I talked about planning wallpaper recently on Focused. I’ve been doing this for a few months now and find it a good way for me to keep my big projects rolling. All of these items are already in my calendar. I know these dates in my head. I think about these plans all the time. Nevertheless, the reason I go to the trouble of putting this on my desktop is to give me a nudge when I need it most. As part of my monthly review process, I open the file, delete the past month, move the others around, and add a new month to the end so I’ve got an updated planning wallpaper heading into the new month. I have multiple monitors but just keep this on my iMac, center screen.
The quote at the top is from my friend, Merlin Mann on one of his podcasts. (I have no idea which one.) I first saw it in a wallpaper designed by Chase Reeves (but I can’t find it anymore). Regardless, it still inspires me when I’m feeling the resistance. Merlin does have a knack for words. I used a chisel because I felt that was the tool that best represents the sentiment. If you wanted to modernize it, a jackhammer could also work. Grin
Several folks asked me to share the wallpaper so here is a version of it. I’ve included the OmniGraffle project below. If you spent a little time on it, you could recreate something like it with Preview, but it’d be more work. Rather than make this a full sized desktop wallpaper, this is actually much smaller. I just center it on the screen and then, on my Mac, match the background color of the rest of the desktop to match the background of the text. Enjoy.
Planning Wallpaper OmniGraffle File
