My current analog calendar is a Hobonichi Cousin A5.

I use it part for planning, and part for setting goals on different levels. Yearly, monthly, weekly and daily. I find it very useful process to do in order to see how busy things will be and setting realistic goals.

Yearly

I use on of the graph pages in the back to define some goals I hope to achieve during the year.

Monthly

On the monthly pages I make a note of the most important dates like birthdates and pay day and things like that. Plus that I use the empty area left of the calendar to define some goals and things I’d like to complete during the month.

Weekly

In the weekly page I do a lot of the same. I define some goals for the week and usually write down a few things I really should get done that week. And in the week spread I write down appointments that involve others or require me to go somewhere plus where I am working from and if I have my daughter.

Makes it really easy to plan and check how much time I have for stuff that show up .

Daily

The daily page is probably the thing that change the most. In some periods it have been where I do my bullet journaling. These days I use them more to define the focus of the day.

So the page laypit it is kind of split into two sections, one taking 1/3 and the other taking 2/3.

The first section I use to outline all the stuff I’m doing that day. It typically looks something like this:

• Get up & dressed
• Walk the dog
• Pack my bag
• Skateboard to work
• Work
  • Work meetings
  • Lunch
• Skateboard home
• Walk the dog
• Eat dinner
• Etc

Then on the big section I first define three areas that I’m going to focus on when I get home from work. After that I use the focus areas to define 2-3 goals/bigger tasks for each of them.

My Hobonichi is currently my analog calendar.

I use it to plan on different levels and set goals on different levels.

I use it to set yearly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals.

Mark important days in the monthly calendar, map out all the things that require me to go somewhere or do something with other people in the weekly calendar and map out my day and main focus areas and most important tasks on the daily pages.

It isn’t something I look at a lot after setting it up. But I feel like doing it makes me more mindful of what it is.

Let’s just get all the digital stuff out of the way since it kind of ties most of the analog stuff together.

Inboxes

I have a bunch of them, but the main one for me is an app called Drafts. I just throw anything into it. And try to process some of it each day, and reach the end of it at least a couple of times a month.

From there it usually is deleted or end up as notes or tasks somewhere.

Calendars

I keep a bunch of digital calendars, most of them are repeating stuff just to get an overview of how things look. And the rest are either manually copied from the work calendars or the same stuff I add to my analog calendar. The main purpose of it is to get an overview of how busy I am and be notified about when meetings happen.

Tasks

I use Things for tasks at the moment. It is just a big database of projects and tasks. A lage portion of it is stuff that are automatically generated at the start of each week and month.

I hide things I’m not currently focusing on.

The purpose of it is to have a place to store all the stuff I currently don’t want to have in my Bullet Journal, and when I run out of stuff in the BuJo I turn to things to populate it.

`` Pocket notebooks was a huge part of my setup until the COVID pandemic started in early 2020, and then they kind of fell out of use for me. And since late 2021 I’ve slowly started to get into using them again.

Their primary focus for me, is the thing I always have with me that I use to do hitlist and capture stuff or to plan things. What I often do is that I bring it with me when I walk the dog and plan the stuff I’m going to do after the walk.

When I’m out I use them to capture stuff, and sometimes I keep lists in there because I don’t want to get dragged into digital tools.

The big difference with all the other notebooks I have and pocket notebooks is that, all the others are things I use every single day, while pocket notebooks are something I use much less in a regular way. I just use them when I need them and forget about them most of the time.

Funny that I planned to start a series on how I do my productivity system two weeks ago, wrote about it and then forgot about it last week.But now it’s actually starting.

I’ve used a variant of this concept without that name for years upon years. Not sure when I started to call it a hitlist, but at some point it just needed a name.

For a long time I used a “Next” collection or project in what ever task management system I was doing at a time. Where the idea is to just have like the next 5-10 items I am going to do. In some periods I’ve done it in separate notebooks, other times as a part of the task management system. Usually only when it’s been on paper, because it doesn’t really work for me in digital. Except for when I’ve done systems that are more based on files and notes like Taskpaper and Agenda and kept separate files for Next.

Anyways. At the moment I use Rhodia dotpads for it, most of the time. And some times I use a pocket notebook for it. As of the time of writing my pocket notebooks of choice is passport sized Travelers notebooks in dot grid.

And the way I use this is that I open the notebook and I have one half for the next things I’m doing and one half for capture. In pocket notebooks I use one page for each and in the dotpad I usually just draw a line in the middle. The ideal for me is when I’m able to limit myself to 5 next items, because it isn’t distracting or discouraging and it is few enough to be able to be relatively flexible.

I was cleaning some stuff in my car the other day, and I found my old Space Pen. Probably been in there for multiple years at this point.

I took it out, cleaned it up, and tested it out. And it is a fun pen. But way too small for my giant hands. Plus I more and more feel like I don’t want to write with these kinds of pen ever. Gel pens are fun because you have great colors and they’re kind of like a non-fountain pen fountain pen.But the rest are so boring.

Sometimes I get the idea: maybe I should get some index cards?

But this whole segment of stationery is really strange. On one side you have all of this super cheap stuff, and on the other you some hilariously overpriced stuff.

In the old days I’d just order some from Nock.co.

These days I just end up not buying anything because it’s either not what I want, super expensive or from somewhere I usually don’t order from.

I recently wrote about how I’m back to bullet journaling, and I thought I’d write about the rest of my task management system.

It always changes to keep things working with my ADHD.

I’m going to break this into different areas, and then try to explain how it is tied together. Almost all of it has both analog and digital parts.

Starting off with calendars and capture next week and take one part of it after each other until I’m done.

As I continue to use the journals I have developed a great appreciation of how flexible the structure is.

When you move beyond defining your theme and start making your daily themes and filling out the journal pages you can kind of do what ever is the right for you.

Like the daily themes can mostly just be used to track habits. There are 15 days and 14 themes per spread. But I have used them in many different ways while using the system since I got the first one in December last year. Sometimes I track two things per row by filling in a half for each, but usually I fill half if I did some but not enough.

And the journal pages are the thing I think has an amazing amount of flexibility. You just have four boxes. Two medium, one large and one small. In the start I used the small ones to review the day first one for personal and the second of work or my daughter. But slowly moved to write a bit good or bad about some of the daily themes or theme goals.

In the large I just write down anything that is on my mind in relation to the theme goals or the daily theme. And the small one I just write down what should be the most important for the following day.

This is what I have found is good for me right now. But there isn’t really a manual or rule book for how to use them. And that is the great thing.

It is really hard to make something that is flexible like this.