Reuseable bags. Great for groceries when you remember. When you forget, you’ve gotta buy another one to leave in your car so you remember next time. Then you gotta clean the car. So you take the bags in. And you forget them…

Went through our collection of bags and took out the ones with holes and other issues, which turned out to be about 14 bags. Got the total number of bags down to a much more manageable and more likely to use number.

Disposition: Trash

Daily Decrease Item Counter: 19

Disposition: Give Away

Daily Decrease Item Counter: 5

This bookshelf has been more or less empty of books for a very long time. The bottom shelf used to have a small foot in the corner which made it stable. The foot broke off so now it has to be upside-down, resting on the top shelf to keep it standing up.

The particle board has started to give in a bit to the many moves this shelf has been through. Now every shelf is wobbly, including the one the whole shelf stands on. Not good for a shelf. In fact, wobbling is the only thing a shelf shouldn’t do short of falling over completely. Off to the dumpster for this one.

Disposition: Trash

Daily Decrease Item Counter: 4

Disposition: Scrap

Daily Decrease Item Counter: 3

This project came from an off campus class at the great facilities of Mahany Welding Supply. They offer great training from a very knowledgeable and animated group. Loved going to that class, getting a brief intro and then straight to the torches. Really hands on welding experience. Here’s a few more detail pictures of this newbie welder’s handiwork.

It’s a solid hunk of steel but a bit wobbly because I welded the legs unevenly. Also has some pointy parts on the legs from the RIT nameplate. I haven’t used this stool much and having a small child around this sharp, wobbly metal piece kind of made this choice easy.

Disposition: Sell for scrap or give away

Daily Decrease Item Counter: 2

Disposition: Recycle

Daily Decrease Item Counter: 1

Source: Lifehack Quotes

I’ve been thinking about this quote recently. Mainly because it’s in my rotation of desktop wallpapers but also because I see so many places it applies. For starters, I’m going to apply it literally. To things. Stuff. Possessions. Or as the members of /r/minimalism call it, clutter. I see this quote not only as a case for minimalism, but also as a method.

As an experiment, I’m going to “hack away at the unessential” on a daily basis. Each day, I’ll post a picture of one or more items I’m either trashing or selling. At the end of the experiment, I’ll hopefully end up with less than I began with but also a much cleaner apartment. As a guideline, I’ll stay away from things that were just going in the trash anyway. But, baby steps. Every little thing counts. As a sort of twist on the usual before and after, I’ll wait to post those kinds of pictures until the experiment is over, just to build up suspense a bit. Let’s see how this turns out.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. First, assign a date to each page of your notebook. None of this saving paper by putting multiple days on one page stuff. One hundred pages equals one hundred days. You don’t know what those one hundred days are going to look like. You could have two or three things to do and have a nearly empty page. Or you might have so many things you have to scribble really tiny in the margins to get all of it written down. In either case, you’ve got a basic limiting factor to help you get started. One page.

All your pages are now dated, good. You started with today right? I would hope so. Turn to that page. We’re going to start our list. First type of task is a simple, one off task. Something you need to do once that day and then it’s over. How about, relacing a shoe? The laces on one of my work boots sorely need to be replaced. So, under the date at the top of the page I would write…

[] Relace shoe

There’s a few things going on here. First, that [] you see is a checkbox, very similar to those seen on the very first to do list example back in Part 1. Second, you see a verb. A type of word which describes an action. From now on, all to do list objects are required to start with a verb.

If I complete this task throughout the day, I simply put an X through the checkbox I created. I have now relaced my shoe so my list should appear as follows.

[X] Relace shoe

Relatively simple stuff, but these are the basics. Simple is good. Let’s say I need to do the same thing multiple times in one day. How does this system account for that? Let’s take the example of eating. I may eat 3 meals a day like most people, or I may be an athlete and eat 6. We can do both in this to do system. Here’s how I put the 3 meals most people eat in my daily list.

[][][] Eat: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

So, very similar to the simple one item but with a few subtle differences. Firstly, you can see the three boxes on the left. Those three boxes correlate to the three times which eating happens. There’s still a verb at the beginning of the task, in this case, Eat. The three specified instances of eating, breakfast, lunch and dinner, are all after the word Eat and a colon to separate the list.

Now it’s mid afternoon, just before Dinner. What should this entry look like if I have eaten breakfast and lunch? This is a matter of personal preference, but I find it useful to check off the boxes in the same place as the instance appears in the list, like so.

[X][X][] Eat: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Again, not terribly complicated, but enough to mull over for a while. Next up, repetitions and times. See ya.

She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid.

I should back up. As I mentioned in part 1, this isn’t my first attempt at a good analog task tracking solution. I used several different programs and notepads before finally settling on a composition notebook. Here are my reasons.

Composition notebooks are analog. I can access what I need to do without worrying about battery life. I can scribble notes inside if I don’t have loose paper. I can easily modify any changes to the overall system if needed at this level. The flexibility of a sheet of paper is far greater than any note taking app I’ve seen yet.

Composition notebooks are easy to write in. Seems obvious, but I’ve had pocket notebooks which were nearly impossible to use because my writing hand kept falling off the opposite page. The 9.75″ x 7.5″ format doesn’t take much getting used to and it’s enough space to hold a day’s worth of tasks.

Composition notebooks are more than one page. This goes for any notebook but it’s important to point out. This notebook holds 200 days. 1 per page side, running from last October to upcoming May. Instead of some pre-printed tear off sheet of check boxes and lines, I can put tasks for this Friday, next week, next month. Far enough into the future to be useful.

Composition notebooks are tough. This particular book carries the weight and responsibility for safeguarding everything I’ve done or plan to do, holding my darkest secrets and wildest dreams. Also I’ll flip through it kinda rough sometimes…spill stuff on it occasionally. I’ve thrown this thing in bags, across rooms, even let my son practice grabbing it. Barely a scratch and a few wrinkled pages I’ve finished using anyway.

Composition notebooks are expendable. This is the main reason I don’t recommend Moleskin. They can run you $10 each whereas my notebook was about $2. If I lose this notebook, I’ll be bummed, but only because I didn’t get to write from cover to cover. If it gets destroyed, easy replacement.

This simple composition notebook was the foundation on which I began to build my to do list system. And it affected other decisions I made later on, as you’ll see.

When choosing which notebook to use, be mindful of what you get. Think about cost, size, page count, format. Make sure you like it. You’re going to be using it for a long time. I’ll show you how…next post. Probably this weekend. Adios.

I don’t like the things I’ve seen from these products. My problem has often been rigidity. The user must conform to a design philosophy to use the list or app. Consider this traditional template from Christina McLauchin at OrganizeForFree.com:

This To Do list offers some nice words of encouragement

I don’t think the creator meant to, but they made a system where all tasks matter equally. There are no hierarchical tasks. Tasks are independent. Tasks occur exactly once. Tasks happen day or night. It’s not important how long a task takes. This could be my list. Your list. Today’s list. Tomorrow’s list. How did yesterday’s list go? Do I care? Does a task needs to be carried over? Can I plan ahead? Do I have goals? Am I getting anywhere?

I’m not picking on the Ms. McLauchin’s work. This is a nice-looking, traditional, commonly used to do list. That’s why it stuck out in my Google image search results as a perfect example. I highlight these criticisms because this is where my system started. A place many people start when they have the genuinely noble intention to do anything. “I’ve got so much to do and I’ve got to keep track of it. I’ll make a list.” If you don’t want more than that, great. Done.

Well…that wasn’t good enough. For me. Keep in mind this is my personal method. It won’t work for everyone. I’m just sharing my experience so you can benefit, I can write, and ideally, one of us gets something done. See ya tomorrow.