My life is busy. Between work things, hospital appointments for my daughter and all the other things that life brings, myself and my family live out of our shared calendar. Don’t get me wrong, I get a lot of stuff done, yet I’ve never really nailed down a process that ensures I stay productive — well now is the time.

Inspiration for this kick in the ass comes from Matt D’Avella and his fascinating video on Bullet Journaling. Instead of preaching the benefits of it and showing off the ridiculous artwork in his, like every other video on YouTuber, he actually did the practice and talked about the issues and covered the improvements it could make. So of course, me Googling bullet journals starts at least halfway through the video until I realise that’s just not going to work.

The reality is I have tried this before and although it starts well, and I spend a lot of time and money setting it up, the act of writing things down and remembering to check them doesn’t fit for me. That’s not to say it wouldn’t for everyone. Clearly there is a following out there, just take a look at the hundreds of videos made on the subject and the number of places that will sell you accessories to go with it. Manually doing something relies on me having a notebook with me all the time, and that’s never going to happen.

Unfortunately, I do carry around my phone with me near constantly, or at least have my watch on my wrist, so I need to lean on the tools I have. Digital means to get things done are everywhere, and it's important to not get distracted by shiny new things and spend more time setting things up then getting things done. Taking inspiration from Kia, I have made an internal agreement to only use apps I have already, particularly stock ones, or services that I already rely on and will not increase my expenditure.

This might take some time.