Rach Smith's Notes & Nuggets

A weekly task list with the Alastair Method

note : journaling Added November 22, 2023

I got back into [[Back on my bullet journaling|bullet journaling]] this year. In the last few months, my productivity system has moved more and more from the digital back to the "analog"1.

I discovered this way of tracking tasks for the week recently, and it has worked well for me, so I thought I would share.

In my bullet journal, I list the things I need to get done in the month, the week and the day. I don't always know exactly when they can/will get done. I just know I would like to do them in that time frame.

The Alastair Method for bullet journaling is when you place some vertical columns next to your list of tasks. The columns could be anything you want to group/organise your tasks by. I choose days. So, I have Monday to Sunday as my columns next to the list. And then, if I plan to do the task on a specific day, I will add a dot to the column. If the task is done, I cross it off in the day I did it and the overall list.

A photo of my bullet journal open on the weekly task list spread

I especially love how my exercise plan can be viewed with a glance at a few lines in the notebook. This is an excellent method for repeating tasks.

I do many things every week that I don't track in my weekly list (meal planning, cooking, groceries, cleaning, etc.) because I just do them without planning them first.

Footnotes

  1. For my personal life that is. Work planning and tracking is all done via software. ↩︎

Thanks for reading! If you'd like to share your thoughts you can reply by email or hit me up on Mastodon or Bluesky.

Comments

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  • Alex Wanderingoff

    Oh wow! I absolutely love this idea and I've never heard of it before. It makes the weekly list so much more appealing, which is a time scale I really struggle with. Definitely taking it!

  • Cory Hawkins

    Love the Curser trail!

  • Alastair Johnston

    Hi Rach,

    Here's an odd but joyful thing. I was wandering around your digital garden, just pottering and enjoying an old-school decent personal website, when I stumbled upon this post.

    I'm so glad you found my method useful, and thanks for the kind comments. Yep, I'm the Alastair behind the 'method' :-)

    It's also great to read your site and I'll be adding you to my RSS feed reader as so much of your approach to what you put on this site resonates with me.

    Lovely to have made your acquaintance!

  • Trailmix28

    Thank you so much for your breakdown. I read and re-read the Allistair method on hks website, but it just didn't make sense to me. Seeing your weekly breakdown with the highlights, and your explanations really made it click.