It’s Friday night and I designed a notepad

Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a bit of an organizational nut. Not in the sense that I’m organized 100% of the time, but definitely in the sense that I get overly-excited about things that are meant for organizing. At work, I have a few friends who are equally excited about such things… to the point, that we sometimes email each other to compare how much we’re geeking out about our new organizational system of the week, special project or funky tabs meant for sticking on things. Oh yes…

Anyways, today I ran out of my ‘Information Central’ notepad from Knock Knock (boo). Yes, I could go buy another one… but instead, I’ve spent my Friday night designing my own — making it into a version that works for my strange system of to-do’s. Yes, I could go electronic… but there’s something satisfying about highlighting a line on a piece of paper when a task is done. There are so many other parts of my work process that are done on computer that sometimes it feels good to use paper. Besides, re-writing my to-do list at the beginning of the week helps to calm me down if I happen to be stressed.

It should be self-explanatory, but here’s how it works:
In any given week, most of us probably have a big project that we most need to focus on, with lots of tasks associated with it. We probably also have a bunch of smaller, medium priority projects and a bunch of backburner, lower priority projects. Use the three main columns for those. In any given day, there are probably 3-5 things that absolutely MUST GET DONE before going home. Use the ‘Top 5’ columns for those. That’s it.

I’m going to try my notepad out for a while. I may end up adjusting it along the way (and adding colour if I decide to spend money on printing it in anything other than black and white), but in the meantime, if this preview design excites you, please feel free to download and print this full-size PDF. Use it and let me know what you think!

ps. Knock Knock, if you’re reading this and would like to hire me to design notepads and other such things all day, please contact me. Ever since I first used one of your products (several years ago now) I’ve been fairly convinced that it would be my dream job. Just saying.

pps. Other organizational geeks: if you haven’t gone to the Knock Knock website yet… do yourself a favour and go have a lovely little browse. It’ll make you happy.