I’m trying out a new planner system (I love Google calendar, but ultimately I’m a pen-and-paper grrl when it comes to gettin’ stuff done) and have become newly curious regarding how my fellow humans organize their days.  This curiosity, to be sure, is not very original; back in the day the philosopher Seneca dropped major knowledge (now compiled in On The Shortness Of Life) about the importance of to-do lists, including:

… let all your activity be directed to some object, let it have some end in view.

We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.

With a very few exceptions life ceases for the rest of us just when we are getting ready for it… It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.

… the man who spends all his time on his own needs, who organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day.

So, too, it seems, did Benji Franklin keep himself organiz-ized.  Maira Kalman’s gorgeous “Can Do” on her And The Pursuit Of Happiness blog at The New York Times explains Franklin’s planner steez:

Specifically:

How do you plan your day?

If you could go back in time and give your 18-year-old self one piece of advice regarding time management, what would it be?