Planhack = a day planner with Vim-like keybindings.

PlanHack divides the screen into Days on the left, and Goals on the right. Everyone organizes their time differently, and PlanHack recognizes this by trying to minimize its restrictions to: viewing time as day-by-day, and entries should be text for ease of entry and search.

I use the Days to log what I do during the day, and to post future events. PlanHack automatically exports as ical future events marked as public at http://planhack.com/calendar/$USER (e.g. my public calendar is at http://planhack.com/calendar/patrick ). Most of my future events are private and are part of some large project, or they serve as helpful reminders (did I get a reply back from a person, ping someone because it would be rude to do that right now, etc.)

Goals I keep blank except for an occasional constant reminder to think about something. When I am planning a project, I fill it up temporarily until I can assign all the subtasks into days. When I have goals stacked up, it creates a psychological drag as I am reminded of everything I want to and have not done yet.

PlanHack borrows from Boyd's Observe, Orient, Decide, Act and his emphasis on reducing its costs ( cf total cycle time ). As I Observe new opportunities, the quick view of days and goals allows me to Orient quickly and Decide how it would fit into what I'm already doing. The limitation of a day forces me to break new things up into pieces small enough that each can be completed in a day. This leaves the day entries with a list of small tasks I can then Act on.