Last time I wrote on this subject, I promised more ruminations on paper and Palm. Somewhere in amongst this will be Newton too.

After working abroad, I returned to the UK full of european sophistication. Well, okay, perhaps not, but I certainly felt empowered to do my own thing. I previously wrote about my angst at using formal documentation methods (log books, for example). But now, 8 years on I felt completely justified to go my own way and document my working life the way I wanted to. So I turned back to Filofax. I didn’t keep using the Psion 5, because at this time in my career, I simply had too much to do and too many responsibilities as to be able to stick them down onto the Psion and do work at the same time. Plus, I was concerned at losing all the information in the Psion.

The Filofax served me well for almost two years. I’d reached an organisational tranquility, where I knew where everything was and what my teams of 40 or so people were doing (or at least should have been doing ) But, I still spent some time drawing up my own forms and having problems with deciding what to archive away. Then I remembered these A5 based systems. When I first discovered these being used by my colleagues I dug around on the internet to discover that they could be purchased but you had to go on a course first. Slightly limiting. So I checked again and this time found that you could buy them without going on a course (which let’s face it is a much better business model!)

Time/system

I bought my Time/system round about the start of 2000, just before I moved up to Inverness. Now, the thing that struck me about this was there was a complete integrated strategy about managing your time, your work and your life. More importantly for me, a way of being more effective and saving time. I did believe the hype because I recognised the issues that it was supposed to address.

I cannot say why it worked for me, but the phrase that Time/system uses which dominated my early experiences was “if you think it, ink it”. I could track progress on a number of sub-projects and tasks, decide what to do in the next days, months and quarters, and keep tabs on delegated activities, estimates etc. Quite an achievement for what is essentially a bunch of paper and some dividers. But, it’s the philosophy that counts. There was also a real bond I found with my Time/system, which was missing from all of the other organisational tools and devices I’d tried. Even the Newtons!

But my time with Time/system eventually came to an end. Why? Well, when I started Junctionbox Media full time, I didn’t have much to do. Work wasn’t coming in and so my Time/system binder was looking very blank day by day – and that was a really depressing thing to see. So I put it to one side and waited.

Tablet PC

By the time work did start coming in so that I needed to manage my time properly, I gave Tablet PCs a go, with FranklinCovey’s TabletPlanner. Suffice to say it did work, but there was still something missing. Not being able to easily search for stuff, file it, extract it or print it was a problem. So after about 8 months I gave up on this – sold my Tablet PC and went back to Newtons.

Newtons again

I wasn’t having much luck now. I grabbed a second hand Newton 2100 off Ebay and swooned when it arrived at my door around the end of 2003. It filled me with great pleasure as I remembered and discovered all the little things that make the Newton great. Unfortunately, I discovered shortly afterwards that the two pieces of software I was using to synchronise with my Mac were to be discontinued. Very unfortunate given the software I was using didn’t currently synchronise all that needed synchronising. So I had to rethink my organisational strategy.

Back to Palm

Palm’s on the other hand did have synchronisation. I use Entourage on my Mac and it’s rather good at what it does. I have a calendar, notes, tasks and projects. Albeit, projects don’t have any concept of timelines or dependencies – it’s really just another dimension of categorisation. I bought a Palm T3 and my life felt so much better. Unlike some people who rely on their PDAs entirely, I use Entourage when I’m at the desk and the T3 when I’m elsewhere. However, about this time I ended up with an awful lot of work which needed managing. I tried To Dos, but that didn’t help me plan, so I ended up going back to listing things on paper. Why? Because I could annotate, reorganise and prioritise visually. Plus it gave me a sense of satisfaction crossing things off and not watching them disappear. An IT project manager once remarked “I like being able to see how much I’ve accomplished. Having the item just disappear on a screen tends to have this numbing effect.”. The other huge benefit is that there is a ready built archive of information. Where does your life history go when you rely on electronic devices?

Where PDAs (and therefore by my choice Palm or Newtons) have the upper hand over paper are in repeating activities or events and in providing reminders. If one relies on a paper based system (e.g. Time/system) there’s also the demoralising issue of manually ‘rolling-over’ tasks not completed to the following day. However, I found out recently that the reason I found such actions demoralising was I because I was misusing the purpose of daily tasks.

Where now?

A difficult choice. At the moment my main work is managed using an issue tracking system called Mantis. Primarily because the majority of my work is development and bug fixing. For new projects I use Entourage for milestones and paper for tracking what needs doing. With the exception of using Entourage for a subset of my organisational requirements I appear to have gone back to paper. That is, Entourage for periodic tasks or long term planning, and paper for everything else. I also have this deep seated passion for paper which is rooted in my childhood – my mother was a company secretary who used to horde the stuff (actually she horded everything: sugar, baked beans, old magazines, clothes, tins of fruit etc.) and I had a relative who worked for Croxley Script.

But there’s more to this. On Wednesday I took the decision to resurrect my Time/system and re-read the Time/system manual in light of where I am now with my life. Maybe this was prompted by this post, but I really feel the need to get a grip on things. I also found this article from Time/system which was almost a revelation! Furthermore, one of the things I never really managed to do first time around with it was to handle recurring activities. I wasn’t in the frame of mind to copy information from long-term to weekly to daily, nor did I realise the importance of doing such long term planned mundane activities when they turned up. My Palm (and Entourage) allows me to procrastinate.

Sleep, Snooze or Wake Up. It’s my choice.