All the livelong day

The Daily Checklist is a piece of my new implementation of Getting Things Done from David Allen's book (I wrote about this on January 13) that is working well for me. I got the idea for laminating a daily checklist from Ricky's A Daily Preflight Checklist. Using a dry erase marker to mark the large check box next to each item really helps me see where I am and what else I may want to do today.

Here's the list:

• It’s a new Disney Day! (this is to remind me to turn the page of the daily Disney calendar I was given for Christmas--a task I otherwise remember only once a week or so and forget entirely after about April)


• Make a mind map for the day


• Move Tickler to In Box


• Clear In Box


• Check calendar in Palm


• Clear Mizzou email In Box


• Clear Yahoo! email In Box


• Read My Yahoo!


• Read feeds in Bloglines


• Read Digital Libraries, 9409 discussion board


• Read Research Methods, 9450 discussion board


• Check Agenda/Rick


• Write in my journal


• Look through my Vision notebook (that's what I call the three-ring binder where I have my projects on mind maps and my Next Actions on lists)


• Read a professional journal (although I don't get to this every day, it does help me think to grab something from the To Be Read stack when I may have an opportunity for some reading)


• Blog

Ricky's preflight list is designed to be completed in under half an hour before he starts his working day. Since my working day and preparation and everything else kind of gets blended into one, I went for a much longer checklist. If I rush through, I'd complete it in an hour.

Since I actually find it useful to work out of my In Boxes (a no-no in the GTD method, but it works for my student lifestyle--I'm not sure that will carry over into the work world), I expect to take all morning to complete this list. In fact, some days, it's just fine if it takes me all day and I don't do much of anything else. Following this list, I touch on just about everything that I want to be attending to on a daily basis.

June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007