(2016-10-17) Boyd Daybook Journaling Calendar Centric Work Management

Stowe Boyd: Daybook Journaling For Calendar-Centric Work Management

The first section, Revisiting Work Processing, is a recap of points I’ve made in earlier posts about ‘work processing’

The second section, Introduction to Sunsama, below. If you want to jump to the description of Daybook Journaling, that’s in section 3.

1. Revisiting Work Processing

content-centric work management

I worked at work processing pretty diligently for a few months, but I had started to drift toward a model based on three sorts of documents

Planning docs

Calls and Meetings

Journal entries

I found that I spend the greatest amount of time in journaling. Creating a plan of attack at the start of every day (as a standalone doc or a section of a weekly journal doc) became a daily ritual, and I updated that doc numerous times throughout the day. (Daily Review, Most Important Task)

I thought I’d miss a rich task model (Issue Tracker) — due dates, notifications, etc. — more than I did. What I learned is that I relied on propinquity: the week journal doc was basically open all day, and as I was adding more information to the various sections I would reacquaint myself with things I need to be working on for Friday, or next week, as I entered new content. And I felt like I had a better big picture sense of what I was working on each day and for the week, than when I just relied on a work management list of tasks

So what if we started with a calendar, and added the richness of work processing and task management to the mix? That’s exactly what the folks at Sunsama have done. And I am a total convert.

Introduction to Sunsama

Imagine a team calendar that supports sharing of events, coediting of events, and comments/chat on every event. Imagine also if that team calendar supported a rich task management capability, with start/due dates, assignment, and notes. That is Sunsama in a nutshell.

The Calendar

3. Daybook Journaling

After a few weeks of using Sunsama, I can’t imagine moving away from journaling as my primary mechanism for my work management

Various flavors of work management

I am finding Daybook Journaling the most natural work management I’ve used, and I have tried every possible approach under the sun