Yesterday, I wrote about how simple daily planning can be.
Have you read it?
If not, go read it. I can wait.
Ok, you’re back.
Quick quiz: what is the one tool you need in place to do daily planning?
You might have said a daily planner. That’s wrong. Remember, the primary product of daily planning is an ordered mind. You can do that by writing your plan down on a napkin and throwing it away when you’re done.
But there is another tool that you do need.
It’s a tickler file.
Man, that’s a bad name. It comes from before the widespread use of electronic tools for planning or todo tracking. The idea is that you have a set of file folders, one for each day of the month (1-31). Then you have another set of 12 folder for each month. If you need to be reminded of something on a particular day or month, you just put a piece of paper in the tickler file for the day or month that you care about. Additionally, you can rotate the file folders around so that the next day’s folder is at the front of the queue.
David Allen’s Getting Things Done popularized the idea of a tickler file, and shortly thereafter a popular blog even adopted the name “43 Folder” after the number of folders in a typical tickler file.
While I’m all for simplifying your life, the fact is that you’ll be hard pressed to make it so simple that you don’t need to be reminded of important things in the future: bills that need paying, dentist appointments, children’s baseball games or piano recitals, etc.
In the context of a day, it’s possible to order your mind in such a way that those reminders are not as important. But in the context of a week or longer, you really need a way to be reminded of the stuff that is important. There will just be too much to keep it in your own head.
Now, the tool you use for tracking your tickler is less important than that you use it every day.
Daily planning is the habit that makes a tickler file into a superpower.
What the tickler actually looks like can vary quite a bit.
You could use notes in OneNote, Evernote, or another note taking app.
You could use lists in any of the popular todo apps that exist.
You could use email reminder services like Nudgemail to get automatic emails.
You could use actual file folder and slips of paper or post it notes. But I wouldn’t recommend this.
Some tips for using a tickler
If you’re just starting to do daily planning, it might be best to just have ticklers for a week out.
As you build the habit, it will be natural to create lists/files/notes for upcoming months.
Although the original tickler concept had 43 list/files/notes, I prefer 23-24: 7 for the days of the week, 4-5 for the weeks of the month, and 12 for the months of the year.
For thousands of years humans have used the week as a fundamental unit of measuring time. It works, so use it in your tickler tool.
Using the tickler is quite simple. Need to be reminded next Tuesday about something? Put it in your tickler file for Tuesday.
Have an appointment in 6 months at the dentist? Stick it in your tickler for the corresponding month.
Then, as you plan your days, you’ll naturally pull up the tickler for that day, move the items onto your daily plan, or defer them to another day, week, or month, and then be ready for the next day. When you plan on Sunday (or Monday, or whenever you start your week), just go through the weekly tickler as well and move stuff to the daily ticklers. Same thing when you plan on the last or first day of the month.
But again, don’t get ahead of yourself. If you’ve never used a tickler, just start with one week, 7 days.
It’s simple.
Once the habit is in place, then expand to larger time frames.
In no time, you’ll recognize the power of a tickler file.