Using electrical tape, I split a whiteboard into sections. Voila, whiteboard calendar.
A teacher friend of mine already knew exactly how to do this--apparently it's common knowledge among teachers.
I did look if there were either large, disposable calendars (no) or existing whiteboard calendars (they're laminated posters that don't actually erase). A 3ft x 2ft (1m x 0.6m) whiteboard costs $30, and you can get electrical tape for $1.
The stickers look bad--I half-assed them. I need tons of big stickers or none at all. This was way too tentative. I do want some kind of decoration, though.
I’ve had a couple people ask how my TODO list works, so here’s what I’ve been doing for the last few years. I have four lists in total: a calendar, a yearly list, a daily list, and a master list.
A calendar.
The calendar has anything that needs to be done on a specific day. Birthday reminders, doctor’s appointments, and weekly activities like board game night or trash day. You’ve seen calendars. This is nothing interesting.
A yearly goals list
A yearly list of my goals for the year. I typically have 5-15 goals, and finish half of them.
This is mostly for motivation and focus. I don’t look at it much, and often only write it a third of the way into the year.
You can ignore this one.
Daily TODO list
A daily TODO list, written on paper. I throw it out at the end of each day, without copying anything off it. (I actually scan it, but I never look at the scans). This one I find very helpful.
Master TODO list
A “master” TODO list, consisting of everything I want to get done long term. I store this as a text file.
Each task is a one-line description.
I sort tasks into four categories:
Tasks that will take under an hour
Tasks that will take under a day (but more than an hour)
Tasks that will take less than a week
Tasks that will take more than a week
At the very top is just a list of all my task numbers, so I can see how many I have in each category, and skip down to them.
Tasks are marked as
[ ] Unfinished
[x]Finished (think ✅)
[X]Cancelled (think ❌, decided not to do it)
[/] Partially done (for very big tasks)
[>]Transferred to another system (doesn’t happen in the master TODO system, but sometimes I do this from my journal or a daily TODO list to indicate I wrote it down in the master TODO system)
In addition, I have a few special categories:
Urgent tasks. Sometimes I’ll have things that really need to get done soon (but not “today”, or they’d go on the daily list). Taxes often fit in here.
“Stuck” tasks. If I have no idea how to proceed with a task, it goes in a special category.
“Done” tasks. These are waiting to be archived (which is why everything you see is un-done)
“For fun” tasks. I try to keep a tasks which are just for fun in their own little section. Things like “learn to make ice cream”!
I try to minimize subtasks, in general. If I have a big task (clean the house), I’ll try to list it as “clean the bedroom”, etc as seperate tasks. If I have to, I’ll have a big task that references separate small tasks, but it’s the exception, and usually in the “more than a week” category.
