Goal and Time Management - Daisho Blacksmith

Goal/Project Management

With DAISHO you capture, plan, structure and track your Goals/Projects. Goals/Projects have to be concrete and measurable.

You can allocate your goals/projects to topics or clusters (Contexts). The allocation of your goals/projects to contexts improves your structuring and organization. You can divide your main goals/projects into subgoals/subprojects, because small steps make the goal/project achievement easier.

With DAISHO you can easily set and manage your goals/projects.

Time Management

With DAISHO you can plan your Time roughly and in detail with Time Budgeting. You can manage your appointments and tasks easily. You can allocate your daily activities to contexts and goals.

Concepts

What is a Context

Contexts are topics or clusters. They are used to classify and sum up goals, activities and projects in groups. Contexts do not have a hierarchical order. With contexts it's easier for you to organize yourself and structure your time. Contexts give a good overview as well.

Examples:

Customer A
Customer B
Project A
Acquisition
Administration
Further education

You can weight contexts by time as well as you can pre structure the week through the allocation to specific days in the calendar. As a planning instance they help to bring the daily activities together with the mid- and long-time planning.

Using the contexts function you can individually give access to your calendar details by granting access rights to different users

What is a Timeslot

Using time budgeting, you can block time periods for specific topics (Contexts). With that you plan your activities roughly.

Timeslots give you the possibility to budget time for your topics (e.g. projects, administrative). They are helpful for structuring yourself. Furthermore, the timeslots show you if you are spending your time as you planned.

What is the difference between Time Budget and Schedule

Time Budget

Budgeting is a roughly planning instance. Time budgeting allows you to reserve time blocks for contexts. You can define how many hours per week or month you want to save for one context for roughly planning. With DAISHO, you can allocate budgets over a timeline.

Schedule

Scheduling is more precise planning. You can assign the budgets to special days and specify the duration of one timeslot.

What is the Graphical view for Time Budget/Schedule

The target-performance comparison matches the original roughly planning (Time budget) with the detailed weekly planning (Scheduled).

Here you see how consistent your time allocation for your time budgets (roughly planning) is with your detailed allocation of your time budgets for particular days and hours (detailed planning). If the bars of the same colors in Budget and Schedule, related to the same week, have the same height, it shows that, your planning has been consistent.

Changes can be made in the Schedule view.

What are the Activity Types

There are 3 types of activities:

Meetings: Appointments
Tasks: To-do-items
Calls: Phone calls where you want to get a reminder
Whole day events: events that you want to get displayed in the event box like birthdays, holidays etc.

What are My Actions

In My Actions all scheduled activities are displayed.

You can change the display by selecting the type of activity, the time span, the context, the status and the priority.

With this selection, you see exactly the activities you are interested in at the moment.

What is Presence

Under Presence you can type in your location for example:

Office
Customer
Travel

You can distinguish between what is shown in public to those you share your calendar with by selecting Public Description and what is shown just to yourself with Private Description.

If you click Default Workdays the Presence will be set for all workweeks. If you click Default Weekends the Presence will be set for all weekends. For exceptions just click on the day where you want to set a different Presence

What are Goals/Projects

With DAISHO you capture, plan, structure and track your Goals/Projects. Goals/Projectshave to be concrete and measurable.

Tasks

How to create Goals/Projects

Create Main Goals/Projects

You are in the view Goals/Projects.
Click on the red plus icon with the target Add Goals/Projects or click on the right mouse button and select New Goal eg. New Project for creating a (new) goal/project.
A pop up window opens where you can type the name of your goal/project into Description.
In Measure type in the measure. This is the measure grade for your goal/project achievement.
For example if your goal/project is to Get 5 new customers, your measure could be signed contract.
Select the Due Date.
Then allocate your goal/project to a Context.
Press the OK button to save it.

Create Subgoals

To add a new Subgoal, just select the referring main goal and click on theNew Subgoal/Milestone icon or click on the right mouse button by choosing New Subgoal/Milestone.
In the pop up window you can see the selected main goal.
Then follow the same steps as in the creation of a main goal.

How to create a Context

To create a new Context go to the view Goals or Planning.
Click on New in the very left column.
A pop up window appears. Type in a Context name and choose a colour in the colour box.
By clicking on Save you create a new context.

How to create a Time Budget

Time Budgets are highly related to contexts. Using time budgeting you can block time periods for specific topics (contexts). With that you can plan your activities roughly and you can create time budgets for your contexts. With that you're planning in the mid-term.

You're in the view Planning.
Click on the Context in the left column for which you want to create a budget.
Then go to the tab Time Budget.
With the New button, you can set a new budget.
You can set a Start Date and End Date for your budget.
Enter the hours for your budget Budget (Hours). You can plan the budget on a Weekly or M0onthly basis.

How to Schedule

You're in the view Planning.
Click on the tab Scheduled.
Choose a day for which you want to create a timeslot. Then click the left mouse button, hold it and draw the timeslot at the chosen day. You can draw it as long as you want.
With a click on the right mouse button, you can change the context of the timeslot. There you see all existing contexts.
You can easily allocate the contexts and duration over the week. Furthermore, you can see your workload.

The timeslot also shows up in the Calendar View. You can edit it there as well.

How to create a Timeslot

There are several ways to create a timeslot. It is easy to create timeslots.

You are in the Calendar View Week

Choose a day for which you want to create a Timeslot.
Click the bar on the left (in the chosen time of day) to set the start time, then click on the left mouse button, hold it and draw the timeslot. Release the mouse button once you have reached the desired end time.
With a click on the right mouse button you can change the Context of the timeslot. There you see all existing contexts

If you want to set a timeslot for a new context, please go to the Calendar View Planning.

You are in the Calendar View Planning

Click on the tab Scheduled.
Choose a day for which you want to create a timeslot.
Then click the left mouse button, hold it and draw the Timeslot at the chosen day. You can draw it as long as you want.
With a click on the right mouse button you can change the Context of the timeslot. There you see all existing contexts. You can easily allocate the contexts and duration over the week. You can see your workload.

The timeslot shows up in the Calendar View. You can edit it there as well.

How to set new Activities

With DAISHO you can choose between Meetings, Tasks, Calls and Whole Day Events. You have an excellent overview.

How to Schedule a new Meeting

There are two ways to schedule a meeting:

Click on New Meeting on the Tool Bar to schedule a new meeting.

Click the right mouse button in the Calendar and select New Meeting.

Type in the Subject.
Then enter the Date as well as the Start Date and End Date time.
As a Reminder you can setup a specific time for the alarm. At the chosen time you can hear a sound or if you tick the Silent box a message on your screen appears.
Under Due you can setup an Early Warning before the reminder appears.
This function is useful if you want to be finished with e.g. some preparations at a specific time before the reminder and before the call itself.

General Tab

Allocate the call to a Context and a Goal.
Under Presence you can type in your location, for example Office, Travel, Customer or a city name.
Under Location you can type in the exact location like street or building.

Advanced Tab

The Advanced section allows you to setup a travel time before start and wrap up travel time after end.
With that function you can block the calendar during the travel time. This helps you to keep control.

Recurring Tab

If you want to set your call as recurring tick the box Repeat.
Then you can easily set how often and on which days the task shall recure. You can choose between daily, weekly, monthly or annually.

Contacts Tab

Click Edit.
A pop up window opens.
Select a contact who participates in the meeting by clicking on the contact's name.
Then click on the blue arrow, with that the contact goes to the right field.
Select as many contacts as you want to participate in this call.
Click OK to save the selection.