Monthly Archives: December 2004

In need of a last-minute gift? Need something to do between turkey dinners? Or how about a massive attempt at self-organisation for the New Year?

Just in time for the holidays, I’m pleased to announce version 1.0 of my Do-It-Yourself Planner system. Almost every template has been revised somewhat from the beta versions, a new graphical look and feel is taking shape, there’s a new “To Buy” form, the instructions are now fleshed out, and there’s plenty of room for customising the package to your individual tastes and circumstances. So much so, that I’m officially removing the “GTD” from its name. While the emphasis remains on David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodologies, I’m trying not to limit users in any way.

Version 1.0 of the DIY Planner package includes a dozen pages of information (in HTML) on how to buy a 5.5″x8.5″ planner, save a bundle on templates/forms, find accessories, set up your organiser GTD-style, and more. The included 28-page PDF file contains a number of double-sided templates including:

• GTD Diagrams (resized and rotated from originals found at www.davidco.com — see the HTML file for exact links)
• Next Actions
• Waiting For
• Agendas
• Project Outline (new layout)
• Objectives
• Contact Log
• Someday/Maybe
• To Do List
• Notes
• Covey Quadrant
• Brainstorm
• Story Idea
• To Buy (new)

Be sure to read the instructions, as they give plenty of information on how to print, cut, punch and use the templates. A minimum of office supplies are needed (primarily a 3-hole punch and a guillotine), but you can purchase them at most department stores for about $25 USD if you don’t already have them.

Both the templates and the instruction file are licensed under Creative Commons, and are therefore free for personal and non-commercial use. The latest version of the package can always be found here.

(For those people who asked about non-letter-size versions of the templates, I’ll see what I can do in the New Year, unless some brave Illustrator-slinging volunteer wants to step forward.)

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, complaints or ideas for new templates, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below or send me an email (my address can be found in this page’s menu at bottom right).

Hope this is a nice little holiday DIY project for some of you organisational junkies. But I take no responsibility if you cut or hole-punch yourself….

Update: For those people mentioning that the templates don’t line up right, just make sure the Page Scaling in your Adobe Acrobat print dialog is not set to “Fit to paper” (which is the default, I think). They should print fine on most printers anyway, and setting any scale besides “None” will result in templates printing several millimeters off.

Update 2: Version 2.0 of the D*I*Y Planner has been released.

You’ve heard the pop-psychology buzzwords and sayings a hundred times. “Enable your inner spirit.” “Be yourself, and your efforts will follow naturally.” “Release the productive you.” “Dream your goals, and they will happen.” “You should live your time, not time your life.” (gag, cough…). I have a feeling that the only people finding these Polonius-style platitudes to be of any great benefit are the writers of self-help books that often wind up on talk shows amidst depressive housewives, teens gone wild and married first-cousins.

In my mind, no one can follow such warm-and-fuzzy objectives and hope to make them work. Motivation is something that works best coming from an baser or more immediate level, despite our hankerings to fuel our souls or enable our inner truth. After all, how does one enable inner truth, sort of spending a few years in a monastery? On the other hand, a dog –a creature of limited intelligence and short attention span– can be made to perform tricks with the promise of a bone or treat. Maybe there’s the hint of inspiration in that.

Everyone may be different, but I think we all have a few things in common. The need to find motivation, especially in the most stressful of times, is paramount to getting things done. In recent years, I’ve been guilty of stretching myself way too thin, and working so many hours that the threat of mental and physical breakdown was a concern (80-100 hours a week not being unusual). Every now and then someone asks me, how do I keep going? What they really mean, is how do I keep motivated? So I decided to jot down a few things that work for me, and share them here. There’s nothing earth-shattering or particularly incisive in this list; in fact, almost everything is common sense. But sometimes the little rational voice inside our heads wanders off for a nap somewhere, and we need to be reminded of certain things. Hence, my “Top Ten.”

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