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?"

Comments

Plan first, tech after

[MadChicken]

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..)

Discipline

[rueger]

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.

Re:Get some Ginkgo

[Trepalium]

Sometimes it's just good to simply acknowledge that you have more work than you can handle. Often the best tactic for handling stress is avoiding unnecessary stress, and if you have so many projects on the go that you need a complex project management system to manage your tasks only, then you probably have a lot of unnecessary stress. Chances are, you're doing this to yourself.