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Keeping Track of All of Your Tasks?
An anonymous reader asks: "I work for a Fortune 500 Company as a Unix sysadmin and at any given time I may be working with 10 different project teams, each with their own milestones, tasks/to-dos, notes and reportable status. I'm constantly losing track of tasks that I need to do, notes I've taken and status reports that I've written. I've tried paper solutions, PDAs, Microsoft Project and groupware type stuff and nothing really seems designed to allow me to track mulitple project with mulitple tasks and to-dos as well as keep up with the status and notes that I generate from each of these tasks. How do you keep it all straight?"
keeping yourself organized in life takes some practice. most of all you at least have to try and stay organized rather than let something else (like a peice of software or a butler) keep it all organized for you.
first, you need basic organization skills and then maybe you will be ready to supplement those skills with software.
I've just finished reading David Allen's "Getting Things Done" http://www.davidco.com/ and it's remarkably tech-agnostic. You can achieve all of your requirements with paper and pen. I'd recommend getting a good solid view of WHAT you want to record, and how to arrange it before deciding on any kind of tech solution.
(Then jump straight to ShadowPlan... heh heh..)
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
I don't know if you have access to a windows machine, but seriously Outlook is awesome at this. I have a list of tasks, meetings and deadlines all in one place. I get reminders of when all these things are due and I can get a synopsis each morning of what my day is going to entail and what my upcoming deadlines are. Im sure people will tell you its insecure and all that jazz, but you should have many layers protecting you if youre at a large company. Outlook organizes my life.
Also eat healthy when you are dealing with a lot of stress. Diet can be as important as any new shiny peice of software in helping with memory.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
It sounds as if your problem isn't with technology - honestly, some to-do lists in Excel would be adequate - but with self discipline.
Any of these systems will help you, but it is imperative that you get into the habit of writing or entering details and logged items immediately when they happen or are brought to you.
I suspect that only half of what you need is being entered into MS Project or whatever system you have tried, with you relying on memory to fill in the gaps.
That seldom works well, especially when handling multiple complex projects.
Three Squirrels
Watch out. I just read the same book after my sister recommended it but when I posted my comments in response to a recent article some anonymous coward flamed me - apparently said coward seemed to think I was a shill.
As someone else commented, learning to organize takes practice and I do have a way to go but I have already seen a significant jump in my organization and productivity since I read the book a few months ago and started using some of its ideas.
As you say, it's "tech agnostic" - it's a book about concepts which can work well with your tool of choice (KOrganizer, Palm, Outlook, pencil and paper - whatever).
I found that I appreciated a book that didn't try to indoctrinate me into, say, the "Cult of Franklin" with planners, refills, tote-bags, Palm plugins, Outlook add-ons, binder-charms (whatever the hell they are) etc. It was upfront about saying, hey, if you aren't ready to change everything but just try an idea or two and find them helpful, that's great.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Personally, I've just started using KDE Kontact. It's simple and intuitive and has most of the features of outlook. There are some things it's missing for me (tasks blocking tasks and task delegation) but for those things I plan on rolling up my sleeves, implementing them and submitting a patch. I've never found a system that does everything I want, so my plan from this point on is to adopt an OSS tool and make it do what I want, that way I get what I need and everyone else benefits.
MS Project?! Man, you are sick! I suggest some time going cold turkey to make your hair un-pointy...
:) (And then be able to update it on the fly as they try to come up with creative solutions).
Heh, all well and good until your next project that has several thousand(!) discrete tasks spread out over several dozen people and at least another dozen or so checkpoints/milestones for integration with other projects that you, by the way, have no control over.
It's very nice to be able to print out a Gant chart that's about 10' by 10' so you can visually demonstrate to the powers that be why the promises they made cannot be fulfilled without changing the laws of physics.
But yeah, like the parent poster said, I wouldn't mind an OSX-compatible alternative to MS-Project myself!
You can't be on 10 teams, you can't report to 10 managers.
Unfortunately the OP could be reporting to 10 managers (or more). In a matrix organization (I work in one) you have a "line" manager, who owns you, and project managers who have money and hire you to do work. When the project is done, they "go out of business" and your line manager helps make sure there's more work in the pipeline. If I work on 2 projects, I have at least 3 bosses-- one line, and two project. If I worked on 10 projects I'd have 11 bosses.
In management classes they often teach that 10 (or even fewer, 5-7) is the maximum number of direct reports that even a good manager can handle effectively. And management is about getting other people to do the work.
If you're working on 10 projects at a time it means you may be reporting to multiple people (even if you're doing multiple projects for a couple different people), they may all want different reporting formats, they'll want to be meeting with you to get status of things, etc. The overhead of dealing with your customers can eat more a 40 hour work week before you've actually produced a single thing. You need to offload some of the work to other people (and then maybe manage them to make sure the work gets done).
All that said, I use a combination of simple things that work for me.
- each project (or major element of a project) gets its own folder/directory. I leave these on sort by date.
- every time I change a file (I don't write software-- I do system engineering for space things, and sometimes tech development)) I give it a new filename that includes the date (sort by date makes this redundant, but when sending files out it makes it clear to people which is most recent)
- each project gets its own mailbox directory, with a filter to a general box, and specific filters for key people to put them into their own named boxes (people I report to get their own mailbox)
- If I'm actually responsible for a lot of organization, I give a project a single excel notebook with a lot of sheets. Each meeting that happens regularly gets its own sheet for notes, there's a sheet for project requirements, sheet for contact information, sheet for schedule, sheets for trades, etc. excel isn't perfect, but it's flexible enough that it works.
- I keep track of action items and things like that with electronic stickies (on my mac), and group them by project. Anal people freak when they see my desktop, but it works for me. My paper desktop is similar (but being phased out), and I can always find things quickly.
- any request/issue/anything that I can resolve right when I see it (unless it's clearly worthy of ignoring) I respond to and pop it off the stack. One less thing to think about.
My company has actually been gradually developing some simple but useful (and useful primarily because they're so simple) web based tools for things like status reporting and action item tracking. It's not universal, but many project people have someone (the same someone) set up a web page that lets various people put in their status (and sends them email reminders), and then it emails it out.