Task management with my little red book

I’ve been asked what I’m scribbling in my little red book I’m carrying around and thought I’d share. Maybe someone will find it useful.

I really became enamored with the idea of https://bulletjournal.com/ a few years ago. However, I just could never get it to work for my workflow. It just is too powerful for my needs and always leads me back into the todo list death spiral of trying to optimize the tool instead of actually using it.

Two years ago I finally stumbled into a custom simplified version that works for me. Instead of premature optimization I started with “lets just take notes”. I soon needed a way to signify the status of those notes… are they even notes or something else? Do I need to worry about them now or later? etc. By doing this for a while I arrived at the system in the photo.

One key difference to the bullet journal is that I strictly use it for day to day planning only and force myself to rewrite unfinished tasks when I start a new day. If that gets too annoying I ^ move them to an external tool for long term planning (trello, linear, whatever).