Activity tracking and note taking improve when they are separated into different activities and methods.

In June of 2015 I was overseas looking for 3″ x 5″ notecards – at the time they were the basis for my task tracking method.  No luck.  None were found.

Finding the store shelves empty of the preferred method – I grabbed a classic reporter’s notebook which was spiral bound at the top.  The methods I’d been using transferred easily to a single page in the notebook:

• Keep only a single day’s to do list
  • This forces prioritization by limiting the number of items (18 in my current notebook)
• Indent each item, then make;
  • Hashmarks to indicate progress towards completion
  • X = work is done
  • M = Moved to a future day
  • D = Duplicate item (unfortunately pretty common)
• Use the back of the list to track a ‘Has Done’ list – this confirms what did get done that was off the list
• Throw out the list at the end of the day
• All day long there is a centralized list to:
  • Track must-do items
  • Add newly identified items
  • There is no need to dig through meeting notes to find deliverables