I have gone through various tools in the context of a developer, designer, and business person. Right now, I’m comfortable with a pattern and has been OK with the outcome. It is a combination of pen/paper, and digital tools. And yes, I have used Things, Clear, ToDoist, Remember the Milk, that weekly timeline-ish thing, and what not.
Here is my personal way of doing it.
I use the OS built-in Calendar at the base (macOS Calendar in my case). We have the usual family calendar (shared with my wife), then the kids calendar for schools, and stuffs, and eventually my personal and work calendar.
I try to be flexible and move the to-do items in the calendar around or schedule it for specific dates across the months, or the year.
## Morning
I earmarked my own personal time of about 3 hours (6-9AM-ish) for breakfast (for the family + school preparations), exercise, reading/writing, just thinking or doing nothing or play/cycle with the kids.
I also list all the to-do items in 15-min slots in the top of the calendar timeline till about 10AM. That way, it prevents people from booking my slots, while it serves as a to-do with no specific schedule. These days, with people across timezones, this helps to block a Busy/Unavailable time.
Change macOS Calendar default duration to 15-min
`defaults write com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event' 15`
## Work
This is where work related and time-specific slots are scheduled, including meeting, etc.
I also tend to write-out one or two big things for the day/week in a Yellow Sticky and stick it right in the middle of the monitor covering the Apple Logo in my iMac (my current workstation). So, I see it every time without having to bring up calendar. :-)
If I have a specific step-by-step task to complete (usually broken down), I use a piece of paper lying around, or the fancy Japanese paper and then make a checklist manifesto out of it.
## Evenings
I try to leave it as blank as possible but meetings with huge timezone differences tends to pop-up and I’m OK with it.
I know this is may not work for most others. I’m always lazily looking for ways to learn, simplify, minify, and making it better. And yes, I also maintain a plain text file that is in the lines of "T0-D0 or NOT or Maybe".
Here is my personal way of doing it.
I use the OS built-in Calendar at the base (macOS Calendar in my case). We have the usual family calendar (shared with my wife), then the kids calendar for schools, and stuffs, and eventually my personal and work calendar.
I try to be flexible and move the to-do items in the calendar around or schedule it for specific dates across the months, or the year.
## Morning
I earmarked my own personal time of about 3 hours (6-9AM-ish) for breakfast (for the family + school preparations), exercise, reading/writing, just thinking or doing nothing or play/cycle with the kids.
I also list all the to-do items in 15-min slots in the top of the calendar timeline till about 10AM. That way, it prevents people from booking my slots, while it serves as a to-do with no specific schedule. These days, with people across timezones, this helps to block a Busy/Unavailable time.
Change macOS Calendar default duration to 15-min
`defaults write com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event' 15`
## Work
This is where work related and time-specific slots are scheduled, including meeting, etc.
I also tend to write-out one or two big things for the day/week in a Yellow Sticky and stick it right in the middle of the monitor covering the Apple Logo in my iMac (my current workstation). So, I see it every time without having to bring up calendar. :-)
If I have a specific step-by-step task to complete (usually broken down), I use a piece of paper lying around, or the fancy Japanese paper and then make a checklist manifesto out of it.
## Evenings
I try to leave it as blank as possible but meetings with huge timezone differences tends to pop-up and I’m OK with it.
I know this is may not work for most others. I’m always lazily looking for ways to learn, simplify, minify, and making it better. And yes, I also maintain a plain text file that is in the lines of "T0-D0 or NOT or Maybe".