Tool directory

Purpose

Give people one dependable place to record every incoming task, then decide — deliberately, once a day — which of those tasks belongs to today.

Features

• Capture column that accepts unsorted notes without forcing a category
• Three-tier priority marking: must finish, should finish, can wait
• Carry-forward field that shows how many days a task has been deferred
• Daily cap that warns when more than six commitments are scheduled

Suggested use

Best used at the end of the working day: empty the capture column, choose tomorrow's six, and leave the rest where they are.

Purpose

Make consistency visible over weeks rather than days, and record context so a broken streak can be understood instead of simply regretted.

Features

• Grid for up to six habits across a 30-day cycle
• Notes column for the circumstances behind a missed day
• Streak and completion-rate summary at the foot of each column
• Review prompts at day 10, day 20 and day 30

Suggested use

Choose habits you can complete in under fifteen minutes. Longer commitments belong in the weekly schedule rather than a tracker.

Purpose

Reduce meetings that end without decisions by requiring each agenda item to declare whether it exists to inform, to discuss or to decide.

Features

• Item type marker: inform, discuss or decide
• Time budget per item with a running total against the booked slot
• Pre-reading list so background material is circulated in advance
• Decision and action log that becomes the minutes when the meeting ends

Suggested use

Circulate the completed planner at least a day ahead. Items that arrive during the meeting go to the next agenda, not the current one.

Purpose

Help people see the shape of a week before it begins, including the commitments that are fixed and the hours that are genuinely free.

Features

• Fixed, flexible and open block types in a seven-day grid
• Energy band marking for high, medium and low concentration hours
• Protected recovery blocks that cannot be overwritten by tasks
• Weekly total that counts committed hours against available hours

Suggested use

Fill in the fixed commitments first, then the recovery blocks, and only then the work. What remains is the real capacity for the week.

Purpose

Give small teams a shared picture of sequence and dependency without the overhead of formal project management software.

Features

• Phase bands with start, end and owner for each stage
• Milestone markers that record the evidence a stage is complete
• Dependency notes written in plain sentences, not arrows
• Slack column showing how much a stage can move before the end date shifts

Suggested use

Works well for projects of four to sixteen weeks. Longer programmes are easier to manage as a series of linked timelines.

Purpose

Make the annual cost of living visible in monthly terms, so predictable but infrequent expenses stop arriving as surprises.

Features

• Fixed, variable and annual expense sections kept separate
• Monthly set-aside calculation for irregular yearly costs
• Category totals with a percentage-of-income column
• Twelve-month roll-up sheet for year-end review

Suggested use

Complete one full month with real figures before setting any targets. Estimates made in advance are usually optimistic.

Purpose

Turn an unsorted list into four short lists, each with a different next step, rather than one long list with no direction.

Features

• Four quadrants with a required action for each
• Holding area for work that has been declined but not deleted
• Review date field so deferred items return on a fixed day
• Weekly count of items moved out of the urgent quadrant

Suggested use

Sort no more than twenty items in one sitting. Beyond that, the sorting itself becomes the task you are avoiding.

Purpose

Close the gap between how long people expect work to take and how long it actually takes, by planning in blocks with margin built in.

Features

• Block templates for deep work, admin, meetings and review
• Automatic transition allowance between consecutive blocks
• Planned-against-actual column for end-of-day comparison
• Buffer block that absorbs overruns without collapsing the afternoon

Suggested use

Start with three blocks a day. A fully blocked day is difficult to sustain and tends to be abandoned within a week.

Purpose

Prevent goals from becoming statements of intent by attaching a measurable signal and a weekly action to each one.

Features

• Outcome, signal and weekly action recorded for every goal
• Twelve-week progress strip with a mid-point checkpoint
• Obstacle log with a planned response for each entry
• Closing review page for what to keep, change or stop

Suggested use

Limit yourself to three goals a quarter. A fourth goal usually means one of the first three has not been decided properly.

Purpose

Make the outcome of a meeting readable in under a minute by anyone who was not there.

Features

• Three-column layout for decisions, actions and open questions
• Owner and due date attached to every action as it is written
• Attendee list with an apologies field
• Summary box that fits in the body of a follow-up email

Suggested use

Write directly into the columns during the meeting. Reorganising notes afterwards is where most action items are lost.

Purpose

Replace last-minute revision with distributed practice by scheduling review sessions at the point they are actually useful.

Features

• Backward planning from assessment dates to weekly blocks
• Spaced review points at one day, one week and one month
• Topic confidence rating updated at each review
• Reading and practice hours tracked separately

Suggested use

Designed for a twelve to fifteen week term. Update the confidence ratings honestly — the schedule adjusts around your weakest topics.

Purpose

Give the week a formal ending, so unfinished work is decided about rather than silently carried into the next seven days.

Features

• Four review sections with timed prompts for each
• Stalled-work section that requires a reason and a next step
• Calendar scan for the two weeks ahead
• Single commitment for the coming week, written last

Suggested use

Book the same thirty minutes every week. Friday afternoon and Sunday evening both work; alternating between them does not.

Purpose

Distribute domestic work explicitly rather than by assumption, including the invisible planning that usually falls to one person.

Features

• Rotating assignment grid across household members
• Recurring task frequencies from daily to seasonal
• Shared errand and supply list
• Planning-load column that names who is tracking each area

Suggested use

Print at A3 for a kitchen wall, or keep the digital version open on a shared tablet. Update it at the same time each week.

Purpose

Turn reading into retained knowledge by requiring a short written response before a book or article is marked as finished.

Features

• Entry per title with start date, format and source
• Purpose field completed before reading begins
• Three-line response written at the end
• Follow-up column for ideas that need to be tried, not just noted

Suggested use

Works for articles and reports as well as books. Anything worth thirty minutes of reading is worth three lines of response.

Purpose

Preserve the reasoning behind decisions so teams can revisit conclusions without repeating the original discussion.

Features

• Options considered with the case for and against each
• Decision statement written in a single sentence
• Named decision owner and date
• Reopening conditions that trigger a formal review

Suggested use

Complete within a day of the decision. Records written weeks later describe the outcome rather than the reasoning.

Purpose

Show why a team that appears to have capacity does not, by counting the hours that were never available in the first place.

Features

• Available hours calculated after leave and standing meetings
• Unplanned-work allowance based on the previous four weeks
• Commitment total with an over-allocation warning
• Four-week forward view for planning conversations

Suggested use

Use the previous month's actual figures for the unplanned-work allowance. Assumed figures make every week look manageable.

Purpose

Prevent the common gaps in onboarding — access, introductions, context — by assigning each one to a person rather than a department.

Features

• Three stages with items grouped by day one, week one and month one
• Named owner and completion date for each item
• Context section covering how decisions are made and where work is recorded
• Thirty-day check-in prompts for the new colleague and their manager

Suggested use

Assign the owners before the start date. Items without a named owner are the ones that reliably slip.

Purpose

Build an accurate picture of when concentration is available during the day, using recorded evidence rather than impression.

Features

• Session start, length and interruption count
• Output field describing what was actually finished
• Interruption source tagging: self, colleague or system
• Weekly pattern summary by time of day

Suggested use

Log at least ten sessions before drawing conclusions. Patterns from a single week reflect that week, not your working rhythm.