I’m a huge procrastinator. Unless I set myself a goal, make a plan and have a clear, small next step, I’ll just waste my time.
So knowing that about myself, over the past years, I’ve experimented with different tools to manage my goals, plans and todos in different ways. The problem that I’ve run into over and over again was that all softwares usually just cover one part of my overall flow.
Currently my flow is :
- I use Evernote to think through and write down my top-level goals
- Then I copy over my top-level goals into Omni Outliner to break-down it into smaller, manageable pieces
- Finally I copy over the tasks into Trello to create a backlog, often having to re-create the break-down by hand again.
Each of these softwares are great at what they do, please don’t get me wrong. But for a ideal, regular planning and execution flow this whole copy-and-pasting hasn’t been great.
What (I think) I want is this: I want one place to set goals, break-down into smaller and smaller tasks, be able to re-arrange and prioritize and finally, have one single list automatically that tells me what my next, highest-priority tasks are based on all the work I did before.
So, I built myself a simple app (Mac native and web) that allows me to:
1. “Dream." That’s where I define and write out my high-level goals. Usually once every few months.
2. “Plan." That’s where I take my high-level goals and break them down into small, manageable and attackable pieces. Usually weekly.
3. “Execute." That’s when I only want to see the most valuable tasks that I need to do right now. This is used daily.
So, here is what I came up with. Each tab represents one step in my workflow.
What I find particularly valuable is to have the Execute tab auto-generated based on my planning before. When I’m in execution mode I don’t want to think about anything except “What’s my next task?”
Dream... 
...Plan**…**

### … and Execute!

As you can see, in Personal Development I’m test-driving this app.
IF it helps me move forward significantly better than my prior solution THEN it’s a success. Otherwise, the search continues.
But I can’t stress enough how much I enjoy having this one, single list of high-impact, high-value tasks generated for me (by me, too, during planning, but still…)
Well, I’m excited to see what happens. Either way, I’ll learn something new.