Keeping a work journal

Yes!  I am one of those people who really benefits from physically writing something down, and moving papers around.  Odd, since my job is highly digital.  I juggle so many tasks, and my day is so chaotic, that good ideas (or sometimes commitments I've made) will just fly by in the torrent of the day if I don't write them down and have a physical way to go back to them during down time.  Somehow the act of writing helps me to cement things in my brain, more effectively than typing does.  Plus there's the historical record you can refer back to, if things change, or things are put on the back burner for weeks at a time and then re-activate.
I did GTD for a while, but I easily fell into the trap of spending most of my time maintaining my lists versus actually working them.  Now, I've adapted it backward into something really old fashioned...  I have a physical work journal which looks a lot like my class notes from college.  If I have something I need to do personally, I'll put an "M" in the left column and circle it.  If I have something one of my team members has to do, I'll put their initials in the left column and circle it.  Then, and here's the really old fashioned, cringe-worthy part:  I'll put each small task of my own onto a post-it note, and each task for my team members on their page in my One on One binder. Something about having the physical notes to shuffle around, organize, and re-organize based on constantly shifting priorities really helps me, considerably more than having an excel sheet sorted by date or priority.  I don't know why it is, but it works for me.
Post back on February 1 and let us all know how your experiment works out!

I faithfully use the Getting Things Done protocols. I started on spreadsheets and now use an app called. Things. I have used these as a documentation of my productivity and to analyze where my time goes.

I've only been doing it for about a week. My biggest surprise has been how valuable it is reviewing my hand-written notes. I used to use all digital to-do lists, and I thought going to a paper system would introduce inefficiencies in recopying and searching for things. What I'm finding is that the recopying is by far the most valuable time I spend in the journal. It lets me review things I might have forgotten and puts each item in the context of when it was written (since it's on the page next to the other stuff happening at the same time). It's also helping me pay more attention in meetings. I think I can listen better while I'm writing than when I'm typing something into a computer.

Staples has a system called ARC which is like what Levenger sells but cheaper:  http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/arc/
I prefer this to the bound notebooks I used to use because if you buy the punch, you can add paper that is handed to you or printed and annotated.  My O3 notes go in the same ARC binder.  ARC is much thinner and classier than a three ring binder.  Every week or two I review the older pages, transfer to-do items to an electronic list I'm better at checking, and scan them for archival, so the book is always small and if I lose it - I haven't lost much.  Also scanning pages let's me file meeting notes electronically, in folders with other meeting or project items, etc.
I went from Franklin Covey, to all digital, back to paper (couldn't live without it) bound notebooks and finally to this ARC system.
Marinna