look untidy. An untidy desk, and untidy mind!

Then I switched over my diary management to Google Calender (more on G Cal coming up) and I used the Tasks function there to keep track of things. Again, it worked, but I found it a bit clunky and a bit of a nuisance to prioritise my to-do's. It could be done, but there's just too many clicks and dragging for my liking. There is also the option to add further notes to tasks, which is useful, but again, I found it didn't work as smoothly as I would have liked.

And now....

I have discovered Workflowy! A new way to organise you brain.

I really like it. I've transferred my to-do's over there now. I love it's simplicity and how much easier it is to add notes to specific tasks, and break big tasks into smaller ones. You can also add tags and use them to search for specific tasks too.

Take a look at Workflowy's intro video.

Workflowy doesn't have an app yet, but it looks like they are working on it, and in the meantime you can access it through your browser.

Workflowy has been going for just over a year and has 100,000 registered users with 30,000 of them being active.

My only concern was 'What if Workflowy goes down or shuts up shop?". Luckily there's an Export option, so you can keep a back up of your latest lists. I'll probably do a save once a week.

Workflowy also have a blog and you can find them on twitter too.

So, happy to-do listing this year!

If you give Workflowy a go, let me know what you think! :)

Say hi on twitter: @karenstrunks 

I'm re-charging my glitter

Advice from my best friend. Good advice.

I felt SO tired yesterday. I think it's psychological. A coming-to-the-end-of-a-busy-year thing. When I look back on this year I'm fairly impressed with the momentum I've built up and all the goals, big and small, that I've achieved. I wonder how I've done it sometimes.

But yesterday I had a big dip in the energy that carries me forward. I just felt plain tired, but frustrated at that tiredness at the same time. I missed my sparkle! I had a bit of a moan about it by text with my best friend which led to a phone call in which I was reminded that it's OK to take it easy and chill out and that I can't do everything. I can't do everything?! How annoying ;)

So, this is what I am going to do - re-charge my glitter. As I mentioned in my last post, I've got a full two weeks coming up soon where I have absolutely nothing planned and I'm going to use that time to invest in a bit of rest and relaxation without putting pressure on myself with a list of to-do's and deadlines. Though I know I'll do some tinkering and I will definitely be putting plans into place for 2012. There's no way I'm wandering haphazardly into a new year without knowing what I want to get out of it!

I'll take a bit of time to look at my goals that I set for this year and see what's worked and which I've achieved.

I LOVE New Year! More so than Christmas. I love the clean page feel of it. I love relishing the moment the old year passes to the new year. It's such an exciting time!

In the meantime, it's the weekend and I'm going to start on that glitter re-charging :)

Say hello on twitter! @karenstrunks