Writing Pending Decisions in a Planner

Sometimes, an event is coming up which requires a decision, but a decision cannot be made yet. Maybe my husband has to figure out if he can get off of work or I need more information before deciding.

I am guilty of leaving these unmade or pending decisions floating around in Facebook messages or in my email inbox.

Bad idea.

I use my planner to plan, and without the pending decisions noted in my planner, I might double book the dates or forget to check on the information that I need.

This time a year, Christmas party invites are plentiful and we cannot make all the events. Also, gifts are ordered and will be arriving at home, so I need to plan to be around, but in between arrivals, I need to get errands done.

Since I use erasable Frixion pens, I "pencil" stuff onto my monthly events/appointments calendar using a question mark.

In the example below, I penciled in a furniture delivery (waiting on confirmation of morning or afternoon, which is expected tomorrow) and a few Christmas parties (waiting on information about family obligations before RSVP'ing yes or no).

I also add a task to my weekly spread to remind me of either what I need to do, the deadline for the decision, or what/who I am waiting on.

For furniture, I'll write "@AF: delivery time" on Tuesday's entry (translation: @ = pending; AF = the name of the furniture store; delivery time = what information I am waiting on). For the Smith party, I'll write "O^c RSVP Smith" on Thursday's entry (translation: O = task; ^c = context code of "at computer"; RSVP Smith = the task).

That's two steps.

1. Pencil in the event with a question mark.
2. Create the next action task or a pending note.

Pending decisions are now obvious on my planner and ready for me to deal with in a timely manner.

Etcetera.