It’s been a little more than a week since I created my new Daily Plan card. After using it, I’ve made a few usability mods. Now it’s even better!

Usability Mods

Here are the mods I made:

• Instruction Comments: Next to the headers (top priority, reasoning, and other tasks) I’ve added a comment in a light gray that explains what the section is for. This helps me remember why I am filling in the section and also provides some visual continuity horizontally from a design perspective.
• Lines in the Reasoning Boxes: It’s already a pretty small area to work with, so I needed to keep things orderly. Adding lines helps keep things organized and ensures I have 5 lines to write on.

How’s It Going?

Overall, I am very happy with the results. I’ve been using it most days (although I didn’t use them over the weekend).

• Top Priority: Using only three things to focus on works out well, especially since I don’t have a tremendous amount of time to work on things outside of my job. Doing more than three would probably be overwhelming.

  Leo Babauta @ zen habits does a daily list of his three “most important tasks” that he must accomplish. I’m a little more laid back than that with my top 3. Then again, he has 6 kids to care for, so he has a little more responsibility than I do.

• Reasoning: This seems to be most useful when I am doing something because I want to, rather than being forced to do so. Whenever it is something negative, I usually just write “because I have to”. I’m still working on a method to analyze this field for trends, which would show up in a weekly review or a monthly review.

  I am starting to believe it’s more important for me to be aware of why I do things, rather than simply “getting things done” and this is the beginning of me being aware.

• Other Tasks: This field has been used to remind me of random things that I need to remember for the day (like appointments) or other things I should try to do when I get the chance. Standard “todo” stuff.