Your Dozen system helps you track both the big picture and all of the little things you need to keep track of in order to run your life.
Collect
The process begins with capturing your ideas. Whenever you notice something you need to remember, stop and make a note about it in your INBOX. Don’t worry about formatting cards the right way at this point – just quickly make a card every time something occurs to you. All you need to do is jot down enough to remember – your captured ideas will get processed later.
You want this part of the process to be as frictionless as possible, so you can get right back to what you were doing. The Trello mobile widget is extremely handy for this purpose, because it’s so easy. I also keep a Trello tab open in my desktop browser.
Process
Next you process the cards in your INBOX.
- Format the text with Dozen syntax
- Apply colored labels
- Define a next action
- Drag it to the appropriate list
Decide
Project level
Each card is placed in one of four lists – ACTIVE PROJECTS, DOING THIS WEEK, DOING TODAY, or FUTURE PROJECTS. This location is dynamic, and often changes frequently.
This part of the process is where you weigh your responsibilities in relation to one another, and make decisions about what you will work on first. This gives you a big picture view of your life, and helps you feel like you know what’s going on. These high level decisions will be guided by your CURRENT GOALS, as well as realism about how much you can actually do.
Daily level
Each morning I consult two lists – SCHEDULED EVENTS and DOING THIS WEEK.
Drag cards from those lists into DOING TODAY to build your day.
Execute
One of the strengths of Dozen is that it separates deciding from doing. All of your concerns are considered together, and triaged while you’re in thinking mode. The goal of this whole process is to output the DOING TODAY list.
Once you have that list, it’s time to switch to execute mode, where you just pick up the next card and follow instructions.
When you finish the next action on a card, drag in to DONE and move on to the next card.