The New Year Had Just Begun.
We could hardly stay awake past 9:PM. We are ‘kinda’ old.
The ‘Early Bird Gets The Worm’ syndrome kicked in. (Oh, holy cow, I’m going to be 74 in three weeks?) So I grabbed a cup of coffee and hooked up my external Hard Disk to do my annual archive. The archive took less than thirty minutes. What next…?
Applications I use every day, all day, are native to my Mac. Last year, I discovered that I had too many applications that I could quickly delete — no longer needed. My Mac-native Calendar application and the Notes app are all I need to track my To-Dos and my daily production status with notes and an accessible journal for each day.
My February 2022 calendar shown above indicates several scheduled activities.
- Income triggers an automatic activity to pay bills and transfer a percentage to savings. (our monthly Social Security payments and my CalPERS pension income.)
- We have company arriving from the 18th through the 21st that coincided with a scheduled ceremony our company would attend with us.
- On the 22nd, a scheduled Zoom Meeting is on hold for the email link before noon.
- My daily Agility/Endurance exercises get moved to the next day when finished. I repeat my writing schedule Monday through Friday.
- My wife has company on the 25th while I start our annual truck registration and pay the fees online.
The Screen Capture above I developed over the last 6–8 months is the template I use every day. While creating the template, I discovered it is a RARE day to get three things done. I am lucky to get two things done. Life Happens.
Above is my Notes App for Monday, the 22nd of February. With our guests, we attended a Dusk to Dawn ceremony. Grueling! Liberating! We waited for over two years of the global Pandemic. We completed our long-delayed ceremony at last!
I use the Notes section in my template, much like a journal. On the rare days that it rains in the desert, I track the weather. There are sub-sections for reviewing the day and planning for the following day. I am enrolled in On-Line writing classes with my email client. I can copy my class lessons and paste them into the notes section for easy reference while practicing my class lessons. The copy and paste from email is a great help for On-Line lessons and learning new skills.
During the last few years, using my Calendar and Notes Application, my reliance on separate ‘ToDo’ applications diminished to where I started deleting them. A bonus effect of deleting unused applications has positively impacted my budget. Reviewing my application subscriptions adds more money to my pocket and saves space on my computer — Win-Win for me.
