Bullet point of life.

How a journal saves time, effort, memory and helps you feel better.

One of the most amazing things I think most of us overlook is the fact that we are made to forget. Our memory is awful, sometimes unable to keep stories straight for more than 3 days. I don’t know if this is due to evolution with the paper and pencil being invented or maybe we just don’t care to remember much. But your mind will trust things you write down by hand better than memory alone.

My story is one of the construction field, outside, long summer work days, upsetting everyone that has to drive to work though my construction site. Besides ruining someone day on the road, my work day involves as much paper work as yours probably does, scheduling, coordinating people, equipment and materials, recording items for payment and making deals with everyone. It’s not difficult to forget something important when you solely rely on your memory, but with a trusted system of just writing shit down, it becomes harder to forget things.

What do I recommend .

I recommend you don’t buy someone else idea of a daily planner and allow your work week to fit you. What I mean is, buy a really nice bound book,draw lines on on said book paper, add dates, titles, keep a 10 page legend, number your own pages and use it to plan for next week.

Plan for next week.

I plan on Thursday what I want to do for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week. Why Thursday, well you have Friday to get Monday in order, review last week and it is a good goal to have. Draw out the following at your time of choice (morning, mid morning, lunch, afternoon,) but don’t let it go till the end of the day. It become a meditation, read back into last week, see what you forgot, then write it down as a major task.

What I do every Thursday. Remember to plan lunch if you normally don’t think of it. I use to forgot it every single day, now I have it planned on thursday where I go or do all week.

Plan Lunch, if you miss it often, you need to plan it. Plan your meeting, delivery of materials, write peoples birthdays down to remember. But you need to plan for the longer term too. This is just the start.

Every Month you need to plan the month and the solution is easy. I have a cell phone, I have a google calendar that I use when I schedule everything. Sometimes you don’t have good cell service in a specific area or some other reason why you don’t have a cellphone working. But paper and a pen will never fail you. I mentally trust my book far more than my phone or computer. I don’t like to send email from a phone because autocorrect makes you look special at best and a computer isn’t practical to be everywhere a book can. So, I do have duplication, which is great for planning. I look at my phones callendar when I add a month; all the days are there. This is what a month looks like.

Put everything that is in your calendar here. Add your Todo’s that you want to do. Such as see more family, make a deck, buy a dog…. You can’t plan something if you don’t want to do something.

This month is easier to write down when you copy a digital calendar. The calendar will auto populates people birthdays and other events that are recurring. Makes it easy, especially if you organize your digital life on your computer for deliveries and future events, you end up copying an existing todo list. When you take your book everywhere, you have your todos with you all the time. Meetings, phone calls, email replies, everything is there for you at your moments glance.

Onces you have your month, you still have to fill out the days. This is where the magic happens. What I mean is, you can do whatever you need to do, to make your day work for you. I will show a few examples of what I mean for layout of your daily planner bellow.

I can flip between different types of days, but mostly the one on the Right I follow more. On days where I need to micromanage my life, I use the one on the left.

In the Day, Fill out everything, ever phone call, every issue, keep logs. Write your day like a story. I was once told to keep emotion out of the journal, I now add it purposely . You can sound angry and when in fact you had the best day of your life. You will remember the tone of a story better if you put some sort of emotion in it. If you were mad at your boss, put it in there, it’s better to yeil in a book than to someone by accident. Words can never be returned sometimes, book keep secrets better than people.

RECORD SHEETS

I keep Record sheets, basically pick the next page and keep it for one specific item. An example would be, the start date and meter of a dewatering system for every day you would inspect it. Basically think of it as one sheet for your own issues that others make for you. Keep all the information in one good place, so you know where to get it once your in trouble or need to answer a question on the spot.

Only items that relate to damage claims should be added to this page, as the example. Keep whatever is important to you to keep track off.

This is the basics, it’s a good way to start to learn what to do when you need to keep records. There is more to learn. Other post will follow.