How to keep track of stuff you have to do

In My Humble Opinion
21

I use Outlook at work (which syncs with my calendar app on my phone and ipad, for when I’m not at work) to keep track of events and deadlines.

For keeping track of projects at work, I use http://www.producteev.com . It lets you break down projects into multiple steps, sub-steps, assign deadlines with alarms, delegate tasks to other people, etc. I also keep track of personal must-do tasks there, for things like reminders to make dental appointments, etc.

I use phone apps for my grocery list (as well as keeping a paper list on my fridge), lists of home fix-it or craft projects I want to attempt some day, and lists of chores that are not done every week (like fertilizing my plants).

22

I use Thngs and the calendar on my iPad, synced to desktops, a paper calendar, and paper lists. And had to pay $10 in overdue fines for Time. Management for Dummies. True story. :frowning:

23

For actual appointments I use a white board by my home desk. For things that take a span of time, like a vacation, I use my paper calendar, also hanging near my desk.

My honey-do list is in my head.

24

I spend hours making lists and organizing them. Then I have lunch and go for a walk. Most stuff doesn’t get done.

25

You sound like me. I love to go to The Container Store, because when I come out of there I feel so organized, even when I don’t buy anything. :cool:

26

We’ve kept a paper “master calendar” since our kids were young - Dayminder, opens to show an entire month, with boxes for each day maybe 1.5" by 1.5" with 7 lines. When the kids were young, it hung on the fridge. No commitment for adults or kids was truly a commitment unless it was on the calendar. And no one had any excuse for making firm plans w/o consulting the calendar. Was very handy, as you could enter all firm recurring dates - music lessons, scouts, etc. We found it gave a clear visual representation of what we had on our plates as individuals and as a family. Could readily see if a day/week was getting too hectic, if we needed to work out transportation, etc.

One of our biggest family “crises” was when we got a new pup who liked to chew paper when we left her alone. One day she got at our calendar. I remember my wife crying as she tried to patch it together. We laugh about it now… Turned out the dumb pooch just wanted to tear up one thing to show her displeasure after we left. So we left a single sheet of paper towel on the floor, she’d shred it, and figured she had shown us what is what!

Now, with the kids out of the house, my wife and I each keep our own such calendar, and every once in a while we sit down together and reconcile them.

For a particular day of errands, we just make paper lists individually or together. I like the feeling of accomplishment that goes with crossing even a small item off of a paper list. Sure, I did 5 BS little things instead of the one huge thing that really needed to get done, but at least I did SOMETHING! :cool:

27

We have a big dry-erase calendar on the refrigerator for house/family stuff.

Work stuff goes in the Outlook calendar on my work computer.

Personal stuff goes in my phone/Google calendar. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t actually put stuff on the Google calendar, it does it by itself using their invasive Google magic.
.

28

Personal stuff I do just kind of do in my head, most of the time. My one weakness is non-routine appointments more than a few weeks out, and I will throw up the odd Google Calendar reminder if it’s something that I know is liable to end up in my ‘blind spot’. I don’t have any kids, though, and I get the impression that my schedule would expand exponentially if I did, in which case I’d probably start tracking things a lot more closely.

At work, I run most of the meetings through Outlook, and I generally have a post-it or small notepad that I keep track of more mundane to-do items.

29

Nothing really works well for me yet - my online vs. paper have been so fragmented, etc.

So I’m trying a paper planner now, with a ton of notes pages that I can keep grocery lists and To Do’s and such on. We’ll see if it works. I’ve been pretty good about putting stuff in it but not necessarily so great at keeping up with it (forgot an appointment that was RIGHT THERE already).

30

I print out free monthly calendars a year in advance. Staple together, lives in The File.

The File is just a file folder on my desk with stuff to do in it, like bills, paperwork, etc.

I try to schedule things to do on different days coming up, and cross them off as accomplished. I also love to put a big “X” on the day after things are all done.

31

I used a bound daily planner book to keep track of most things, and I put a big checkmark next to anything that’s done. It’s supplemented by my Outlook at work. I mark any email regarding a task that needs to be completed as unread, so I can quickly view my unread email and see everything that I need to do. Work appointments are on my Outlook calendar, as are personal appointments during work hours. I also keep a Post-It note on my desk which lists everything that needs to be done at a specific time today, to prevent me from wandering off and forgetting a meeting.

32

In the military I used one of Day-Timer’s pocket organizers. It was always full and I referred to it constantly. When I went to work for government contractors and the like, I bought one, thinking I’d use it a lot. It ended up in the trash. Turns out, military life is far busier than civilian government employee life. I was usually able to get by with a monthly desk blotter version.

33

I use OneNote on my phone; but I also use this cool little template to make a fold-able paper organizer that I can print out.
http://www.pocketmod.com/v2/

34

Stickie notes for brief things, like needing to know what page I left off on in a document I’m editing.

Outlook for appointments and things that have deadlines.

If I get even more overwhelmed than that, like covering for my boss’s 3 week sabbatical this summer (and she then quit!) and needing to deal with about two dozen tasks that had several steps each, I create elaborate to-do lists that include steps to check off as completed too. This summer’s had tables and check boxes and colors filled in for completed tasks… I might like MS Word a bit too much.

35

I just wing it. It’s an only intermittently successful method, but it sorta usually works for the bigger things. Kinda ;).

But then I’m not very OCD about accomplishing things in a timely manner. I mean, I’ve got a 15 day grace period to get that mortgage payment in without penalty - so far that’s been enough.

36

Another Outlook user. I learned to tickle everything when I worked 3 jobs and simply didn’t have a lot of slack to forget stuff. Everything goes into Outlook whether personal or business. I do tick off the tasks as they are accomplished to keep it all straight. I’m pretty organized. Gotta be.

37

It kind of depends on your personality what you find will stick, but the “bible” of getting things done (often abbreviated GTD) is David Allen’s book. I’ve never actually read it since — from what people who have read and implemented it have said — it can be boiled down into a few paragraphs.

  1. Collect — get everything out of your head and into a system. A system could be paper, computer, hybrid, whatever works for you. A “hipster PDA” is basically index cards held by a binder clip; a super lo-tech way to capture ideas, tasks, etc. I’ll detail my system later.

  2. Process — subcategories: trash, incubate, reference.

Crank through all the ideas, tasks, etc. you collect and figure out what you’re going to do with them. Are they actionable; i.e. can you actually do something with that item? Do you need to figure out dependencies; stuff you need to do before you can do the actual task?

The idea is to not think too much about things at this point, but just sort your items into basic categories. This should take you very little time once you get used to it.

  1. Organize — Iterate on 2. Figure out the actual dependencies. Set priorities and dates, etc. If it’s actionable, make it a Task or a Project. Task is short, finite, manageable. Project is longer, multi-step, can feel unmanageable unless you break it down into tasks.

  2. Review — Set up times to review (crank through all the steps) and figure out where your bottlenecks are. What are you not getting done? Why? Figure out how to get ideas and tasks through your system and into a workable form.

  3. Do — subcategories: defer, delegate. If you’re not going to do it yourself, are you going to put it off (set a definite date to deal with it) or give it to someone else to deal with?

(See: Getting Things Done - 43FoldersWiki for a more in-depth overview.)

You may be a more visual/creative person, in which case you might benefit from using a taskboard or kanban (literally: sign, board in Japanese). The key with this is to keep your daily tasks to a manageable number. Capture and process is very similar to GTD principles.

Use reminders and calendars. I put everything, EVERYTHING, into a reminder or calendar appointment. I’ve found that if I don’t block it out on a calendar, at least generally, someone will eat that “unallocated” time. It feels like a lot of work to do at the beginning — and it probably is a lot of work, since if you’re anything like me you probably had a big pile of unorganized shit to start with — but once you get started and keep with a system, it gets much, much easier. You can declare organization bankruptcy and just start organizing incoming stuff from day one, if you really need to. That probably is not any worse than the inconsistent mess you had in the first place.

I use my iPhone for nearly all capture, but I do have a small notebook that I use for when it’s socially unacceptable to be poking at a phone. People think you’re all intellectual and shit if you’re writing, but that you’re fucking around on Facebook if you’ve got your phone out. If it’s written down in the notebook, I get it into digital form as soon as I can.

I use Drafts because it launches faster than any other text/note app I’ve tried, and can send or process text in so many ways. I use TextExpander for tags, dates, and a few other things that save me repetitive typing. I send notes to Dropbox and access notes with Editorial (I used to use Notesy or Simplenote, either of which I would still recommend.) I use tags for fast search, and I date everything now. For example this post (since it ended up being more than a few sentences) ended up in nvALT tagged @dope @draft(2015-09-19) and when it’s done, I’ll tag it with my completion tag which will trigger another program I’ve set up to automatically sort my note files based on certain criteria.

Everything from my iPhone is synced to my Mac via Dropbox. I use nvALT because it’s fast and provides support for some other things that are probably too geeky to explain right now (like Markdown and Textile). I try to add calendar items and reminders as soon as possible, and then delete them from the capture system unless I need to make more extensive notes. I do brief daily sweeps to tag stuff that needs to be done soon, and a longer weekly review at the end of the week to find stuff that might slip through the cracks under time pressures, do bigger organization, set priorities, figure out what went wrong or right.

If you’re on Android/Windows, there are likely equivalent programs for everything I introduced here, but I don’t know them offhand. The basic idea is: have a way to collect all your stuff — ideas, tasks, projects, research — and process it to set reminders and appointments so that you don’t forget anything. Make capture and process a habit that requires little actual thought. Save your brainpower for actually doing the tasks, not getting them recorded.

38

As soon as a thought enters my head like “I need to pick up toothpaste on the way home” I instantly grab the nearest thing I can write on and furiously write it down or it’ll be gone in seconds.

Sometimes I even remember the list!

39

Appointment and stuff gets written on the wall calendar. I use a dry-erase pen to make notes in the top left corner of the windshield of the cars for oil changes (mileages and dates) and needed repairs. Or, if it is IMPORTANT, huge letters right in the middle.

I can barely see out the Jeep windshield! :smiley:

My wife goes to the church (or maybe cult) of Franklin-Covey.

40

Every New Years my employee’s health plan visits and we get a wonderful Wild Kingdom full sized calendar. I keep them from previous years. I start out by copying birthdays, anniversaries, etc from the previous calendar. Then, as bills appointments come due, I put them on the calendar. Works like a charm.