The Anatomy of a POA

It's been a while (3 years?) since I used an Excel version of my own POA, but that's the "standard" that most others use, so far as I know. So I'm going to take a few moments (ok, it will probably take me upwards of an hour, let's be honest) and see if I can't 'splain a few things for the uninitiated and/or confuzzled. :)

This is the front page of version 7. Yeah, I got all fancy and started issuing version numbers when I made changes. V7, 7.1, 7.1.2, 8, etc. 7 is the one I believe is closest to what most others have adopted. Later versions tended to be specialized for use with another program and are not user-friendly as a stand-alone form. Have I lost you yet?

Anyway, this front page is what would generally get posted to PCC. At the top are point totals carried over from other sheets (which we'll look at in a moment). The orange section headers break down personal, irregular tasks by type: phone calls, errands, mail, shopping, etc. This is where anything that wasn't daily, weekly, or a challenge would go, all the miscellaneous stuff that comes up. The box at the bottom tallies all the points for the day, as well as the week to date and month to date and year to date, along with the point goals for those periods.

The other tabs across the bottom are like storage places for recurring tasks so they don't clutter up the front page. For instance, this shot is the Daily tab (scrolled a little way down to show more of the headings). I'm a compartmentalizer. I like grouping tasks in some way, so here I have daily cleaning together, computer tasks together, the kids' jobs (that I would need to at least check if not remind and/or supervise), PDC items, etc. The total points earned on this page are then listed on the front page on the Daily line.

Here's as good a place as any to talk about points and formulas. The far left column contains the point value that each task is worth. Red numbers mean the task is repeatable and the number is how many points for each time - like making beds, x points per bed. The second column is the item itself. Third is where you would record when something was completed. The default setting is "**done" for a non-repeatable task and a number for the number of times a repeatable task was done. The fourth column then would look at column 3, and if there's anything there it would know what point total to enter, and this is the column that is totaled for the day.

Other tabs work a little differently. This one, for instance, shows the PCC list. While the PDC was different each day, almost all the tasks repeated eventually if not regularly. Rather than writing them each day, I ke

pt a running list of them. Then as the PDC was issued I would highlight the appropriate items and record completion for the day.

This BMH tab (and TMT next to it) is somewhere in between the Daily and PDC tabs in purpose. These are weekly tasks from the PDC that were regular a

nd merited their own permanent place. As with all the tabs the total is reported on the front page on the BMH line, which I would simply hide when it wasn't Monday.

FBB Tasks were just like PCC Tasks but for another, now-defunct, group. Projects were ongoing multi-hour items that would not be "finished" in a single day but time was tracked and points awarded based on progress. Resolutions were similar to Projects, based on my goals for the year. PCCX and SGP were like BMH and TMT, recurring groups of tasks that were only applicable at certain times - in this case seasonally.

The last tab, Annual, tracked progress month-by-month. At the end of each month I'd copy the total to this page to compare to previous months and/or years. This is also where I got the year-to-date total for the front page.

Without going into specific formulas, I think that about covers it. :)