Summary

The author describes a personal system for productivity using "Daily and Weekly Dockets" tailored for her right-brained tendencies and busy life, which includes caring for family members with dementia, managing a writing career, and restoring a Victorian mansion.

Abstract

The author, a severely right-brained individual with a multitude of responsibilities, shares her effective system for staying organized and productive. She admits to being easily distracted and having poor follow-through, which necessitates a robust organizational method. Her system involves using daily and weekly dockets, inspired by her experience as a paralegal, to keep track of tasks and goals. The daily docket includes sections for focus, priorities, writing plans, and a checklist for daily habits, while the weekly docket outlines steps for her Big 6 Goals and includes a meal planner and week-at-a-glance calendar. The author emphasizes the importance of writing tasks down multiple times for better retention and time management, despite the repetition. She has found this method to be more effective than traditional planners and digital tools, which she tends to neglect.

Opinions

The author believes that her system of daily and weekly dockets is more effective for her than using a planner or digital tools.
She acknowledges her own tendency to be distracted by new things and to have poor follow-through, which her docket system helps to mitigate.
The author values the act of physically writing tasks and goals, as it helps cement them in her memory.
She finds that the repetition of writing tasks down three times (in her planner, on the Weekly Docket, and on the Daily Docket) is a worthwhile trade-off for the efficiency and peace of mind it brings.
The author suggests that her docket system is particularly useful for writers, as it is designed with their needs in mind.
She plans to share dated and undated versions of her dockets with her Patreon supporters, indicating her belief in the broader applicability of her system.

A Simple System for Keeping Your Right Brain in Line

Daily and weekly dockets work better for me than a planner.

I‘m not sure if it’s just the season of life I’m in right now — where my husband and I find ourselves both parenting a teenager (our older two kids are adults) and caring for Kevin’s parents who both have dementia.

Or maybe I’m just pathological about taking on things — between Ninja Writers, writing here on Medium, writing novels, moving across country to a sort of broken down Victorian mansion, and on and on.

Whatever it is, I have a lot on my plate. And I am also severely right-brained. What that means to me is this: I’m prone to being distracted by shiny new things, I have fantastic starts and sucky follow-through, and I say ‘yes’ without really thinking through what that means.

In short, I’m seriously disorganized and I have to have systems if I ever hope to get anything done.

As a result, I am fairly obsessed with figuring out some systems that will help me get all my stuff done. Really help me. Not just look pretty.

I’ve learned a few things thanks to that obsession:

I’m great at filling out planners — in the beginning.
I won’t actually open a planner during the day to refer to it.
Eventually, I won’t even fill it out at all.
I have zero time for an artistic planner, no matter how much my maker’s heart yearns to BuJo.
I need to see, in my face, what I have on my list to do everyday. In. My. Face.

I’ve actually come up with a system that helped me get my edits AND my MFA packets all in on time during the two years I was in graduate school. Go me!

This system works — when I use it. After our cross-country move in November, I stopped using it. I don’t even really know why. It just fell through the cracks. And I’m feeling it now. So I’m getting back on the horse, and I thought I’d share it with you as well.

The Dockets

I was a paralegal for a long time. To me, a docket is a list of all the things that have to be addressed TODAY. I actually use two dockets. One for today and one for this week.

The Daily Docket

The Daily Docket is a single page, printed just in two columns on one side. It gives me an at-a-glance overview of my entire day all at once.

Left Side:

The date.

Today’s Focus is a box that lets me choose ONE non-negotiable for the day. The one thing I’ll do, even if the whole day derails. (It happens.) If I have some kind of deadline, that goes in the focus box.

Today’s Priorities is a space to prioritize three goals for the day.

Today’s Scene is a space to write down what I plan to write for the day.

Finally I have a little checklist that I lightly revised from James Altucher’s (amazing) book Choose Yourself. It’s just a list of 8 things that make my life run better if I manage to do them. Everything from sleeping enough to managing anxiety.

Right Side:

The right side is almost entirely taken up with a TaDa List. A TaDa List is a magical thing. Just list everything you need to do today. I have a list of a few things that I try to do everyday that I just pre-print on my docket. Then there’s room for more. I look at my planner the night before and just transfer any appointments, practices, etc. over. I also transfer anything that I didn’t get finished the day before. Trust me, if you make yourself write ‘put away the laundry’ enough days in the row you’ll do it just to stop having to write it.

And at the very bottom, a space to write down what’s for dinner that night.

The Weekly Docket

The weekly docket is laid out the same as the daily: a single side of one piece of paper, divided into two columns.

Left Side:

The date.

A section to write the next steps for my Big 6 Goals for 2018. I don’t write the goals — just the steps I want to finish in the upcoming week.

A checklist for the WRITER framework. I try to Write for 10 minutes, Read for 10 minutes, Ideate (write down 10 ideas, another James Altucher idea. Really, read Choose Yourself), Talk to someone I don’t live with, Exercise for 10 minutes, and Review my day before I go to bed. There’s space for marking off when I’ve done each thing, each day.

How to be a Good Writer with a Good Life

The WRITER Framework

medium.com

And lastly, a space to write down a meal plan for the whole week.

Right Side:

The right side of the page is a week-at-a-glance calendar. I don’t write EVERYTHING on the docket. Usually just things that I know are on the schedule — like sports practices and games, school breaks, doctor’s appointments, etc. I’m mostly looking at the shape of my week here. On Sunday nights I look at my planner and transfer the pertinent stuff over.

There you have it.

I keep my Weekly Dockets on a clipboard hanging on the wall near where I work. And the daily dockets on padfolio that has a clipboard on the front. (I’m able to keep a whole month’s worth clipped to the front of the padfolio with no problem.) Everyday I just take off the current day’s docket and fill out the next day’s.

I make a Pocket Mod booklet out of each day’s docket when I’m done with it and use it the next day to take down notes or doodle on whatever. Just make sure to fold it so that the printing is on the inside.

You might be asking yourself how writing down my stuff three times (in my planner, on the Weekly Docket, and on the Daily Docket) is an efficient use of my time. The truth is that I WISH I could use a planner efficiently. That I could write everything down and actually look at my planner throughout the day. Or that I could use a digital planner. (For me, digital is even worse. Out of sight is definitely out of mind. Ask my kids some time how I do with text messages.)

But I can’t.

And, hand writing things cements them in my brain. Even though it’s a little bit of repetition of work, it saves me a lot of time because I’m NEVER scrambling. And I actually get things done. It’s kind of like a budget — for my time.

Want your own Dockets?

I’m super excited to let you know that I’ll be offering dated Daily and Weekly Docket printables to Ninja Writer Patreon Patrons at the $10 and above level every month. (Your weekly docket will have a completely blank TaDa list, so you can totally customize it to your schedule.)

This a organizational tool especially designed for writers. I hope you love it as much as I do.

If you’d like an undated version of the daily docket, click here.