I use a paper notebook. Each page is a day, each line a concrete task.
Each morning, I copy the unfinished tasks to the new page. It means that I must acknowledge and reprioritise each of them. Every task is either done, discarded or copied over.
The page is a physical limitation to how much work I can take. It's a reminder of my own limits. I also need to re-read the list every few minutes to find an item.
With this simple system, things rarely got misplaced. Not even little things like updating tickets or answering specific emails.
Where do you keep the rest of the things that you need to do at some time? Like do you mainatin some other list of all the things that need/want to do, but not necessarily do today?
I hear about it once in a while, and it looks like the opposite of what I do. It has a book, a website, and a weirdly obsessed reddit community. It got the Agile treatment.
I just write stuff on paper, and write the date at the top of the page.
Lots of things, but almost always the same concept: Divisions of space. Not just "I'll remember to put that there," but making a place to put it. No "piles" allowed - a tray, binder, folder, bag or bin for everything, labels optional. Making spaces for different kinds of work, duplicating your workstation if necessary. "This is the type of place where I do X" is a powerful behavior shaping tool. This can also take the form of reconfiguring the same space in slightly different ways.
The computer can make a mess of organization simply because it's too easy to hide away everything and the system will oftentimes impose the method on you. Notes and documentation can help. Make a habit of daily self-talk, a "standup meeting for one" when you have a break. The exercise of speaking it aloud jogs the memory and creates a form of engagement that isn't had by thinking it or writing it. If done habitually you won't have to physically record much, because your priorities will remain stable day by day.
>Divisions of space ... Making spaces for different kinds of work, duplicating your workstation if necessary.
Absolutely right! The same concept applies (from behavioural psychology) to workspaces as a whole; eg. Do your work in a "study room" and not in a "bed room". Keep spatial spaces and their functionalities separate and your brain will automatically "switch modes" when you move from one to another.
I'm not normally a "woo woo" type person, but what helped the most was I just started referring to myself as organized to people I worked with. It honestly helped me a lot to become organized.
From the "tactics" point of view, the two biggest game changers for me have been quick capture and weekly review. A la David Allen's "Getting Things Done" or "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" (both absolute game changer books for me).
Whenever _any_ thought of something I should/need to do enters my head, I write it down in Trello on my phone. You could use the notes app, I just got used to Trello. This could be anything from a Youtube video idea, to needing to pick up paper towels from the super market.
Every Sunday I take everything from Trello and schedule it out into blocks of time into my Google Calendar. During the week I just execute whatever's in my calendar. Some of that is meetings, some of that is focused work blocks, I'll even have "Date with Girlfriend" or "Watch Rick and Morty" in my calendar. I've found scheduling out the "fun" stuff is just as important as scheduling out the "career" stuff, especially if you tend towards workaholism like I unfortunately do.
This means during the week I'm never thinking of what to do next. I just do whatever's on my calendar. If any thoughts come up I write them down, and the cycle repeats every week.
Tools don't matter in this example. Honestly, I'd be more "organized" if I cut out Trello and just wrote it in Notion since I use Notion for work more often, but I'm just so used to quick capturing with Trello I keep doing it. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
I can recommend reading a summary of Getting Things Done, not the book itself. All the good and relevant advice boils down to - make a habit of writing things down (to-dos and other ideas) and reviewing the things you have written down. Similarly with 7 Habits - it's a horrendous read. Look up a summary of the key ideas to see if something will click with you but don't waste your time with the book unless you really enjoy reading fictional self-congratulatory stories (presented as real) from people who are out of touch with reality.
Wow, never seen such a brutal put down of 7 Habits.
I kind of get where you’re coming from, but it was still one of the most impactful books I’ve ever read, by a mile. Not just for “working effectively” either, it’s really a book about living a good, balanced, purposeful life.
Also I would encourage people to listen to at least one of Stephen Covey’s narrated audiobooks (7 Habits or First Things First). The guy was full of wisdom, authenticity and compassion, and you can hear it in his voice. Not to mention the subject matter (in my opinion) is solid gold.
Yes his books were a bit wordy but they’re still very much worth a read (or listen) IMHO.
I create a list every morning. I'm switching tools from time to time, but the system is the same (currently using Bear on macOS, but trying Joplin for cross platform, before that I used TaskPaper which is really a great tool because of how simple it is).
Try to list all the things I need to do across all my tasks and areas of responsibility, and check them throughout the day. If I didn't get around to something I copy it the following day to the next list. Simple stuff.
Agree. I have tried all [0] the tools that populate the world of self-organisation, and what I can tell you is that in my experience, more important than the tool is to follow the 2-step procedure:
1) Write down the things to do and the ideas.
2) taking time to organise, prioritise and plan.
With special emphasis on step 2, it can be one hour before starting work and half an hour before finishing or another solution, but this activity is crucial.
As recommended in Deep Work (one of the best productivity books around), I try to schedule my whole day in my calendar at the start of the day, with specific deliverables/outcomes for each block of time. Even if I don't finish everything or I end up deviating from the plan (it happens often), just doing this at the start of the day imposes a certain structure that your brain tends to internalize, which in turn provides mental clarity. Try it.
Where do you keep the rest of the things that you need to do at some time? Like do you mainatin some other list of all the things that need/want to do, but not necessarily do today?
I use notion. I create a check list for each day. The next day, I copy paste the list and rename it with today's day. Anything that didn't get completed yesterday just rolls over.
- todo apps have stuff that can happen at any time, some might have a deadline, but I can do them sooner if I want to
- entries in calendar represent fixed events in time - e.g. a meeting, interview
I have a set of task lists grouped by topic (e.g. "recruitment", "house chores", "reading list"); each task has a description and some sort of completeness criteria.
Then I have a weekly and daily lists - at the beginning of the week I take selected tasks from the various lists I need to complete this particular week and transfer to the weekly list. I pick at most 3 most important ones to complete.
Every day after I wake up I take a look at my calendar and the weekly tasks list, and decide what can and needs to be done this day, and transfer tasks from the weekly list to a daily list. Again I select at most 3 most important tasks.
During the day I try to block off some time for doing this stuff by having focus blocks in my calendar - e.g. I spend 30m on reviewing CVs, or 1h reviewing the backlog of my team - during this time I disable all but the most critical notifications and try to get stuff completed. After each block I gather all the things people want from me, and put it on the appropriate list.
After each day and week I review if I'm happy with what I've done, and how I can improve it - for instance recently I noticed that some of my task descriptions were quite vague and did not have completeness criteria, so I'm trying to improve on that.
That being said:
- don't try shaming yourself if you can't complete stuff - there was a reason why it wasn't completed, try to figure out what it was and how to deal with it in the future - making yourself feel miserable doesn't solve any problems
- use a process you find to suit you, don't be afraid of adjusting it
- try making this stuff a habit - this way fewer things slip by
- don't try to be a robot - I won't put every single thing in my life on the task list - although most work-related stuff does go through it
I've been fiddling with this for about a year, and it seems to be working mostly OK - there is some room for improvement, but I'm not as predictable as computers are, do it's difficult to nail what specific actions I need to take.
They don't have a pricing page, but AFTER you give them your email and name, then you get a questionnaire that reveals there's a monthly subscription..
Wouldn't recommend.
That is unfortunate. I tried them out based on a blog post, so I knew about the monthly subscription after the trial period, but that is poor marketing for sure.
I have no relationship with that startup (other than being a user).
Each morning, I copy the unfinished tasks to the new page. It means that I must acknowledge and reprioritise each of them. Every task is either done, discarded or copied over.
The page is a physical limitation to how much work I can take. It's a reminder of my own limits. I also need to re-read the list every few minutes to find an item.
With this simple system, things rarely got misplaced. Not even little things like updating tickets or answering specific emails.