Guide
The offline board guide
A board is a surface where a plan stays visible without a screen. This guide covers the choices that decide whether a board gets used: its job, its surface, its columns, its labels and the habit that keeps it current.
Start with the job, not the surface
Most boards fail because they try to hold everything. Before you pin, cut or paint anything, write one sentence that says what the board must answer when someone glances at it. “What is due this week?” is a job. “Our life” is not.
Each board in this guide is built for one job. The six boards below cover the common ones: a weekly wall, a flow strip, a household rota, a term map, a pin field and a day ring. Pick the one whose job matches your sentence, and set the others aside until the first is working.
Choose a surface
Pick a surface you will pass every day. A board in a hallway you walk past will get used. A board in a drawer will not. Cork, painted wood, foam board, a whiteboard and heavy paper fixed to a wall all work. They differ in how often you can rewrite them and how well they hold pins, tape or magnets.
Check three things before you commit:
- The width and height of the space where it will hang, measured in centimeters.
- How far away you usually stand when you read it, so the labels are large enough to read from there.
- Whether the surface takes the fixings you plan to use. Pins need a surface that accepts them; magnets need a steel-backed one.
The two measurements
The planner on this site uses two calculations. Both are plain division, and you can do them with a pencil before you cut anything.
Column width
Column width equals the surface width divided by the number of columns. If a card is wider than the column, it will not fit. Use fewer columns, or a wider surface, until each column is wider than the card.
Cards per column
Cards per column equals the surface height divided by the card height, rounded down. Round down, because a card that is only partly visible is hard to read at a glance. If you keep a title band at the top, subtract its height from the surface height before you divide.
The table shows the arithmetic with one set of numbers. The numbers are an example for working through the sums, not a recommendation for your wall.
| Measurement | Value and working |
|---|---|
| Surface width | 120 cm |
| Surface height | 90 cm |
| Columns | 3 |
| Column width | 40 cm (120 divided by 3) |
| Card height | 15 cm |
| Cards per column | 6 (90 divided by 15, no remainder) |
Planner shortcut: the plan a board page runs both calculations and draws the columns to scale. It works without anything being sent or saved.
The six boards
Each board below says what it is for, how to set it up, and what to leave off it. Start with one. Add a second only when the first has been part of your routine for a week or more.
Weekly wall
A weekly wall answers one question: what is this week for? Use seven narrow columns, one for each day, under a header band that carries the date range. Put one card per task and move it when the task moves. Keep the wall to the week in front of you. Anything further out belongs on a separate sheet.
- Mark seven columns of equal width, one for each day.
- Write the date range in the header band.
- Add one small note at the top for the single priority of the week.
- Clear the wall on the same day each week, and move unfinished cards into the next week’s columns.
Flow strip
A flow strip shows work moving from left to right. Three columns are enough for most people: waiting, working and finished. Each card is one piece of work, and a card moves only when its next step is clear. Write a limit at the top of the working column, so the board shows when you have taken on too much.
- Name the columns after the steps you really take, not the steps in a template.
- Write a working limit at the top of the middle column.
- Use one card style for each kind of work, or one style only.
- When a card reaches finished, date it and take it off the strip at the end of the week.
Household rota
A household rota puts shared jobs where everyone passes them. People run down the left edge, recurring jobs run across the top, and each cell holds a small token that is turned over when the job is done. Keep the rota to recurring jobs. One-off tasks belong on the weekly wall. A rota works when it hangs in a room everyone uses, and fails when it lives in one person’s notebook.
- List the people down the left edge.
- List the recurring jobs across the top.
- Agree what a finished token looks like before you start.
- Review the rota once a week at the same time, and rotate the jobs nobody likes.
Term map
A term map gives a long stretch of study or work a visible shape. Draw a horizontal line for the whole term, mark each week as a tick, and place milestones as shapes: a fixed exam date is a diamond, a block of reading is a bar, and a block of practice is a second bar on the other side of the line. The map is for orientation. The detail lives in your notes.
- Mark the first and last day of the term at the two ends of the line.
- Add one tick for each week.
- Place the fixed dates first, then fit the reading and practice blocks around them.
- Move a marker to show today. Never erase a past milestone; mark it as done.
Pin field
A pin field is the loosest board in this guide. It holds open questions, people to contact and ideas that are not yet tasks. Pins are placed by hand. String between two pins shows a link: a dependency, a shared thread, or a question that waits on another answer. The board is useful when the string tells a story, and useless when every pin is strung to every other.
- Use a surface with room to move pins around.
- Write one idea on each pin, large enough to read from the doorway.
- Connect two pins with string only when you can name the relationship.
- Once a month, remove the pins that have been answered.
Day ring
A day ring shows one day as a circle. Each hour is a segment, so the board answers “how much of today is already spoken for?” at a glance. Divide the circle into twenty-four equal segments for the hours of the day, shade the hours you cannot move, such as work, school or sleep, and leave the rest open. Open space is part of the plan.
- Draw a circle on card or paper and divide it into twenty-four equal segments.
- Shade the fixed hours with a single mark.
- Write the flexible tasks into the open segments.
- Redraw the ring each morning. A day ring is a plan for today, not a record of yesterday.
Keep it current
A board is useful only while it is true. Choose one fixed moment to review it: the same morning each week, or the same evening each day. At that moment, remove what is finished, move what has changed, and write one sentence about what you learned. The review stays short when it happens at the same time every time.
Keep a spare card or pin for things that do not belong on the board yet. Look at them during the review. If a note keeps returning without a place to go, the board may need a new column, or the note may belong on a different board altogether.
Ready to test a layout? Open the planner and enter the size of your surface.