I watched the videos at Amazon again and also discovered some blogs that focus on the Kindle. I knew that the Kindle had wireless access for downloading books and other content, but I didn’t know that it had a browser built into it that would allow the user to check email, weather, go to Wikipedia, and do a lot of other things online.

That $359 price tag had been the biggest thing holding me back, and although the browser is limited, it was the tipping point that pushed me into making the purchase. I’ll be using this for business activities so the price is tax deductable; that essentially brings the price down to around $269. If I buy 10 books this year for $9.99 (or less) that would have been around $20 (or more) then I’ll have spent $100 less than normal; that brings the price down to around $169. At this price point, it’s becoming more palatable to me. I also have an unlimited wireless Internet plan for my Verizon Samsung SCH-i760 Windows Mobile phone. I use it mostly to check email, weather, flight status, research on wikipedia, and stuff like that. I looked at the megabyte usage on my bill and realized that I’m not using a great deal as long as I’m not downloading programs or large graphics to my phone. If I can drop my ~$50/month unlimited data plan on my phone and just use the $1.99/Mb plan when I really do need to access something online via my phone, I can probably divert the funds I would have spent there to pay for the remainder of Kindle in about 4 months or less. After that, the Kindle will actually be profitable for me in that I will be spending less ongoing.

There is a 30-day window in which I can return the Kindle. I’m certainly going to put it through its paces over the next few weeks. Here are my thoughts so far:

What I Don’t Like So Far

• I wish the background was closer to white. It’s kind of a light gray mixed with beige sort of background and I would like to have more of a contrast.
• I was hoping that since I have several options for font size, I wouldn’t need my now-that-I’m-over-40 reading glasses. I probably wouldn’t outside in sunlight, but inside I still need them. That’s not a down side of the device, just a commentary on how my current eyesight interacts with it.
• The devices seems just a little slower than I would expect on page turns. This may be due more to the current state of digital ink technology than the Kindle itself.
• The browser needs quite a bit of improvement. I may post another post later on my ideas for it. Currently it’s at least as good as Internet Explorer Mobile on a Windows Mobile device though, so it it’s still quite usable. Amazon says this is an experimental feature though and I expect it will improve over time.
• The 5-way controller seems a little weak to me. It may be much stronger than I think, but it just doesn’t have a good feel to it. We’ll see how it does over time.
• I wish it had a backlight for night-time reading. Amazon recommends a book light like one might use with a printed book, but I think a backlight just makes more sense.

What I Like So Far

• I didn’t like the way it looked in the pictures. Many reviewers said that it looked better in real life and it just wasn’t photogenic. I can attest to this fact. It really is a nice looking device when you hold it in your hand.
• It has a good feel to it. It’s not ultra-light, but it isn’t heavy by any means. It has a good solid feel in your hands. The metal back may contribute to this as well. When I saw it in pictures, I didn’t like the placement of the buttons. In actual usage they are exactly where they need to be though.
• The antialiasing of the fonts is really good and it appears much like a regular printed page. Since printed media is usually 300 dots-per-inch resolution and the 3-1/2″ x 4-3/4″ and 600×800 screen means it’s only at about 170 dots-per-inch I’m really surprised.
• Being able to browse the Amazon Kindle store, purchase, and download a book in less than a minute is really nice. By the way, my first book is Making it All Work by David Allen.
• I’ve been reading eBooks for probably 9 years now (my first real eBook reading experience was on my Palm IIIx) and I can certainly say that the Kindle is the best experience I’ve had so far.
• I’ve done a lot of reading in bed on Palm and Windows mobile devices. I find that the Kindle is much easier to hold while laying down. With mobile devices, my hand would frequently get cramps or my arm would frequently tired from the way that I had to hold the device. That doesn’t seem to be a problem with the Kindle so far.
• I really like having the built-in dictionary and Wikipedia access. Being able to instantly access other information and resources is very helpful when reading, but I don’t enjoy reading longer works when I’m sitting at my computer with a full browser and web access.
• I’ve only experimented with the text-to-speech, but I think it’s going to be a valuable feature. The technology isn’t perfect and still sounds mechanical, but it’s not bad and I’m sure it will improve over time as well. With many of these things I keep having to remind myself of this fact in light that i’m an early adopter. A few months ago when I was working with a personal coach in a Brian Tracy program I had the audio CDs and a manual with the text. I found that it was helpful for me to read along with someone else instead of just reading on my own. The mechanical voice will help add this capability to much of my reading now.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ve probably missed some things I wanted to say, but I’ll try to catch those in a future post.

You may remember that one of the reasons I started using TiddlyWiki was because I wanted to be able to reorganize my list items quickly. At first I did this by selecting each item with the mouse and then cutting it using keyboard shortcuts, re-positioning the cursor with the mouse, and then pasting it with a keyboard shortcut. If you do this very much, I think you will find the following very useful. The challenge is to get them deeply ingrained in your workflow. I would suggest trying to avoid the mouse or trackpad for a week and use these as much as possible for all your text navigating, selecting, and editing. You will find the trial well worth the effort.
Cut, Copy, and Paste:
CTRL-X – Cut the selected text to the clipboard
CTRL-C – Copy the selected text to the clipboard
CTRL-V – Paste the clipboard to the current cursor position

Undo and Redo:
CTRL-Z – Undo the last editing command
CTRL-Y – Redo the last undo command

Navigating Text:
HOME: Move cursor to the beginning of the current line
END: Move the cursor to the end of the current line
CTRL-HOME: Move the cursor the very beginning of the current text field.
CTRL-END: Move the cursor to the very end of the last line of the current text field.
PAGE UP: Moves the cursor up the same number of lines as is displayed in the textarea.
PAGE DOWN: Moves the cursor down the same number of lines as is displayed in the textarea.
UP ARROW: Move the cursor up one line to the current horizontal cursor position. If the current horizontal position doesn’t exist, the cursor will move to the end of the line.
DOWN ARROW: Move the cursor down one line to the current horizontal cursor position. If the current horizontal position doesn’t exist, the cursor will move to the end of the line.
LEFT ARROW: Moves the cursor one character to the left.
RIGHT ARROW: Moves the cursor one character to the right.
CTRL RIGHT ARROW: Moves the cursor one word to the right, placing the cursor before the first letter of the next word.
CTRL LEFT ARROW: Moves the cursor one word to the left, placing the cursor before the first letter of the previous word.

Selecting Text:
SHIFT-HOME: Selects all text from the cursor to the beginning of the current line
SHIFT-END: Selects all text from the cursor to the end of the current line
SHIFT-CTRL-HOME: Selects all text from the cursor the very beginning of the current text field.
SHIFT-CTRL-END: Selects all text from the cursor to the very end of the last line of the current text field.
SHIFT-PAGE UP: Selects all text from the cursor up the same number of lines as is displayed in the textarea.
SHIFT-PAGE DOWN: Selects all text from the cursor down the same number of lines as is displayed in the textarea.
SHIFT-UP ARROW: Selects all text from the cursor up one line to the current horizontal cursor position. If the current horizontal position doesn’t exist on that line, the cursor will selects all text from the end of the line.
SHIFT-DOWN ARROW: Selects all text from the cursor down one line to the current horizontal cursor position. If the current horizontal position doesn’t exist on that line, the cursor will Selects all text to the end of the line.
SHIFT-LEFT ARROW: Selects one character to the left of the cursor.
SHIFT-RIGHT ARROW: Selects one character to the right of the cursor.
SHIFT-CTRL RIGHT ARROW: Selects all characters from the cursor to the first letter of the next word.
SHIFT-CTRL LEFT ARROW: Selects all characters from the cursor to the first letter of the previous word.

TiddlyWiki Specific:
CTRL-ENTER: Closes and accepts changes to the current tiddler being edited.
ESCAPE: Closes and discards changes to the current tiddler being edited.

If you have other useful keyboard shortcuts for manipulating text (either in TiddlyWiki or any other textarea field) that I’ve missed here, please post a comment to let me know.

You’ll notice in the example below 4 things:

• Dated: I always try to write today’s date in top right-hand corner. This lets the recipient know that I’m aware of when I sent it. It’s also a note for them of how long a particular item has been open.
• Recipient’s Name: I get stuff sent to me that doesn’t really belong to me. Some of it is sent by accident. By including my intended recipient’s name I know they will eventually get it even if it gets routed to someone else.
• Clear and Direct Action: Briefly describe exactly what the recipient needs to do for you. This keeps them from having to think about it. Even if they don’t do GTD, they still have a definite next action.
• My Name: I absolutely hate getting inter-office mail and I don’t know who sent it. Let people know who to contact if they have questions.
• My Phone Extension: If I’m sending to someone via inter-office mail then they are probably doing something for me (or I’m returning something that I worked on or them). If they have any questions, I want to make it as easy as possible for them to contact me. By including my extension on the note, I save the recipient from having to spend time looking it up.

Once I’ve sent something out, I need to track the fact that I’m waiting on someone else to do something. In TiddlyWiki I have a tiddler called @WorkWaiting. All of the items that I am waiting for are in this one tiddler. I use a bullet point for each item, the subject is bold, and my notes are superscripted. Here is some sample code:

*''Bob: Review eNewsletter''
^^I sent to him via interoffice mail on 12/13.^^

And it appears like this when I view it.

Here are a few notes about how I handle Waiting For items:

• All In One Tiddler: I see no need to keep a separate tiddler for each item I’m waiting for. They are easier to handle if they are all in one. (I have kept this example down to just one for the sake of brevity.)
• Start with the Contact: The first thing in the item is the name of the person or company that I’m waiting on followed by a colon.
• What I’m Waiting On: The name is followed by a short statement of exactly what I asked the person to provide.
• Notes:My first note is always when I made the request and the method (conversation, phone call, voice mail, email, IM, inter-office, etc…) that I used to make the request. As I get correspondence from my contact about the request, I’ll update my notes. For example, Bob may email that he will be traveling on Thursday and plans to review this on the plane. I’ll add that to the notes. When he gets it back to me he may only have reviewed part of it. I’ll note that and send it back to him to finish—making a note for myself of when I returned it and why.

So, there’s not a lot of magic or heavy duty logic in this, but I think you’ll find a lot of common sense and courtesy. If you have ideas for improving on either of these, please leave a comment.

Note: I don’t know how much more TiddlyWiki stuff I’ll post here, but I have added a TiddlyWiki category for those of you who are primarily interested in how I use TiddlyWiki. I’ll be tagging all my previous TiddlyWiki related entries with this category. Hopefully it won’t add them all to the RSS feeds again. My apologies if it does.


|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc): !2 0 0 6 |
|>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!January| |>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!February| |>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!March|
|1|2|3|4|5|6|7| | | | |1|2|3|4| | | | |1|2|3|4|
|8|9|10|11|12|13|14| |5|6|7|8|9|10|11| |5|6|7|8|9|10|11|
|15|16|17|18|19|20|21| |12|13|14|15|16|17|18| |12|13|14|15|16|17|18|
|22|23|24|25|26|27|28| |19|20|21|22|23|24|25| |19|20|21|22|23|24|25|
|29|30|31| | | | | |26|27|28| | | | | |26|27|28|29|30| | |
|>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!April| |>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!May| |>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!June|
| | | | | | |1| | |1|2|3|4|5|6| | | | | |1|2|3|
|2|3|4|5|6|7|8| |7|8|9|10|11|12|13| |4|5|6|7|8|9|10|
|9|10|11|12|13|14|15| |14|15|16|17|18|19|20| |11|12|13|14|15|16|17|
|16|17|18|19|20|21|22| |21|22|23|24|25|26|27| |18|19|20|21|22|23|24|
|23|24|25|26|27|28|29| |28|29|30|31| | | | |25|26|27|28|29|30|
|30| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!July| |>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!August| |>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!September|
| | | | | | |1| | | |1|2|3|4|5| | | | | | |1|2|
|2|3|4|5|6|7|8| |6|7|8|9|10|11|12| |3|4|5|6|7|8|9|
|9|10|11|12|13|14|15| |13|14|15|16|17|18|19| |10|11|12|13|14|15|16|
|16|17|18|19|20|21|22| |20|21|22|23|24|25|26| |17|18|19|20|21|22|23|
|23|24|25|26|27|28|29| |27|28|29|30|31| | | |24|25|26|27|28|29|30|
|30|31| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!October| |>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!November| |>|>|>|>|>|>|bgcolor(#cccccc):!December|
|1|2|3|4|5|6|7| | | | |1|2|3|4| | | | | | |1|2|
|8|9|10|11|12|13|14| |5|6|7|8|9|10|11| |3|4|5|6|7|8|9|
|15|16|17|18|19|20|21| |12|13|14|15|16|17|18| |10|11|12|13|14|15|16|
|22|23|24|25|26|27|28| |19|20|21|22|23|24|25| |17|18|19|20|21|22|23|
|29|30|31| | | | | |26|27|28|29|30| | | |24|25|26|27|28|29|30|
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |31| | | | | | |


I designed this purely as a reference without links to Tiddlers for the days or the months. I don’t use it as much as I expected, however, but you might use it more than I do, so…Enjoy!

Here is how the TiddlyWiki markup looks (I’ve removed a lot of items for this example):


!Date: Week#49 - 12/04/05 through 12/10/05
!!!!Role: Sharpen the Saw
*''Physical:'' Avoid sweets and walk each morning @@color(purple): @@
*''Social/Emotional:'' Have lunch with Bert @@color(purple): @@
*''Mental:'' Read //Organizing from the Inside Out// each morning @@color(purple): @@
*''Spiritual:'' Read //With Christ in the School of Prayer// each morning @@color(purple): @@

!!!!Role: Web Designer
*Design Client ABC site for approval. @@color(purple): @@

!!!!Role: Web Programmer
*Mindmap XYZ Program @@color(purple): @@
*Write Stored Procedures for XYZ Program @@color(purple): @@

!!!!Role: Husband
*Give Sandy a massage @@color(purple): @@

!!!!Role: Sunday School Teacher
*Read part of lesson each day @@color(purple): @@
*Finalize lesson plan by Saturday @@color(purple): @@

!!!!Role: Blogger
*Post five new articles @@color(purple): @@


And here is how it looks in use (reduced by 75%):

The Weekly Compass is the default tiddler that I see when I open my TiddlyWiki. This keeps me reminded of what is actually most important and helps keep me from getting distracted by the urgent but less important things. I also review it as I do my daily planning. It is part of my processing check list each evening.

You are probably wondering what all the extra “purple” tags are for. As I am doing my weekly review, I evaluate how successful I was at “sharpening the saw” and accomplishing my big rocks. Before I move the Weekly Compass to my archive TiddlyWiki, I place notes about those things in green. This helps me to see where I need improvement. Those notes look like this:

To layout the tiddler, I use a heading format for the sections. Each next action is a bulleted item underneath one of these section headings. Here is how the TiddlyWiki markup looks (I’ve removed a lot of items for this example):


!A - Must Do

!B - Should Do

!C - Could Do

!Master Task List
*Read 48 Days newsletter
*Change HVAC Filter
*Print and Mail Invoices
*Plan Connecting People Time Management Class
*Upgrade BackupBuddy VFS
*Upgrade NoteStudio
*Start reading Snow Crash
*Blog about my integrated Covey/GTD/Tiddlywiki system
*Blog about my Tickler tiddler
*Blog about my Home Task tiddler

!Completed
''Sunday''
*Get and Distribute new Sunday School literature
*Do WeeklyReviewAndPlan[++Sunday]
*Clip fingernails
*Blog about Covey Focus seminar

''Monday''

''Tuesday''

''Wednesday''

''Thursday''

''Friday''

And here is how it looks in use (reduced by 75%):

Each evening as I plan my next day, I move all my incomplete next actions under the Master Task List section. I look over them and choose a few things that I deem to be most important and move them under the “A – Must Do” heading. Then I choose a few more that are the next most important and move them under the “B – Should Do” heading. Finally, I’ll choose a few more and move them under the “C – Could Do” heading. Everything else stays under the Master Task List category.

During the day I endeavor as much as possible to complete all the items on my “A” list and at least some of the items on my “B” list. I’ll get to the “C” list items if I can.

How do I know which things are most important? I determine those during my weekly review and plan on Sunday morning and add them to my “Weekly Compass” tiddler. I’ll blog about that later.

During the day I will occassionally do tasks from my “Master Task List” as dictated by my context, time available, energy available, and priority—so in that respect I’m true to this aspect of GTD.

As I complete things, I move them to the completed section at the bottom for the particular day of the week that I completed them. This comes in handy for the weekly review to see if I have any open loops that I have overlooked.

My Tickler tiddler works almost exactly like a desktop folder tickler file—I still use a desktop tickler file too for paper based reminders. The Tickler tiddler has replace the dated and repeating tasks that I used to do in Outlook, Palm Desktop, and DateBk5.

To layout the tiddler, I use a heading format for the month names and the days of the months, to correspond to the tabs on a file folder based tickler file. Each tickler item is a bulleted item underneath one of the headings. Here is how the TiddlyWiki markup looks (I’ve removed a lot of items for this example):


!30
*Do HomePreFlightChecklist[++daily]

!31

!December
*(2006)Renew drivers license

!1
*Change HVAC Filter[++1st day of month]
*Print and Mail Invoices[++1st day of month]

!2

!3
*Change bed linnens and flip/rotate mattress[++Saturday]
*Check HotMail.com email[++Saturday]
*Check Gmail.Google.com email[++Saturday]
*Read all Yahoo.com email[++Saturday]
*Record Vehicle Mileages[++Saturday]

!4
*Do WeeklyReviewAndPlan[++Sunday]
*Backup PC[++Sunday]

!5
*Give Heart Worm Pill to Muffin[5th day of month]

!6

!7

!8

!9

!10

!11

!12

!13

!14

!15

!16

!17

!18

!19

!20

!21

!22

!23

!24

!25

!26

!27

!28
*Transfer payment to Visa[++monthly on 28th]

!29

!January
*1/1 Change Toothbrush[++Quarterly]
*1/1 File state Sales and Use Tax[++Quarterly]
*Find out when Battlestar Galactica starts again

!February

!March

!April

!May
*Change oil in mowers[++annually]
*Check air filter in mowers[++annually]

!June

!July

!August

!September
*Get Ranger inspected[++annually]

!October

!November


And here is how it looks in use (reduced by 50%):

Each evening, I open my Tickler tiddler in edit mode, copy everything for the next day and paste it into my Home Task List tiddler. Once I’ve done that I have a little work to do in the Tickler tiddler. Anything that repeats has its frequency in square brackets. I copy those to the next date that I want it to show up. If something doesn’t repeat again, I simply delete it. Once there is nothing listed under the heading for today’s date, I cut that heading and paste it into the sequence below the previous days date, just like I would move a file folder in a desktop tickler file.

In the example above, I will copy the task from the 30th for “Do HomePreFlightChecklist[++daily]” and paste it into my Home task tiddler. Then I will cut it from it’s location and paste it under the heading for the 1st. (The 30th is the last day of November so I don’t want to see that task again until the 1st.)

On December 1st I will see “(2006)Renew drivers license”. I don’t need to see this until December 2006 so I’ll just leave it with the heading and copy it down to the bottom of the file after the November heading.

I will also copy the two tasks from under the 1st heading “Change HVAC Filter[++1st day of month]” and “Print and Mail Invoices[++1st day of month]” and paste them in my Home task tiddler. I will then cut them and paste them and their heading below the “January” heading.

You probably have the hang of this now. Items marked “[++Saturday]” will be pasted under the date heding for the next Saturday date, on Saturday. Items marked “[++Sunday]” will be pasted under the date heading for the next Sunday date, on Sunday. And so on…

One of the things that I always wanted with my Palm task list was to have new items show up on the list on a certain day, but not show up as dated for that day. I just wanted them to appear then. This system allows me to do that quickly and easily. The steps above may sound like a lot of work, but in practice it takes less than 30 seconds, typically, even for days with a large number of repeating tasks.

I quit using alarms on my Palm tasks a long time ago as I realized that having alarms on my tasks just meant that I really didn’t trust my system. Life is much simpler without them. Alarms on appointements are still a great thing, however.

Next, I’ll describe how I use my Home Task list tiddler.

I still synch my Palm T5 at work to Outlook and at home to Palm desktop. I still use it for everything I always have, but just not for task managment—at least, not the way I used to. My Palm is still always with me as my ubiquitous idea capturing tool—Memo Pad is great for that. I use iSilo to convert my TiddlyWiki RSS feed so if I need access to my lists away from a desktop, I still have them. I’m still hoping for a Palm OS browser that will open a local HTML file, and interpret enough JavaScript to allow me to edit TiddlyWiki in the browser and save it back again. This system is working fine for now since I’m usually either at a desktop or laptop computer.

You may remember from previous posts that I’ve always tried to keep separate task systems for work and home. I do this becuase I don’t want my side businesses to interfere with my full-time job and vice versa. I started out with one TiddlyWiki file that had all my stuff in it but over the last few weeks I split it up into 4 separate files: Work, WorkArchive, Home, HomeArchive. During my weekly review, I paste my completed tasks and my Weekly Compass tiddler into the appropriate archive file. If I need anything I’ll know where to find it.

I’ve deleted all the unnecessary informational tiddlers—no use to wait on the computer to save information I don’t really need. My primary tiddlers in my Home Wiki are: Home Tasks, HomeWaiting, HomeSomedayMaybe, HomeProjects, HomePreFlightChecklist, Errands, WeeklyCompass, and GoverningValues. In the coming days, I’ll explain more about how I use these individual tiddlers, or lists.

I had tried and failed at the Covey system several times in the past. The primary tool in this system is The Productivity Pyramid. This is a theoretical four-level pyramid. From bottom to top, the levels are: Identitify Values, Set Goals, Plan Weekly, and Plan Daily. I think that I had failed at this in the past because there was just so much clutter at what David Allen calls the runway and 10,000-foot levels. With that now all well under control, I have the clarity that is necessary to use the Productivity Pyramid.

I attribute the rest of my success with the new methodologies to the hands-on use of a FranklinCovey Planning System. Yes, they gave us an actual paper system with binders and all the planning pages. In class we saw examples of how to use the system and we also started writing things in our own planning pages. Although I knew that I wouldn’t actually use the paper planner, I did realize that I needed to find a way to implement parts of this system electronically. I chose to use a highly customized configuration of the GTD TiddlyWiki–goodbye DateBk5 on my Palm for task management.

My weekly review has become a weekly review and plan time and it has undergone a major makeover as well. As I was doing my weekly review and plan today, I realized that I hadn’t made a blog posting in nearly 4 months. I’ve set a priority for this week to write about my new system and how it’s working for me. I hope you find the posts this week very empowering.

At the same time, however, I realize that there are times when paper is just more efficient. For example, I seem to be more productive when I work from a printed next actions list than when I work from one on my monitor or my Palm.

When I absolutely have to have something on paper, I usually prefer it to be digest sized (8-1/2″ X 5-1/2″). (I don’t have a good reason for this, I just prefer that size.)

Many years ago (May 6th-8th, 1999) to be exact, I developed 16 Word templates that would print digest sized booklets for me. Over the years, I”ve used these countless times. I’ve shared them with friends and co-workers, but I’ve never thought about publishing them. I had to use one this past weekend and thought that I might as well share them with the world. With most printer drivers these days offering 2-up printing you may not find them as useful as I did 6 years ago. I still find that they are quite handy to have around.

The WordBookletTemplates.zip file contains Microsoft Word templates for 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, and 32 page booklets, with and without page numbers (16 templates in all). I think I developed these with Microsoft Word 97 and I’ve never made any changes to them. They use a series of text boxes that flow from one to the other to get the text where it is supposed to be in the booklet.

To use them, simply start a new document based on the template of choice and start typing (or paste your text) into the text box on the right hand side of the first page. The text will flow to fill all the other pages as needed. To understand this better, you may find it useful to start with one of the templates with page numbers. If you shrink the page size down so that you can view all the pages, it may appear that your text is all over the place. Don’t panic! That’s normal, and there is a reason for it.

Make sure your printer has 8-1/2″ X 11″ paper in it. If your printer does duplexing, simply print your document. If your printer doesn’t offer duplexing, then it will be a simple 3-step process for you: 1) Print out all the odd numbered pages; 2) When they are done, reverse the sort order of the pages [This may vary by printer model and settings]; 3) Print out all the even numbered pages on the back of the odd numbered pages. Once all your pages have printed, simply fold them in half. The pages will be set up so that they will form a properly numbered series of pages from beginning to end.

Once the pages are printed, I use a long reach stapler to bind them together. (I omit this step on the 4-page booklet because it’s only one piece of paper, of course.)

Oh, they seem to work in OpenOffice.org too! Enjoy!

Update (Nov. 3, 2006): So many people have asked me to create custom size templates for them that I have decided to start offering this service. The standard templates that are linked to above will remain free, but for $49 I will create custom size templates for you in all 16 variations: 4-, 8-, 12-, 16-, 20-, 24-, 28-, and 32-page booklets with and without page numbers. I will need to get some information from you about your specific requirements within the available options. Email me at rickyspears@gmail.com if you are interested in purchasing custom Microsoft Word Booklet Templates.