My new favourite task planner

How to weather the storm in your head

Over the years, I’ve used so many different organisation methods and tools. For a long time I kept a bullet journal, and I also made my own way to track my habits. As someone with so much going on at once, having a place to hold all the chaos has been essential.

One thing I’ve realised is that there is no perfect system. What worked for 17-year-old Amy studying for her exams won’t work for 27-year-old Amy organising her business. As I change over time, so should my tools.

But finding and choosing the ‘right’ system for the moment can be intimidating. There’s so many options on how to start and what to use, and things can get complicated fast.

For day-to-day tracking, I’ve found that there are only three things I’ve ever needed to keep an eye on:

1. Things I need to do
2. Things I should be aware of
3. Things I want to remember or be mindful about

With this in mind, I wanted to come up with a new system of my own. Something fun yet functional. A cute framework I could use without getting too bogged down into the details.

A stormy metaphor

Describing our systems in abstract ways isn’t new; for an example, Jake Knapp likens his Burner List method to a kitchen worktop. Tying your framework to an existing mental model can help your understanding of how it fits together.

At the start, I chose to use the weather on a whim. It was fun and it meant I could use loads of different emojis. But over time, I found that using the weather to talk about the things going on in my brain actually worked well.

Thunder and lightning ⚡

This is the blanket term I’m using to talk about things that need my attention. There are different ways of ranking tasks, but for the day-to-day, I only need to know if I should do it today or tomorrow.

Lightning tasks are quick and immediate. They’re things that won’t take too long, but…