Looking for a paper calendar that handles next actions well

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frankjacob1

0
I am a pastor of a church and I am trying to implement GTD. I have way more next actions than I do appointments. I usually have 1 or 2 appointments a day. Next actions dominate my life. I frequently have several "projects" going at once. My struggle is most calendars are dominated by printed hourly blocks of time.

I do not like to schedule a next action for a time. Rather I will prioritize the next actions for the day and start with the most important first. What I find is I am doing a weekly review everyday to review my projects to see what is important.

My struggle comes in calendarizing the next actions. I use Google calendar because it syncs with my smart phone. Doing next actions in Google is a waste. I was using RTMilk but found my congregation thought having my computer open at every meeting was annoying. It was also annoying to me too. I have great tech skills but paper less intrusive and certainly easier.

Does anyone have any recommendation for a paper based calendar that does not
take up tons of space with a printed time block and more suitable to next actions?

Thanks

Frank

Illinois
 
Calendarizing Next Actions

I'm wondering why you aren't doing a weekly review weekly, reviewing your projects, and putting next actions on next action (e.g. "context") lists? It might help, as you say you don't really want to schedule next actions, but don't want to be reviewing your projects for next actions on a daily basis... To me, that means you have discretionary time, and all you'd need to do would be review your next action lists.

Perhaps I am missing something, so please forgive me if I am!
 
I agree with Carolyn. You can take a blank piece of paper (or one for each context) and list all your "next actions" on it. Then each day you only have to look at that list --
you don't have to do the whole weekly review. You can attach the page(s) to your
paper calendar. "Next actions" are usually not associated with a specific day, so
they don't have to be on a calendar.
 
frankjacob1;101217 said:
I am a pastor of a church and I am trying to implement GTD. I have way more next actions than I do appointments. I usually have 1 or 2 appointments a day. Next actions dominate my life. I frequently have several "projects" going at once. My struggle is most calendars are dominated by printed hourly blocks of time.

I do not like to schedule a next action for a time. Rather I will prioritize the next actions for the day and start with the most important first. What I find is I am doing a weekly review everyday to review my projects to see what is important.

My struggle comes in calendarizing the next actions. I use Google calendar because it syncs with my smart phone. Doing next actions in Google is a waste. I was using RTMilk but found my congregation thought having my computer open at every meeting was annoying. It was also annoying to me too. I have great tech skills but paper less intrusive and certainly easier.

Does anyone have any recommendation for a paper based calendar that does not
take up tons of space with a printed time block and more suitable to next actions?

Thanks

Frank

Illinois
Click to expand...

I know this is a bit of an older thread, but I am new here and just saw it.

Here is what I see, the problem is you are not trusting the lists that you currently have. That is why you have to keep reviewing them over and over again because in the back of your mind you are afraid you might miss something.

And what jumps out at me, is you are afraid that you might miss something that has to be done today. Not tomorrow or the day after, but today.

if you have to talk to maria about who is she putting in charge of rounding up some volunteers for the charity drive and that has to be done today, because she is going to be gone for the next two weeks, and that action is blended in with all your other next actions then of course you will have to keep reevaluating what needs to be done today versus what can I do as soon as I can get to it.

In order to relieve this kind of stress you need to remember and use the "day specific" section of the calendars.

And once you know what needs to be done today "day specific" you can work around that with your other next actions.

If you continue to blend these two categories "next actions" and "day specific" actions then it won't matter if you use a paper based calendar or digital you will still have to reevaluate your lists each day, looking to see what you need to do today versus what only needs to be done as soon as you can get to it.
 
frankjacob1;101217 said:
but found my congregation thought having my computer open at every meeting was annoying. It was also annoying to me too. I have great tech skills but paper less intrusive and certainly easier.
Click to expand...

This is an odd (and expensive) suggestion, but is there any chance that a tablet computer (an iPad would be my choice, but there are others) would be perceived as less intrusive? A laptop pretty much requires a table, it occupies a lot of table space, you might have to plug in power, it's a sort of physical block between you and others at the table, people have to get up to see what you're looking at. A tablet computer can be set down, carried as you go to look at something, used in an armchair, held out or handed to others to look at - while it's obviously not paper, I'd say that it functions, socially, as paper.
 
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