Like most of you I struggle with the demands of modern living. If one has a family there are unending personal details that must be tracked and managed. Property, automobiles, and other sundry tasks pile up and must be dealt with efficiently or one rides an unceasing tide of avoidable crises. Even when you do it right you get impaled by the system. I have been locked in a multi-year struggle between 3 different state MVDs to get a valid license plate for my car after one of them misread a "V" on my vehicle identification number as a "U" which has snowballed into endless hassles from insurance companies and motor vehicle departments.
Yet I manage to handle the day-to-day trivialities and get things accomplished. Having always used lists to keep track of personal tasks I improved on the basic linear list format with this handy "PDA" that you can carry around in your pocket. PDA stands for Person Digital Analog. It's digital because you maintain it on your computer. It's analog because you print it out when it gets used up or misplaced.
Now I know that many people have devised similar methods. If anyone has an identical version that is coincidence. Use my example and tweak it for your needs.
The salient features of my PDA are 1) it folds into a handy, readable pocket list 2) it provides a means to make small contributions to ongoing self-improvement goals.
The latter is crucial to making progress in those areas you want to grow such as entrepreneurship, physical fitness, personal finance, learning, and travel preparation.
I struggled with those things in my usual linear list format but that gave a poor sense of progress. Some personal efforts are measured in years. To simply write "go to gym" has no feedback, the critical element to any improvement system. Another problem is that you always have things to do and once done they get deleted. You always face that interminable list but probably get no sense of accomplishment.
But if you have an ongoing space for your goals you can add feedback in the form of a simple hash mark next to each self-improvement activity. Now you instead write "pushups" and every day that you knock out a set you just put a hashmark in groups of 5. After one or two weeks when you open your list you see that. If you don't it gently reminds you to make some. In our pushups examples, rather than an oppressive goal to get massive pecs you just prod yourself to do those daily increments that slowly adds up to results.
The ongoing personal tasks are still there but on a different page of your PDA. They will always be there and cannot be escaped. But this format moves them to a priority list that is easier to handle or puts them on a long-term list for continued management.The page printout below shows how I organize the task panes so Personal Development Activities shows up in the inside booklet.
Here are some example formats you can try out :
Download a PDF of the ElmerPDA grid layout
Download the ElmerPDA grid layout in OpenOffice Draw format
After I posted this on reddit got feedback about similar tools
Pocketmod folds into a proper booklet
A way to fold it into an 8-page zine
The ElmerPDA is part of ElmerPad, a free writing environment for Android. ElmerPad also features a virtual keyboard so you can make notes on the go and edit your PDA tasks for later printout. The page printout shown below was composed in ElmerPad, exported as a PDF, and printed out.The ElmerPad minimalist writing tool for Android
Click on image for larger view of screenshots
