I schedule some time to work on projects by group each month. I will decide to spend 8 hours on gardening projects, or 8 hours on personal development and schedule it in my calendar. When the time comes I look at my list, and see what project I can do the next task on. Some get dropped after I look at them for a while and some get expanded but at least I make progress each month on long term goals. As I start a task I enter in the date started and when I finish one I enter in the date finished and use my word processor to put a line through it as “checked off”. Seeing the crossed off things keeps me motivated and seeing when I started something keeps me on track to continue.

I also have 2 separate timelines. In the past one I have each year and the major events that got done that year. I also have a forward looking one with major projects to be completed over the next 1,3,5 and 10 years. I even have a very short list of what I hope to see if I came back here in 100 years.

Each year when I do my year end filing, shredding and closing of books and stuff I make a copy of this file, Delete all the things not done. Change the crossed out stuff to regular fonts and the printout the list of what I actually got completed. I also update my ongoing timeline of major projects completed.

I’m often surprised at how much really does get done over the course of a year.

Keeping the list in a simple word processing file is easiest. I’ve tried various time, idea and project management software packages but simple files are more portable, easier to edit and I don’t have to think about the software to edit and update it so it actually gets done.

A perfect example is that I’d like to have an “editorial calendar” for my blog, a written schedule for posts. Never happens; I’m always choosing a topic and madly typing my posts at night.

I should go re-read The Now Habit and see if I can stop procrastinating on this!