As I had mentioned earlier I’m trying to bring a little more organization in to my life and I had been looking at various methods of doing so. One of my biggest hurdles has always been remembering things. I tend to remember I need to do something pretty much minutes before it needed to get done by. Things without a firm date have a tendency of sliding out of focus for me. Obviously this was the first thing I knew I’d need to address if I were to have any hope of bringing a little more order to my life (not too much order mind you, I do enjoy some amount of the chaos).
I had been pondering getting a PDA again, though I never used it as much as I should have – for whatever reason I just felt uncomfortable carrying one around so it was never with me when I needed to keep track of something. A few people have recently suggested I try using a Moleskine notebook. I looked at them a couple of times and they are very nice, so I made a mental note (ie, a bookmark in my browser) so that I might come back to that idea at a later date. Well yesterday I was reading some article on Lifehacker during a particularly slow moment at work and lo and behold they had a link to an article about converting a small Moleskine notebook in to your own custom day planner. This person actually made the decision to go from a PDA to a more simple approach to things and it inspired me. So last night I made a trip to Borders and ended up picking myself up a couple of the notebooks. One of the smaller ones (grid paper because they were out of the lined notebooks in that size) and one of the larger lined ones for jotting done story ideas, random observations, anything at all that might help the good ole’ creativity start flowing again.
I broke out the ruler and a drafting pen last night and started dividing the notebook, one week over two pages. Right now it only goes up until the end of June 2008, but I’ll add several more months to it. Then the last 60ish or so sheets will be used for todo lists, notes, etc. I bought some post-it note reinforced tabs so that I can divide the sections in the back accordingly.
Now I’m armed with my new lo-tech PDA and feeling ready to get something done! Or maybe just refill my coffee cup, it’s still early.
Just a Man with a Mash Paddle 