Good evening,

Here are the pillars I view my life around:

I strive to live my life centered around the Kaizen principle, a principle that encourages that you learn at least one new thing every day, a principle that you become 1% better each day. It has a Japanese origin and has lots of documented research after Toyota embraced it and credited it as being the main principle of their early success. After organizing myself with all kinds of apps from Things 3, Todoist, Superlist, etc.. I've dropped the "Development" part of the phrasing to simplify the chaos inside of my todo apps. My workflow is simple, add a task as soon as it becomes a thought, so I need simplicity for this to be effective or else my undiagnosed ADD will take over and I am forgetting why I am on the app. Another reason, is that some tasks, which I call in my brain "Chore tasks" just simply do not fit into the "development" phrasing -- I'll add more on that below.

With these pillars, all of life's goals, tasks, and responsibilities fall into each category respectfully. Here are some example tasks that go into each pillar.

This is just one way I organize my life. In Things 3 I have had all these labeled as tags, but inside this new tool I have been using called Timestripe, I have the freedom to create these kanban style boards with each pillar as a column. There is some polishing Timestripe needs compared to a UX perspective compared to Things 3 and other todo apps, but right now it is winning in my workflow, simply due to its fluid scheduling of TODAY / THIS WEEK / THIS MONTH / THIS YEAR / LIFE.

This fluid scheduling helps my brain not lose sight of tasks, as not every task holds the same weight. Some tasks may be important for the week rather than the day. I'll give a straight forward example: Living a little ways out of the city, returning an Amaznon package cannot be done on any specific day. More often than not I have to take a mental note that I need to return the package whenever I am in the city limits. On a traditional to do list app, this task would need to be carried over every day until completed, or buried in a sea of undone tasks. Inside Timestripe, having the item place in the THIS WEEK column helps me not forget it and helps a gentle, not intrusive reminder that I have the freedom to complete it any day this week.

As for the task "Complete Pluralsight training on CompTIA CySA+" which I provided as an example above, you can imagine how I have this task labeled under. In a traditional todo list app I would need to break it down to every module or have one task get punted over and over. Inside Timestripe I have it under THIS MONTH and it serves a a friendly reminder to make progress towards this goal.

I will post more of my progress as I continue using Timestripe in my workflow! 🙂

Chandler Santos