Keeping track of stuff

[dmaze]

How do you keep track of things?

Here I'm thinking of "things" like "medium-term life progress". Like, at work I'm working on a project with some other people. I have a list of things I need to do in the short term, and I can estimate how long those things take. But the project as a whole has a schedule, and other people are working on their parts. If I'm asked "how is the project going" I'd like to be able to give an answer -- but this involves keeping the schedule, other people's progress, and my own work all in my had and having those things available at the right time.

(I also had a similar problem in my now-former ET corporation position, where in principle I should have been able to keep track of People We're Talking To, but that in my mind is more of a context-switching problem: when I paged the Corporation out, I never put that data anywhere, and so when I needed it again in two weeks it was lost.)

I seem to do fine with my own things. Part of this is having written down on my whiteboard things I expect to do this week. Things that happen on a schedule, like paying bills, are also pretty routine. It's trying to keep track of the larger context that's proving a bit tricky.

Comments

[desireearmfeldt]

Is *someone* at work keeping track of the schedule and the big picture and how everyone's coming along, such that you could access that information? (At my workplace, the answer is often "not so much," which is one of my peeves about my workplace. Projects Need Structure And Information Management. There's my capsule rant. :) )

I generally find I can hold a fairly big picture in my head (though I fear I'm losing that superpower with age). But keeping track of a big picture involving other people's actions involves them accurately and regularly reporting their actions, which often people don't.

That being said, my strategy is 1) Write Everything Down, and 2) Make the plan sufficiently detailed that it has lots of concrete milsetones to check off on your list.

[dmaze]

There is an actual schedule; I'm not responsible for creating or updating the schedule, but it's not terribly unusual for me to be asked "how are you doing", with the expected answer being in terms of the schedule. Keeping the page of Things That Need To Be Done promininently could help...until I'm in a meeting, get asked The Question, and don't have the backup brain to refer to.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

For giving an answer to "how is the project going?" I think a good rule of thumb is to be able to keep track of
1) a couple of things you've accomplished recently
2) a couple of things you would be accomplishing but you're waiting on something else to happen first.

[dmaze]

Often a good answer (recently) seems to be "well, I ran into this other thing that we've mentioned but failed to make the schedule". When that happens, I think, I actively swap out the schedule because I know it's irrelevant. But adding that mental note (or written!) would probably help this case. Hmm.

[jencallisto]

for me, having many different lists seems to work reasonably well. so there's to-do today, to-do this week, to-do soon, to-do eventually, to-do periodically, etc.

[obra.livejournal.com]

So. Um. Coffee. I have this idea..(that I've actually started coding on)