Over the years, I tried different ways of organizing my time and tasks, such as Personal Kanban, ‘personal Scrum’, GTD / Getting Things Done, PARA method, Theme/Epic/Story pattern from product management, and many tools, such as Trello, Asana, Todoist, Miro, ‘note-making’ apps (Apple Notes, Roam Research and Obsidian) and Google Calendar with reclaim.ai.
If I had to choose one of these, I would say Personal Kanban changed my life, but what has been working best for this past year is a personal solution combining different elements of different approaches.
I call it C-WOMF® – Certified Way of Milos Framework®.
Jokes aside, I obviously don’t have a name. Especially not trademarked.
But I am happy to tell you more about this personal approach I’ve built over the years, with early roots back in 2011 (!), when I started uni.
The 5 principles for organizing my life
These are the five principles that are important to me and that shaped the approach.
- Manage focus within the big picture
- Manage tasks at the ground level
- Navigate in time
- Document important bits
- Learn from doing (PDSA)
The main elements and tools
1. Manage focus within the big picture
I use elements inspired by (Personal) Kanban and PARA + Theme/Epic/Story.
Simply put, I visualize the main areas of focus and keep it above my monitor so it’s a reminder of what I’m focusing on.
Besides these focus areas, I have a very simple (Personal) Kanban on the wall by my workstation. For subjects at my PhD studies, so I know what I’m taking, who’s the professor, and what’s the status (TO DO year I or II, DOING and DONE) and what needs to be done to pass (e.g. write an article).
2. Manage tasks at the ground level
I use Obsidian for note-taking and ‘second brain’.
(This is a whole other system and story – let me know if you’d like me to write about it some other time)
Within Obsidian, at the start of each day, I write what I want to do that day, grouped under focus areas. (Precise) time is not in focus here (beyond the fact that I am doing it today). Priority is also not reflected by the order.
I also add colored emojis to reflect what’s done, partially done, not done, or delayed.
3. Navigate in time
If something has a deadline or needs to be done at a certain point in time, it goes into my Google Calendar.
e.g. meetings and calls, submitting a paper, etc. – I put it in my calendar.
I even have the time blocked for walking my dog.
I have multiple calendars (2 personal, 1 Toptal, 1 full-time work) and I manage them using reclaim.ai.
Additionally, which is also for learning – I timetrack everything I work on in the trackwell time tracker, which I vibe-coded in Lovable and is free forever 🙂
You can read more about trackwell in this blog post.
4. Document important bits
I have ‘second brain’ in Obsidian, but it’s a whole other story that needs a lot of space. Too much for this topic.
Beyond Obsidian, I have a daily journaling, with weekly, monthly and yearly reviews.
For the daily I answer 4-5 things (What I’ve done well, What I’ll do better tomorrow, What I’m grateful for, How did the day go, …)
For weekly review, I rate 4 focus areas (physycal health, mental health, work, learning); note progress on 1 habit; note optional comments; and write what gave me energy, what took my energy, what worries me, and what I’m grateful for.
It’s a somewhat simplified version of my weekly retrospective and review template from before.
For monthly review it depends/still shaping it up.
For the yearly, I’ll do something new this year.
Sidenote: My daily activity list from Obsidian and my calendar are logically also used as documents of history, not ‘just’ for planning.
5. Learn from doing (PDSA)
I use all documents and experiences to learn.
I am also trying tiny experiments, which is “a transformative guide to rethinking your approach to goals, creativity, and life itself from a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and creator of the popular Ness Labs newsletter” Anne-Laure Le Cunff.
Wrapping up
That’s the whole shebang.
If you’re curious about more details or anything – reach out in the comments or find me on LinkedIn or somewhere online.
p.s. All the best in 2026!
*1 Cover image, C-WOMF illustration, and the postcard are generated using GenAI
*2 “Planning with flexibility” is the name of a topic from the learning community NESS LABS. What actually inspired me to write this blog post