Octobook cover

Octobook

Planner

The Octobook is a personalized notebook planner that combines the best tools to plan and organize my personal and professional life.

After spending months testing different planning methods and task manager tools, I wanted to find a simple way to effectively accomplish long-term goals through smaller daily tasks without relying on multiple digital sources.
HCD
Layout Design
Research
TYPE
DATE
Case Study
Sept 2020 - March 2021
TOOLS
Sketch, Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Designer, Notion, Evernote, pen&paper

How might we design a system to effectively fulfill our goals?

Goal setting

Personal Mission Statement

CHOOSING YOUR PATH
As described in "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", you shouldn't wander in the jungle without a map to guide you in the right direction. Life is the same, and the first biggest step to arriving at a destination is to understand where you want to go. Ask yourself:
  • What are my values?
  • What inspires me?
  • What do I care about?
UNDERSTANDING YOUR ROLES
The easiest way to set up long-term goals is to first understand all the hats you wear. Think about what you want to achieve in those roles over the next 6 months, 12 months, and 5 years.
  • What are my life roles?
  • What are my 6-month goals?
  • What are my 12-month goals?
  • What do I want to accomplish in 5 years?

Task manager

Tools considered

checklist icon
CHECKLISTS
A great tool for short lists of less than 10 small items. Larger lists should be avoided as they tend to appear never-ending and stressful.
clock icon
HOURLY SCHEDULE
A good method for an especially busy day: it allows you to clear your mind by planning your work hour-by-hour and finish everything on time. Best with coffee.
coffee icon
ROUTINES
Most humans love structure, consistency, and completing a series of easy yet satisfying tasks. A morning routine is a truly effective way to develop healthy habits.
calendar icon
WEEKLY PLANNER
A great tool for short lists of less than 10 small items. Larger lists should be avoided as they tend to appear never-ending and stressful.
notebook icon
DAILY PLANNER
3-5 significant and achievable things that you absolutely want to complete on a particular day. You'll feel awesome when you do.
reviews icon
DAILY AND WEEKLY REVIEW
A great tool for short lists of less than 10 small items. Larger lists should be avoided as they tend to appear never-ending and stressful.

Bringing all together

Sketches and mockups

Flowchart

6-month goal plan

octobook flowchart

THE OCTOBOOK: EIGHT QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD ASK YOURSELF

1. IF I ONLY HAD 6 MONTHS TO MAKE THE BEST OF MY LIFE, WHAT WOULD I SPEND MY TIME WITH?

STEP 1: WRITE A PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT
The first step to success is to understand what you want to accomplish by creating a Personal Mission Statement. The goal of the first two pages of the Octobook is to make it easy for you to do that.
  • What motivates you?
  • What drives you?
  • What things should you start doing more in your life?
  • What things should you start doing less?
Figure out what truly matters to you and focus all your attention on it.

2. WHAT ARE MY LIFE ROLES?

STEP 2: SETTING UP A GOAL
You relate with each person in your life in a different way. That means you wear multiple hats depending on the relationship you have with a specific person. In your personal life, it's your family, your friends, the people of your community. In your job, you probably wear more than one hat depending on who you are working with: your teammates, your boss, your clients, your suppliers, and so on.
  • What are all the different roles you play in your life?
  • What are your long-term goals for each of these roles?
  • What are your goals in 6 months, 1 year, and 5 years from now?

Goal planner

3. WHAT THINGS, IF DONE ON A REGULAR BASIS, WOULD MAKE A TREMENDOUS POSITIVE DIFFERENCE IN MY LIFE?

STEP 3: THE HABIT TRACKER
The next step is identifying the good habits you'd like to promote and the bad ones you'd like to reduce. Through the creation of a daily routine, you can truly focus on your goals while keeping everything else organized through a morning or evening ritual.

The ritual is most effective because it is the same every day: it's a list of short yet important tasks that make you feel accomplished even on an unproductive day. For example you can do something that fosters your physical or mental health (like yoga, a breathing exercise, meditation, etc) while still having a big piece of you day assigned to your work. I wrote a case study around the effectiveness of a habit tracker. Check it out here.

4. WHAT ARE MY GOALS FOR THIS MONTH?

STEP 4: MONTHLY CALENDAR
We are transitioning from the long-term goals to smaller bite-size tasks. The next step is to identify the short term goals that contribute towards your longer term ones.

The monthly planner serves as a regular calendar with a major focus on your goals and monthly tasks. The habit section allows you to apply colorful stickers when you complete a daily habit and keep track of your progress through the month, which positively reinforces those habits.

Monthly planner

5. WHAT ARE MY OBJECTIVES FOR THIS WEEK?

STEP 5: WEEKLY PLANNER
Given your monthly goals and tasks, it's time to break them down into weekly objectives for each of the roles you defined in step 2.
  • What would make this week great?
  • What are the projects you want to focus on?
  • What are the objectives for each of these projects?
  • Is there anything specific you want to learn?
  • What's a passion project you have that you are working on in parallel with your main projects?

6. HOW CAN I DIVIDE MY WORK IN DAILY TASKS IN ORDER TO REACH MY WEEKLY OBJECTIVES?

STEP 6: DAILY TASKS
This is the major focus of the Octobook: plan your daily work on a weekly basis, helping you save time and accomplish your weekly objectives by breaking them down into small and achievable tasks.

Why?
  • It drastically reduces the time you spend every day organizing your work.
  • It helps you stay focused on achieving your objectives.
  • Your work day becomes effective and satisfying.
If you spend one hour of your week planning your work ahead, it's a lot of saved time later on, you'll see clear and measurable results, and your mental health will probably improve too.

Weekly tasks

7. WHAT WOULD MAKE TODAY GREAT?

STEP 7: DAILY OBJECTIVES
The next step is to focus on your day. Given that the majority of work is done weekly, the daily planner has the purpose of a daily journal with an emphasis on creativity, positive affirmation, and gratitude.
  • What would make today great?
  • What are you grateful for today?
  • Who do you admire or appreciate in your life?

8. WHAT WENT WELL TODAY, THIS WEEK, AND THIS MONTH?

STEP 8: REVIEWS
The very last step is to review how your day, your week, and your month went. This is essential to understand what worked smoothly and what needs some improvement. It's important to take this into consideration before planning the work for the day, the week, or the month after.
  • What really worked for me?
  • What can I do better?

Habit tracker and Daily planner

Insights

The combination of a periodic goal setting, task planning, and final reviews was particularly effective to keep me excited and focused on my goals.

The introduction of regular habits as part of a daily and weekly ritual reinforced positive behaviors and encouraged me to keep up with them without losing focus on what really mattered.

Dedicating time reflecting on what I had accomplished over prior time periods was extremely motivating and improved my effectiveness over the long term.

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