I’m cursed with some kind of attention disorder and can’t keep track of what the heck is going on when I context switch. So over the years I developed this syst

I’m cursed with some kind of attention disorder and can’t keep track of what the heck is going on when I context switch. So over the years I developed this system: I keep notes of what I’m doing and what I’ve learned as I do my work. I keep a separate note document for each task/project. I do this in One Note so that it syncs to my phone and I can attach clean processed images of whiteboards. But I used to do this with plain text files and vi. Either way I indent sub tasks. In this document I break out and list all the things I’m going to do, with either a checkbox in one note or a [ ] if I’m using text. When I have done the task I change it to [x], and when I start the task I change it to [.] When I get interrupted, I switch to the other file and keep track of what I’m doing there. When I switch back to the original task I scan the file and look for the [.] and that’s where I need to resume working. This step is crucial and helps me avoid the situation where it takes me 20 minutes to re-aclimate and remember what I need to do next. Each day I do work I make an entry in the text file that tells me things below this line are in this date. As I complete projects I put the documents into a history folder keyed by date. This also lets me go back and see what I was doing on a particular date. This helps me avoid that “blank stare” feeling I get when management inevitably asks me why the task took so long or what the hell I’ve been doing all week. I’m not a slacker, I just need systems to help me overcome my memory and attention deficiencies. You mentioned having trouble finding the willpower to go back and resume a project. A big cause of procrastination is not having faith that you’ll be productive with the project in the time you have available to work. Having the work broken down into achievable measurable chunks is key to fixing this problem. And that’s the major part of what this note system is all about fixing.