It’s the time of year when people start thinking about being organized next year, isn’t it? Here’s a roundup of thoughts about productivity. Here’s a recommendation for the productivity geeks out there, a few thoughts on planners, and my spreadsheet for 2018.

Productivity Alchemy

If you do podcasts at all, and you haven’t dipped into Productivity Alchemy, I highly recommend it.

It’s done by Ursula Vernon (writer and artist – her stuff is fabulous!) and her husband Kevin Sonney (programmer, for his day job), and together they have been exploring all sorts of different productivity approaches, tools, and techniques.

The podcasts are a great mix of Ursula and Kevin talking, Ursula as Wombat Test Subject for trying out different techniques (or refusing to try some out, as the case may be), Kevin interviewing other people about what works for them, letters from listeners, and other tidbits of their lives. They are funny, thoughtful, and interesting.

One thing I particularly like is the focus on talking to people who have a wide range of different kinds of needs and goals – the interviews include a lot of people doing arts or freelance work, as well as people with demanding office-based jobs.

They’re also great about including people who’ve got chronic health or mental health issues that make figuring out what to do or getting it done more challenging. So much productivity geekery focuses on doing more, more, more, that it’s really refreshing to have people focusing on ‘how do I get the necessary stuff done so I can do more of the things I really enjoy or want to do or feed my soul.”

Looking for a planner?

Episode 23 of Productivity Alchemy reviewed several planners (links are in their show notes, even if you don’t want to listen to the show.)

The Simple Dollar had a nice roundup of twelve planners with info on what they focus on that included a few I hadn’t seen before. (Also, in rummaging around later links in this post, I found my way to Rachael’s 52 Planners in 52 weeks series, which highlights some other approaches.)

I’ve also been thinking a lot about this post from Shawn LeBlanc, about working on projects in an eight week cycle: six weeks of focused work, a week to wrap up loose ends, and a week off. Specifically (being me, and with my religious life running on a Sabbat cycle), I am thinking about how to apply that.

(In my case, it would not be for work projects, because this model is not a great fit for librarianship or other jobs that are reactive to questions, and also because I don’t have final control of a lot of long-term project choices.)

I’m finding the Momentum Planner’s approach (which I discovered from the Simple Dollar roundup) might be a way to bring this together, and let me do some longer term planning. They have free versions you can check out over here, and you can buy a full year’s version with additional tools for $12.

If you’re the kind of person who really wants to build your own, I came across Agendio. That looks very promising for people like me who need some things in a planner, but not, for example, a major task list or daily schedule. I’m eyeing this as a thing to build, but haven’t tried it yet. Also very customisable in terms of colours and fonts.

Also in the mix for my personal planning is Briana Saussy’s Book of Hours, “a planner for sacred artists” that includes astrological information, brief but illuminating questions for particular events. You can get the questions and brief date info from her 2018 Astro Rx page, but the planner is gorgeous.

I put the questions for last year into Todoist, where all my actual tasks live, and I’m looking forward to taking a little more time this year to sit down and actually write.

My tracking for 2018

I’ve been working on updating my tracking spreadsheet for 2018, and it’s got some new categories, and a new layout.

Summary :

The first sheet pulls in the month’s data from all the other tracking sheets, and gives me a score for the day (out of 7, but it’s technically possible to get a total of 9 points). This helps me see if I have a run of especially good days or especially bad days, so I can make some corrections.

Embodied life:

Physical things, or relating to my physical body.

• Physical activity
• Exercise
• Upkeep (did I take all my meds? Or was it a day I had a health-related appointment?)
• Sleep time
• Sleep quality

Several of these are tracked with apps (Human for activity, Sleep Cycle for sleep) as before. I get a point for at least 30 minutes of activity, and having more than 7 hours and 70% sleep quality. Also a point for doing whatever the necessary upkeep stuff is.

Doing:

• How many words did I write? I get a point for any words, and an additional point for more than 1000, because I would like to do a lot more focused writing this year.
• Tasks (total number of tasks, using my calculations for small/medium/large). I get a point for doing the equivalent of at least 3 large tasks.

Spirit:

• Daily spiritual practice : space for me to track what it was, and I get a point if there’s anything in that space.
• Did I do a creative/artistic/crafting thing today? What was it. (I get a point if there’s anything entered.)
• Tarot card of the day.

Type of day:

This year, I’m adding a set of three columns. One for a rest day (if I decide I need a day to recover.) I get an extra point for any day designated as a rest day. (This is meant to make up for losing points on the ‘tasks accomplished’ because I want to encourage myself to rest when I need it.)

It also has space for unusual days (like travel, or other times my usual routine is knocked around) or if I’m sick. For the latter, I put in what kind of sick it is, so I can see any patterns. I lose a point for sick days, because even if I actually manage to get things done, they are not great days.

Summary

At the bottom, a set of 7 rows counts up the number of days with each set of point totals. Now that I’ve added in two points for things I should be able to do almost any day (the basic daily practice and taking my meds), it’ll be interesting to see how the adjustments go.

Additional sheets

I have summary sheets by week and by month (to help me see larger patterns), a sheet to track what I’ve written, a sheet where I store things I want to write about (since this spreadsheet is often open and handy).

And then the two I mention above, for tracking goals, and looking at them across seasonal blocks of time.