Back to the Franklin Habit

(with apologies to Franklin Habit...)



So I gave in.

I posted a little while ago about how calendars were calling to me with the beginning of the new year. Well, as I thought about it more, I decided that my current electronic-only planning and organizational system wasn't doing all that a planning and organizational system should do, and I bought a complete 2008 refill for my trusty old Franklin Planner. I've been using it for almost 3 weeks now, and I'm already feeling more like myself than I have since well before Conner was born.

In addition to becoming a first-time mom last June, I recently finished two other major projects in my life that have been going for multiple years -- moving into our dream log home and finishing development on the most ambitious product of my career to date -- and I could see myself soon falling into complacency and maintenance rather than pushing forward with new goals and ambitions. Conner, the house, and the new product at work all kept going because momentum had been established; I didn't really need to do much planning just to keep them on track and moving along.

But now they're finished (ok, well, Conner will be an "ongoing project" for the next 18 years, but the others are finished) and no new projects were already spinning under their own momentum. It takes determination to keep new projects spinning along, and I just wasn't getting that determination from my Treo. In the early stages of a project, I need to be able to keep the mile-high view in front of me in order to find the motivation to slog through the daily tasks. That's not easy to do electronically.

So I'm back to my trusty Franklin planner and training. I have my values, goals, and intermediate goals laid out, some daily tasks accomplished, and I'm starting to roll again. I think I'll stick with the Franklin planner for some time now, but we'll see about that as we go forward. I still keep contacts and reference memos on my Treo, but otherwise it's been relegated to phone, text messaging, sudoku, and ebook duty, and that's ok with me for now.