How do I plan my tasks and day with the Remarkable II tablet?

The weekly plan template

The goal of this template is to once a week make a plan of what I want to do this week. For this I have a tiny checklist of things that I go through (like looking at my calendar for the next few weeks, what I've done in the last week, etc).

The weekly plan is a negotiation moment as I've set a maxiumum of 10 tasks that I'll do during the week. These are the tasks that are not part of routines or meetings or events that are already set,

The daily plan template

The goal of this template is to help me decide what I'll do during the day. This daily plan page is the page that I usually have open next to me through out the day that helps me stay focused on the plan and that helps me realize (with the achievements list) that I'm making good progress.

Most of the time I create the daily plan in the morning for the current day. From time to time, I also prepare the next day plan the evening before.

Here are the different sections of this template:

• Schedule: I mark the things that are fixed (time with my kid and family, meal times, meetings, travel times, etc) to see how much time I really have left through out the day to do additional stuff.

• Tasks for tomorrow: When I duplicate the previous day plan to create the one of the day, I erase everything except this section, so I already have a list of the important things I might want to do. Once the planning is done, I erase the elements from this section, and this section becomes a sort of inbox of things that emerge that I don't have time to to do today, but still have a certain urgency.

• Tasks for the day: The first task is the one that should be the "frog" task. The one that I have to absolutely do today, and if I don't do the rest it's okay.

• Achievements list: Here I capture the things I've done, the things I'm grateful for through out the day. It's a sort of micro-journal that I do through out the day.

• Visual summary: At the end of the day I make a few doodles of the key things that I want to remember from that day. That then allows me to have a sort of visual gratitude journal of the most important things that I can explore quickly when looking at previous days.

The digital companions

I still have a hybrid system, where the Remarkable tablet II with the daily and weekly plan is where the negotiation and planning happens. But I keep two digital tools as sort of inboxes:

• Apple Calendar: to see all my meetings, events, courses that I give, workshops, etc.

• Apple Reminders: to put reminders that are beyond tomorrow or this week. Like checking in with a person about a question I sent them, a reminder to send a reminder (I know that's meta) to my students about an assignment, etc.

A bit of personal productivity history

When it comes to system to run my life, it's important to note here that there are seasons in my life. These systems change as my life changes. When I wasn't married and without a kid I had a very different system than what I use today. And I imagine that when my son will be older it will also impact what I'll need from such a system and how it works.

The tiny system I have today is inspired by a few things that I've used over the years in different seasons that are merged together:

• Notion: for many years I've used Notion to run my days, with a micro journal database. What I kept from this system is the visual summary (that I did then with photos and screenshot, but I do now with sketches) and the micro journal.

• Intelligent change journals: When I was going through a difficult mental period, I switched to paper and used the Intelligent Change Five Minute Journal and their Productivity Planner. The productivity planner approach is the basis that I've kept, including the weekly planning routine, the maximum of tasks per day, the fact of drawing by hand your schedule to realize how much time you really have.

Backstage of this article

This article was illustrated by hand on a refurbished Remarkable II tablet. It was also mostly typed directly on the tablet using the keyboard folio case. The first few lines were written by hand. If you are curious you can download the original note below.