Daily Tracking
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I got the newsletter recently from SSW and there was a short piece in there from Adam Cogan about daily goals. The main thrust of the daily goals was to have them in an email and move the items from the previous day to a new email. Cross off items completed, comment in color on items not completed, put outstanding things down and note if partial completion is expected.
Now SSW has a product, Extreme Emails to help with this, but as with other products I've tried, I'm not sure it will work well. We've had some custom ones, MS Project, and others that various employers have tried to use to "manage" projects better and get insight into how long tasks take, but none have worked well for me.
The one thing that worked well for me in tracking daily items and being efficient was a process I used in college one year. I think my Mom bought me a book or told me about it, but one spring I decided to try it. I got a large notepad and the first day I wrote down everything I had to do. Fortunately life wasn't too busy and everything fit on one sheet 🙂
As I finished things I'd cross them off. Then each night before I went to sleep, or each school night, I'd copy over the items that weren't complete. So each day I'd have a list of pressing items. I learned that I wanted to please myself and get things done and that anything I had to write down twice (or more), meaning it hadn't been finished, annoyed me and I'd try to get things done. That worked great all semester, but for some reason the next year I didn't follow through on it. I had a manager later that did the same thing in his day timer, but added the date it was first written down to track how old things were.
I've tried similar things since using Outlook, but the lack of writing seemed to doom everything to failure. Technology is very cool and interesting, but it lacks concreteness. Actually writing things down has always reinforced them way more than typing and certainly more than CTRL-C and CTRL-V.
I'm not sure if there's a great way to track your own work, and maybe everyone needs their own method. I just know I haven't found one. I do have a fairly good method of not getting overloaded, however. I memorize everything I need to work on and keep it in my head.
That way when I get overloaded, things are quickly, efficiently, and easily, dumped!
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Do a search for "Hipster PDA" - total simplification of to do lists...
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Like you I started doing something like this years ago. Handwritten, start date, sign off on each item and it got circulated. It really worked.
Since then I've tried all manner of electronic versions and they somehow just don't work.
As you say there's something about writing it down. Computers aren't always appropriate!
It's so easy, takes a few minutes, that I hope your article inspires others to give it a try.
(When posting this I got an Out of Memory exception. It still uploaded though!)
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Steve,
I suggest some improvement:
1. Since it is efficient if you write on one side of the page, the one that is up, I use old printouts where one side is blank to create To Do lists.
2. Some people prefer to use Yellow Sticky Notes.
3. Combination method: works well for me:
- Write individual task on a small sticky note
- Put them on an old printout 8''x11''
This way everything is on one page (2 pages, 3 pages) and you don't need to copy, re-write and cross-out. The notes for the tasks that were completed could be easily taken from the list, the one that are not completed are re-arranged and the completed but with phone numbers or other information that you want to keep go into container (plastic cup). Additional benefit: when the phone rings or there is a VM I take a small sticky note to write if needed. It can be added as is to the list if I need to do something following this call.
Yelena
Regards,Yelena Varsha
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Yelena,
Interesting and glad that works. For me, however, I found that writing something reinforces it. Also, when I have to rewrite something, it's annoying and spurs me to get it off the list
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