Writing On Your Palm

00/05/22 - Planning, Revisited

(Printing? Click here.)

I've gotten a lot of requests recently for more detail on my planning system, in particular, how to use Arranger to best advantage. Arranger is one of those programs that adheres to the Zen of Palm. In fact, it's so simple and uncluttered that many people never realize how powerful it truly is. For those not in the know, Arranger is an outliner that allows you to incorporate items from all five of the stock Palm applications (address, datebook, expense, memo and todo) into heirarchical outlines. You can either link to pre-existing items, or create them straight from Arranger. What this does for you is give you way to outline your life while still keeping the details in the stock apps, so you can check off todos, set alarms for appointments, et cetera.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to revise my stance on Action Names. I said in my previous column that I preferred DateBk3 and ToDo+ over Action Names for planning. That is no longer the case. Action Names 4.51 has enough flexibility to do everything I did in DateBk4 (not 3) and ToDo+. I'll explain below.

Here's my revised planning system:

In Arranger, I have a single outline called "Life Planning". In that outline, I have my personal mission statement and all my roles (the various "hats" that I wear) as top-level items. Under each role is the governing value for that role and all of the long term goals that pertain to that role. Under each goal are linked appointments, contacts and tasks that contribute to the goal's completion.

Once a week, I expand everything, start at the top of the list and work my way down. (Actually, first I review all my appointments and completed tasks in Action Names, but I'm primarily focusing on Arranger for now.) First, I review my mission, then start with my roals, one by one. For each, I review the governing value(s) for the goal, then I dive into the goals.

For each, I break the goal down into managable steps, assigning them to either appointments, calls or tasks in Action Names (which the newest version of Arranger supports for item creation). I schedule the due dates for everything appropriately, not too aggressive, but ambitious enough that I can't just sit around.

While DateBk4's advance notice feature does a great job of simulating start and due dates for tasks, Action Names has its own way of doing this, thanks to repeats. If I want to create a task that should be started on one day and completed by another, I create it with the due date in the description and then set the task as due today and as a redo repeat that ends when the project is actually "due". Not only does this give me a daily checkable reminder to work on the project (much harder to ignore than an undated task), but it also gives me a log of the work I've done in my completed ToDo items and it "guilts" me if I put it off by showing me the date I last worked on it. If I finish it ahead of schedule, I just delete the last task rather than checking it off.

There's just one problem with this setup. Currently, Action Names handles repeat tasks by checking off the current task and creating the next task fresh on the next appointed day. This means that when you look at your outline in Arranger, you see only the first task you checked off, assuming you haven't purged it yet. DateBk (in all it's variations) moves the current task forward, then creates a copy today which is checked off. This is much more "Arranger-compliant", as Arranger always shows the current, "fresh" task. I've emailed iambic about this, and they've been really cooperative in working this out.

Honestly, that's about it. Between this and my previous column, that's my planning strategy. It's really pretty simple, and I don't have much more. If this doesn't answer your questions, please email me, and I'll try to explain in more detail. If I get enough email, I'll compile the responses into a "Planning FAQ".

Jeff Kirvin
jkirvin@yahoo.com