As a software developer, I'm used to breaking large tasks into smaller chunks, and it seemed like some of the methods used in software development could be used in the field of personal development and goal achievement.

Software can be big and complex, and creating it can be very expensive and risky. There are plenty of methodologies that can be used to create it, but one that has recently caught my attention is eXtreme Programming. Although the name makes it sound like programming whilst leaping out of a plane, it's more about making developers more productive by distilling all of the various tasks into smaller units.

The rules of XP are broken into 4 sections: Planning, Designing, Coding and Testing. Not all of these fit into goal achievement, so I've revised them into more appropriate categories. They are: Defining, Planning, Taking Action and Measuring.

Of all the categories, Taking Action is the most important. Without Action, nothing else will happen. You can plan a goal forever and a day, but unless you actually do something, it'll never happen.

The first stage of any goal is to define the ideal outcome that you want. Without a clear picture of what you want to achieve, you'll struggle to get anywhere at all.

There's no escaping the fact that any sufficiently large goal will require a degree of planning in order to achieve it. Planning should follow these rules:

The most important phase is taking action. Only you can move yourself closer to the completion of your goals, so take action to get there!

Keeping some form of measurement is a simple way of increasing your productivity. When you measure your progress, you can see areas for improvement and work on them accordingly.

The most important part of "agile achievement" is to be flexible. It's a fact of life that circumstances will change, and this will cause rigid goals to break. Be flexible and open to change, and don't get attached to any particular way of doing things.

Paper Based – The main reasons for this is that I find it much easier to modify a paper based system "on the fly". The other main reason is that I find paper to be more rewarding to use when ticking things off. It also means I don't need to switch the computer on first thing in the morning, which would stop the "I'll just check my email" phase that can last hours.

Printable – As much fun as it was to draw all that stuff, it really needs to be printable so I can stick it in a binder and save myself some time.

Bigger System – Ideally it should cover my long term goals as well as my weekly ones, and also my affirmations and intentions. These items should be easy to access so that I don't overlook them. There should also be the potential to add slots for my 30 day trials.

Points Tracking – Points tracking worked well in previous versions of my progress tracker, so I'll be keeping it.

Space for Reflection – There should be space to write down what worked and what didn't work, which I should be able to put in a stack and review when my monthly/quarterly goal sessions come around. There's not much point in writing these things down if I won't be using them.

Weekly Goal Tracking – There should be a space to monitor the progress of my top three goals.

Weekly Review Checklist – The weekly sheet should have a checklist for completing my GTD weekly review. This is more of a system to help me get into the habit of performing a weekly review.

I'm not much of an artist, so this version is somewhat bland. I fully expect the design to change over time, so I'll be linking to updates from this page.

These files are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Licence, which means you're welcome to share and modify them as long as you keep the original link and don't use them for commercial purposes.

The b-Alert tracker is taken from "The Power of Focus", and the 30 day trial is a modified version of the habit changer taken from the same book. The scoring system was inspired by David Seah's "The Printable CEO".

The points system – I definitely get more done when I've been using the system for a few weeks, and it really motivates me to work harder. It's really a private commitment to do something, and having it written on a piece of paper that is regularly reviewed galvanises it in the mind.

Reflection – It's all too easy to keep your head down and work without looking up to see if you're doing the right thing. If you find yourself saying "I'm too busy to look at my goals", then you have a problem. Taking time at the end of the day to reflect on what has happened can help you keep a check on your progress, as well as helping you analyse what your stumbling blocks are.

If you work from home, you can also use this reflection time as "closure" to your day, which you use to signify that the working day has finished. Work will quite happily encroach on the rest of your life, give yourself a definitive ending point to stop it doing this.

Helps to build & maintain habits – It takes roughly 30 days for a habit to form, and those 30 days can be extremely difficult if you don't have a system to help you. Getting into my habit of daily exercise was helped by tricking it off on my goals tracker. It almost acted like a contract with myself, and it pushed me to exercise in some pretty manky weather!

Weekly goals – Seeing my weekly goals helped me create schedules and keep track of my progress. It didn't do much for larger goals, and if I missed a weekly goal it created a backlog and decreased my productivity.

Increased motivation and focus – How you work is affected by how you feel, but instead of making ourselves feel good about our work we often only remember the bad things. Keeping a record of the things that have been achieved prevents us from warping what actually happened, and makes us feel better about ourselves.

Lack of focus on larger goals – There isn't really a reminder of my big goals or purpose inside the tracker, which means they can be forgotten too easily. Putting them in my progress log seems like a logical step, especially if I'm going to be looking at it more than once a day (see below).

Not reviewed often enough – This is more of a flaw in how I used it than how it was laid out. I firmly believe that you need to look at goals at least once every day in order to root them into your brain. It might sound like overkill to look at your goals several times a day, but if that's what it takes to work then it's worth it.

Scoring system too vague – Things like "concrete project work" don't go far enough to explain what they actually are. This is especially important as GTD defines anything with more than one action as a project, so just about any action would fit here. Something like "publish blog or site article" is much better defined. Trying to group all tasks into scoring zones is quite difficult, so it might be a case of breaking them into A, B and C tasks as I mentioned in "How to create an effective schedule".

No rewards – I'd like to experiment with tying the scoring system into some form of reward scheme. It would be nice if the work was always its own reward, but sometimes you need that little extra encouragement to push you through. This would also help me partition my time between pleasurable pursuits and work related stuff.

Drawing it all – Yes, it was fun to draw and colour it all in, but it still takes a lot longer than printing a new sheet out. Any form of barrier that discourages me from using the system should be eliminated.

As you can see, there's a lot that can we built upon, but also a lot that needs to change. The biggest change the system needs is a tie-in with my larger goals. In my next article I'll be writing about the new and improved system that I'm about to start experimenting with.

Now that we know what not to do, let's take a quick look at the qualities that make a good next action.

Something that can be done in one sitting – This isn't an essential requirement, but I've found that it helps to list tasks as something that can be done in a single session. If it will take a lot longer, then it's possible that it's actually a project so I'll try to break it down further.

It's a physical action – The next action list should only list actions that need to be performed. If you're looking over a list and having to process items as you go, then they need to be re-worded.

Finite Limits – There are set conditions for the task completing. Instead of "Brainstorm article ideas", use "Brainstorm 25 article ideas". This way you know when you've done enough. It sounds simple, but it's an easy detail to leave out.

The easiest way to get rid of the lingering tasks is to re-process them during your weekly review. I've found that I get a lot more zombies if I've been lax with my weekly reviews. It can be a difficult habit to get into, but it really is the most essential component of an effective GTD system.

Some time ago I looked at how David Allen's "Getting Things Done" system was working for me, and pondered over some of the improvements that could be made. One of the improvements I thought about was the use of a schedule, so I've been experimenting with them over the past few weeks.

The overall results have been very positive, and although there's still a lot of improvements that can be made, I'm confident that it's worth the effort.

• Structure – A schedule gives you a sense of structure for your day, which can help you organise your time and resources.
• Helps you focus – You'll constantly be looking at your goals and projects in order to put together your schedule, which helps prevent them from being overlooked or forgotten.
• Highlights your limits – This might seem like a strange thing to mention, but being able to see your limits is very helpful when you're planning your working week. We'd all like to be able to do more in less time, but seeing how long tasks actually take can stop you from overloading yourself and burning out.

Here are a few recommendations to help you when you're creating your schedule:

• Create it the night before – Creating your schedule the night before gives your subconscious time to process everything on it whilst you sleep. It also means you're able to get on with your work as soon as your day starts, instead of having to figure out what needs doing first.
• Use large blocks – Don't divide the day into chunks that are too small. Hourly blocks are generally large enough, but it can take time to get into the flow state required by some tasks so you may need 90 minute or 2 hour blocks.
• Group similar tasks – If you have a lot of small, similar tasks, it's best to stick them all in a half hour group and just dash through them. Clearing up all of these small tasks will give you a sense of satisfaction and leave you feeling energised.
• Schedule your rest and relaxation – Working for long periods without a break will eventually take its toll, so schedule some time to get up and have a walk around. If you're an early rise, you may also want to schedule a 30 minute nap around lunch time. This can give a much needed boost of energy, and will stop you flagging later in the day.
• Keep it flexible – It's very difficult to predict how long each task will take, so make sure your schedule is flexible and can cope with a reasonable amount of unexpected delays. One important point: don't fall into the trap of using your relaxation time as a "buffer" zone. Relaxation time should not be seen as something that is a luxury, and should be treated as important as any other activity.
• Know your limits – We'd all like to be able to get more done, but it's important not to overestimate how much you can physically do. If you don't give large tasks enough time, you risk creating a backlog as the day goes on which will bog down your mind and demotivate you.

You may need a few days to get into the groove of using a schedule, but the more often you do it the more proficient you will become.

As you'll notice from the rather colourful photo, I colour coded the tasks on my schedule. I tried two main methods of colour coding during the trial.

The first method I tried was to colour code by category. This seemed like a logical idea at first, as I could see which projects were getting the most attention and which were being neglected. I soon realised that I would run out of colours if I used a different colour for each project! I modified the system slightly to use colours for more general categories, such as "computer projects", "business projects" and "personal projects".

After a few weeks of this system, I switched to colour coding by priority. I used the Covey Quadrant style categorisation for this method. If you're not familiar with Covey's four categories, they are:

1. Urgent and Important Tasks – Firefighting, pressing problems and deadline driven tasks fit here.
2. Important and Not Urgent – Tasks that need to be done, but aren't particularly urgent. This is the area your should spend most of your time on.
3. Not Important and Urgent – Things like some phone calls and meetings.
4. Not Important and Not Urgent – You should look carefully to see if these activities are worth doing at all.

So far this method has worked the best, as it forces me to look at the bigger picture and to be more careful about where I spend my time. It might seem like a clash between the relatively priority free GTD system and the rigid quadrant based thinking, but really helps to keep a tight focus on what is important and what isn't.

Although using the quadrant method of sorting tasks worked well, I think there is room for improvement. I tent to think that most tasks are important or they wouldn't be scheduled, so it's pointless to classify everything as a quadrant two task. One method I'd like to try out is Steve Pavlina's 50-30-20 rule (the Pavlina Pyramid?) for sorting tasks. These segments are:

1. A Tasks – These are tasks that will yield significant benefits over a 5 year timespan (and beyond).
2. B Tasks – Tasks that will bring benefits over the next 2 years or less.
3. C Tasks –These will only bring improvements in the short term, and probably won't be remembered further down the line. However, ignoring them could cause problems at a later date.

You'll notice his system of prioritising is much more focused on long term goals and benefits, which can often be left behind in the rush to get something complete.