Ciak v Moleskin
Tempted by a fruit of another?
I have been a Moleskin fan for years. But like any good addict I can always be tempted by something new and shiny. I acquired two pocket size Ciaks - one with multi cooured paper ideal for GTD. The other a slimmer pocket version with a pen and Moleskin style pocket.
Unlike the Moleskin the Ciaks have a stiff bonded leather cover, this looks quite stylish at first but in use it doesn't lossen up well which means the notebooks don't lay flat - a major drawback from my perspective.
I'm no expert but the paper doesn't seem to be as good the Moleskin seems to write better. The organisational ability of the multi coloured paper is good i set up all the necessary categories of In-notes, actions, agendas, waiting for, project lists etc . At one level this is handy and less work than the tab-hacks but personally less effective than lists on Index cards.
The slim pocket book is good to carry round being fewer pages and more flexi than a pocket Moleskin . But overall quality the Moleskin is better the pocket is better - the Ciak pocket is outward facing which is not as good . The ribbon on the Ciak is much longer and frayed very quickly and doesn't look good.
Overall I think I will stick with Moleskin the overall quality and range is better. But the big plus is the lay flat ability of the Moleskin.
Next stop the new city notebook range - I will get a London one and set up as a reference book, roll on early October!!
At zero
A milestone was achieved this week the inbox went to zero and so far is remaining under control. My blinding flash of the obvious was that despite using GTD I was still using my inbox to remind me to do something rather than deciding and processing appropriately. A simple change has worked wonders, it sort of proved what a serial procrastinator I was and how easily I fooled myself I was on top of things.
Anyone else had any recent obvious moments?
Index cards to the rescue...
I joined GTD Connect last week, OK it is a bit pricey but the cancel whenever option allows me to decide if the value is no longer there. But to date I think it is very good, great content, very responsive support so pretty good so far.
The value for me is hearing via audio and video the messages in the book being reinforced - I think I'm getting it at last!!
I finally cracked the behaviour of dealing with things once ie capture once and process once (according to context). I found keeping everything lo-tech has helped, hence index cards to the rescue for lists and lists.
I found simple templates courtesy of Bare Bones HPDA and found plastic envelopes for each context - this allows easy access for viewing and portability.
Cards are colour coded red for next actions, green for projects, blue for agendas , yellow for waiting and white for notes or someday projects.
The accessibility, portability and flexibility of paper based approach has made this more second nature to me than the pda and computer methods.
Analog does it..for me
It has been a while but finally feel I have made progress. Like many people I feel tied to a comuter, PDA, Blackberry or mobile phone. All this may well be self inflicted but it definitely affects how effective I am, my concentration levels and probably more importantly my interactions are less effective. Putting a large part of my work onto paper has given me 'permission' to break the tie and be more fluid.
The tools are:
moleskin 18 month planner
moleskin notebook (large plain or grid)
a leather book cover
a selection of page markers
a selection of index cards
(photos to follow)
The planner holds all day and time specific stuff. The right hand page I use for actions that need to be done that week (any none time specific actions are captured on index cards by context or by project ). Also on the right hand page I keep a running log of cross references to notes in the big book ( the larger moleskin is page numbered and dated).
In the larger moleskin all meetings, brain dumps , phone calls etc are captured. I tried to use the tab hacks but found it slowed me down.
I use a series of page markers to mark specific pages
red for unprocessed actions (once processed flag removed)
yellow for a waiting for un processed
green for project info to be processed
grey for info on planned meetings (where I might mind map a meeting in advance)
blue for work in progress
The markers help pick up key information for the weekly (cough ok irregular weekly) review.
So far this works.....
Soon to return
Work pressures have got the better of me again-I know excuses excuses-but it is true. Choices had to be made - blog or have that difficult conversation or finish reading that report. I admit to struggling with a mass of seemingly important and urgent priorities which leaves me with less a feeling of success than managing degrees of failure. But it is now a new year - although it has already started pretty manically.
I have learnt the dowside if inflexible systems and have really valued the return to a paper based system . At least nothing gets missed and paper to me allows more flexibility in capture and processing so the moleskins have returned and have been hacked and the journey continues - even though the blog slowed
