Why NotePlan and the Productivity Field Guide Work So Well Together
The Productivity Field Guide by David Sparks is a comprehensive system for defining your life roles, discovering what matters to you, and then determining and implementing ways to improve yourself in all of those roles.
It’s a happy accident that the NotePlan app is such a perfect fit for those in the Productivity Field Guide system. You’d guess that NotePlan was explicitly designed for use with it, but it wasn’t. It was independently developed and is just a happy coincidence.
It’s typical to use several basic productivity tools when implementing the Productivity Field Guide. These include a notes app, task managers, calendars, a daily plan, time blocking, and weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews. The NotePlan app contains each of these elements, all in one uncomplicated app.
Organizing Your Notes for Productivity Success
NotePlan includes a comprehensive notes system that’s very similar to that in Obsidian or Craft (linked notes).
I maintain a note showing all of my roles and Arete statements (what I envision as my ideal behavior in each role), as well as my current habits and projects under each role. I link this note to my weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews so I can quickly jump to it from the review template and then back to the template. You can also store notes on any other topics or ideas that you have within NotePlan.
NotePlan has been called a ‘Goldilocks’ app in that it’s not as complicated or fiddly as Obsidian or as basic as, for instance, Apple Notes. It fits a nice middle level that gives users a lot of power but doesn’t require significant fiddling to get the app to do what needs to be done.
Task Management: Turning Intentions into Action
Task management is an integral part of implementing the Productivity Field Guide. To improve your behavior in each role, you’ll develop specific projects, tasks, and habits that you need to be reminded of.
NotePlan syncs with Apple Reminders. It also includes a built-in task system, although it has some limitations.
Apple Reminders tasks show on a panel to the right of the daily note in NotePlan. The tasks due today in Reminders have a red indicator.
I can drag them into my daily plan template as I wish. If I decide to work on a task on a different day, I can easily move it to a future date by dragging it to a date on the calendar that shows in the right panel.
Daily Planning: Structuring Your Day with NotePlan
The Productivity Field Guide recommends that you prepare a work plan for each day. In this plan, you specify what you intend to work on that day.
There’s a special kind of note in NotePlan called the Daily Note that is generated each day. I insert a custom daily planning template into each daily note.
I set up this template in the templates folder and have it automatically inserted into each daily note. When I open the Daily Note, it already contains the template. The template I designed has five different categories: possible tasks, today’s tasks, priority tasks, time blocking, and notes.
On one screen, I have my calendar and tasks. I drag tasks from the Reminders panel into my Daily Note. For tasks I’m unsure about completing, I categorize them as “possible tasks” and move them to that section. For tasks I definitely want to do today, I drag them into “today’s tasks.” Finally, I select my priority task and move it to the “priority task” category.
I also have a “time blocking” category. When working on a task, I drag it to this category and then to the calendar, which automatically creates a time block for it. I also include here any tasks that I want to time block in advance.
The “Notes” category is used to store any notes or information related to my work or other thoughts or information I wish to store on the Daily Note.
Time Blocking: Choosing the Right Approach for Your Workflow
David Sparks recommends using some form of time-blocking to ensure that you do the work you intend. Several time-blocking options are available. Some are more rigid, while others are more flexible.
1. Rigid time blocking. You time-block all of your working time for the day, designating what you’ll be doing and when you’ll be doing it. When you reach the time to begin, you begin; when the next block starts, you end what you were doing and begin a new task. The time blocks are typically set up at the beginning of the week for the entire week or the evening before.
It’s a more rigid approach, but it still allows for rescheduling time blocks if necessary. However, you’ll have to move other time blocks around to compensate for a change.
2. Gentle time blocking. You can use this approach for larger projects. Rather than time-blocking everything, you only time block larger blocks of time to work on important projects.
“Think about that one big task that’s been nagging at you. Maybe it’s a sales presentation that needs a complete overhaul, or any other substantial project that keeps sliding off your to-do list. Instead of trying to block out your entire week, just start with this one thing.” David Sparks, The Productivity Field Guide.
3. Fluid time blocking. “The concept is straightforward: instead of assigning specific times to your work blocks in advance, you start by mapping out the major blocks you want to tackle each day, but without locking them into specific time slots.” David Sparks, The Productivity Field Guide..
Examples of this include noting at the beginning of the week that you need to spend a couple of hours on administrative work or research. Instead of locking these into a time-blocked schedule, you leave them as flexible blocks and insert them into times when your mood, energy level and time available work best.
4. Fluid task choosing. At the start of each day, I list tasks under my task categories (possible tasks, today’s tasks, priority tasks, time blocking), and as I go through the day, I decide which tasks to work on and when to work on them.
“Increasingly, I realise I’m happier, but also more productive and creative, when the structured, scheduled, willpower-based parts of my day are balanced by opportunities to do, in that moment, what it is that I feel like doing.”
Oliver Burkeman, The Imperfectionist: The Right Dose of Self-Discipline
When I decide to work on a task, I drag the task over to the calendar, and NotePlan automatically establishes a time block with it. It’s an approach to time blocking that focuses on setting an end time to work on a task, and creating a visual record of my tasks. Instead of setting an appointment to work on a task with a time block, I’m creating a record of when I worked on it. This is useful when I do reviews and want to quickly see what I worked on the past week.
Reviewing Your Progress: Weekly, Monthly, and Quarterly Check-Ins
Weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews are an integral part of the Productivity Field Guide system. In fact, David Sparks has said that his experience in teaching this material the past year is that the people who succeed in the system are those who do the weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews and those who do not do the reviews eventually drop the system..
NotePlan includes built-in slots for all review levels. They’re easy to access from the upper left panel above the note and the calendar. You can also use templates for reviews.
I use templates almost identical to those in the Productivity Field Guide. I draft templates for each review level, and I can edit them to make changes as I wish.
I set up these templates in NotePlan to automatically insert custom templates into the weekly, monthly, and quarterly locations. When it’s time to perform a review, I click on the appropriate week, month, or quarter, and the appropriate template appears.
Keep It Simple, Keep It Effective
The more I use NotePlan, the more I appreciate how well it aligns with the Productivity Field Guide. The ability to keep all my tasks, notes, and planning tools in one place makes my workflow smoother and more intentional.
Too many productivity systems collapse under their own weight. NotePlan and the Productivity Field Guide strike a balance between structure and simplicity, making it easy to stay on track without endless tweaking. The goal isn’t to build the most complex system—it’s to create something that actually helps you get things done. And in that respect, this pairing delivers.
If you’re using the Productivity Field Guide, NotePlan is worth a serious look. It might be the missing piece in your productivity system. for more information about NotePlan, see my post Why I’m Making the Switch: A Two-Week Journey with NotePlan.
AI Note: I wrote this blog post myself, using my own words for the initial draft. I used AI only to suggest headlines, section headings, and improvements to the text.
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