My Planner

Zeigarnik Effect - People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better, this is why you always feel things nagging at you.

Problems You Cannot Solve

• You have more things you want/should do than you have time for
• You do not have the energy to accomplish the set of things you do have time for

Problems You Can Solve

• Remembering Everything You Can Do
• Reducing the stress your to-do list causes

Points Scheduler

Give every task a point value. This is mostly arbitrary. Mine is number of minutes divided by ten. If the task is kind of fun, cut that number in half, if the task is pretty terrible, double it. So biking is something I know I should do and it takes about 40 minutes, so it should be a 4 but I kind of like doing it so I call it a 2. On the other hand cleaning out the sink only takes 10 minutes so it should be a 1 but I don't like it at all so it's a 2. Laundry takes 20 (active) minutes and it's kind of neutral, so it stays a 2. You can do this however you like.

Find out how many points you can sustainably do in a day. Since how you set points is arbitrary, how many you do should also be. I schedule 10 points worth of stuff. The first thing this does is lets you know when your To-Do list (not to be confused with your backlog) is full. Often, if I put everything that really needs to get done and the pressing stuff down, I have 10 points and I don't look any further. About twice a week I end up with fewer points and I'll dig into my backlog and pull out a task.

The best part of this system is Being Done. You'll never actually be done, there's always more to do, but you'll get that 10th point and you'll get the Being Done feeling - this day has been productive and if I sit down and play Minecraft for the next 3 hours, I'll still go to bed feeling accomplished.

V2.0

I've been using V1 for a while and it's working really well. I have a few minor improvements I would like to make, but mostly I'm just looking to make the UI a little better (and more fun).

Have expandable lists in the left tab for 2 weeks, 12 months and tools with the relevant sub lists - jQuery accordion. This includes current task dragging functionality. Toolbar across the top with New Task, a slot for 1 timer (if there is more than 1, which ever will finish first). I like the "New Task" in the place where the new task would be created (such as at the bottom of the list).

I should use the Grid CSS I've worked with and have the left bar disappear if the screen is too small.

I need a better way to do dependencies - the current system doesn't stack well beyond 1 deep.

I want to be able to see several days at once and drag tasks between them (4 days should be good).