getting 9 things done with penultimate and evernote

8/12/2019 Getting 9 Things Done with Penultimate and Evernote

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jam ie rubin.ne thttp://www.jamierubin.net/2013/01/22/going-paperless -getting-9-things-done-with-penultimate-and-evernote/

Going Paperless: Gett ing 9 Things Done With Penultimateand Evernote

In last weeks po st , I discussed how I use Penultimate as a commonplace boo k that replaces the pocketnotebook I used to carry around. At the end of that pos t, I promised that this week, Id describe how I usePenultimate t o help plan out my day.

Over the years Ive tried lot s of methodologies f or getting things do ne each day. Ive made list s, Ive usedorganizational sof tware, Ive even tried GTD on a number of occasions . None of them really f it my workst yle. GTD didnt work f or me because there was too much overhead. To-do lists didnt work well f or mebecause they lacked context and would grow out o f contro l. But a f ew weeks ago, I landed on acombination thats o f arhas been working prett y good f or me. Not too much overhead and not out of control. The idea came to me when I was a guest over at 27Goo dThings . If youve never seen

27GoodThings , its wort h checking out . 3 times a week, they feature a guest who pro vides 3 t hings t o read,3 things to watch and 3 things to use. (9 x 3 = 27.)

It o ccurred to me that part o f my problem making list s was t hat they were never ending and not f ocused. Idecided that instead of writing down a list o f everything I had to get done, I would narrow the scope: Idwrite down a list of the things I wanted to get done tomorrow . Still, that was too broad. Recalling the27GoodT hings site, I decided that if I could get 3 t hings done at work each day, that would be a victory.

Also , since I am a f reelance writer, it would be nice to get 3 f reelancing t asks done each day. And f inally,because I have a lif e out side of both work and f reelancing, it would be nice to get 3 things done at homeeach day.

I wa nted my lists to be info rmal. I didnt want to have to t ype them out . I wanted to be able to scratch themdown, as if on a piece of paper. Thats where Penultimate c ame in. I was already using Penultimate as acommonplace book. Why not use it to capture the 9 things I wanted to get done each day. So I created anew notebook in Penultimate and drew three lines across the page, labeling them Work, Writing, andHome. Under each, I scribbled out t he numbers 1, 2, and 3. And then, I tho ught abo ut what I wanted to getdone in each of these areas the next day.

Of course, t here was so me overhead in that each day, I had to scribble out t he template in Penultimateand then f ill it in. Th ats whe n I disco vered tha t in Penultimate, you can create your o wn custom paper. I didthis, and the result loo ks as f ollows:
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These are my 9 things f or to day. Whats nice about this is, each time I add a new page to my notebook, itis automatically added with my custo m template. Ill discuss ho w I created that t emplate in a moment. First , Iwant to talk about my process f or how I manage my 9 things.

How I manage my 9 things

Step 1 . Each night, before bed, I review the page f rom the previous day. I try to check of f completed itemsas I go along, but at t he end of the day, if there is anything on the list that Ive completed, I scratch it o f f . If there is anything I havent completed, I circle it. I do this only to the numbers, so that the items themselves

are s till legible, and I do it in red ink. Here is an example:


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Step 2 . Once Ive completed the review of the previous day, I send that page to Evernot e using the SendPage To f eature in Penultimate. In Evernot e the page goes into my Diary notebo ok s tack, and my Timelinenotebook f or the day on which the thing were done. This way, I have a complete record o f what I wanted toget done and what I actually got done.

Ste p 3. I open a new, blank page in Penultimate. I f ill in tomorrows date at t he bot to m and then go througheach of the sections, considering what it is I want to get done t omorrow. I only look one day ahead. If thereare 20 things at work that need to get done, I pick the 3 that I think are the mos t important and write thosedown. Ditt o f or writing and home. If Ive circled items f rom the previous daymeaning I didnt complete

themI may carry them over, but I may not . Priorit ies change f rom day-t o- day. Also, I dont always have 3things in every category, and Im f ine with this. I just leave the line blank. On weekends, I dont f ill in anythingf or work, but just write WEEKEND! across that section like this:


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Step 4 . As I move through the day, I review the list f requently and try to cross t hings o f f as I completethem.

One thing I dont do is change the list during the day. My priorit ies may change, but I want a record of what Iwas att empting to get done. The exception here is if I didnt f ill out a list completely. If I only f illed out 2items, Ill f eel free t o add a third.

So f ar, this has worked out much better f or me than the ot her systems I have tried. It is f ocused only onwhat I want t o get done the next day, it narrows the scope to t hree areas of life that are important to me,

and it limits me to 3 things in each of those areas. Now, onto how I created the template:

How I created the custom template for Penultimate

When I started out with this pro cess, I didnt realize t hat Penultimate could make use of custo m paper


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templates. Apparently, you can buy some, but you can also create your own. Here is how I created thetemplate I used f or my 9 things pages:

Step 1 . On my iPad, I to ok a screensho t o f a blank page in Penultimate:

Step 2 . I pulled the resulting screenshot into Skitch and cropped it s o t hat it was just the page portion o f the image and none of the ot her parts o f the screen:


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Step 3 : In the cro pped image, I used Skitch to added the text and lines t hat I wanted on my page template:


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Step 4 : From inside Skitch, save my 9 Things template to my camera roll. This ensures that the image isavailable to ot her applications.

Ste p 5: I opened Penultimate to the noteboo k I wanted to use. In this case it was my 9 Things no teboo k. Iclicked on the Paper icon (see below) and then clicked on the + sign to add a new custom paper:


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Step 6. I selected the image f rom my camera roll that I saved in Step 4 above:


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Penultimate uses the last paper template you used for each new page added. Since this is t he only one Iuse in this notebook, whenever I add a page, it always has my template. And since the template is part of the paper, erasing stuf f you write on t he page does not erase the t emplate underneath. You can use atemplate similar to what I did here, or you can create your own.

For anyone who would like to add my template to Penultimate, the background image can be downloadedhere:

9 T hings Template (1169)

One reasonable question to come out of all of this is: why use Penultimate? Why not just make these listsin a note in Evernote and use the checkbox f eature? That is a perf ectly valid question and I think theanswer comes down to personal taste. When I am making these lists, I think them through better when Iwrite them out long-hand. Penultimate gives me the ability t o do t hat, and the ability t o save my lists in
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Evernote f or f uture reference. This method f eels more natural to me than typing the lists into a not e inEvernote and working of f the not e. But again, this is personal preference.

And besides, even if you dont like making your to-do list s in this manner, I think there is st ill value in seeingust how you can create cust om paper templates in Penultimate, and the po ss ible application of suchtemplates.

So there you have it. I like this approach to managing what I need to get done. It is , so f ar, working bett er

f or me than any of my previous ef f ort s in this regard. And it is very, very simple. In next weeks post , I amgoing to at tempt a more detailed answer at o ne of the mos t f requently-asked questions I get about go ingpaperless: How do you o rganize your notes? Stay tuned

getting 9 things done with penultimate and evernote

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