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For work management... Whatever task management system you use, never ever write down a "task" that cannot realistically be done in a single sitting of work. I
by beat 8y ago
For work management...
Whatever task management system you use, never ever write down a "task" that cannot realistically be done in a single sitting of work. If you can't do it in an afternoon at worst, it's not a task, and needs broken down further.
Set a ceiling for the number of items in your backlog. When I was using Trello/Kanban to manage my tasks, I had a hard ceiling of ten things in the backlog. If something isn't important enough to rate being on that top ten list, it shouldn't even be formally acknowledged until you have space to acknowledge it in. (And if something sits in the backlog for a while unaddressed while new things come and go, admit it's not that important and drop it.) This doesn't need to be "ten items". Whatever number works for you, as long as it keeps you comfortable. This is about managing anxiety, not managing work. A backlog too large to even count is overwhelming. Don't let that happen.
Write everything down, preferably on paper. The physical act of writing does wonders for memory.
I've recently converted from Trello to bullet journaling for managing my life, and it works a lot better, for me at least. Paper writing, plus the loose-yet-structured nature of the bullet journal, is really powerful for keeping thoughts in order.
- beat 8y agoI should add here that bullet journaling has been a big improvement on the problems of Kanban backlog management. By working from a daily log, I can separate tasks I'm working on today from the general backlog. Theoretically, this works with the "doing" list in Kanban as well, but I like it better in the journal. And I have all my stray thought notes that aren't up to the level of a backlog task in the same place that I'm doing my daily things. The acts of daily and monthly reflection encourage me to go groom that backlog in a more conscious way.
- Starwatcher2001 8y agoYou've got some great advice here, but I went the opposite way from paper to electronic notes. I had about five years of project notes on paper that became totally impossible to manage or search. I've been doing it electronic now (simple text files) for about a decade and find it much more valuable.
- beat 8y agoFor a focused project, electronic is almost certainly better (and if you initially write on paper, it's worth transcribing). But for my purposes, I'm mostly journaling my day-to-day activities. I don't think I'll ever want to search for that time I needed to get caffeine free Diet Coke and had to push it forward for three straight days (that would be today...) A really nice thing about bullet journaling, relative to other forms, is the index. I can keep my old journals (labeled by date range) and look up stuff that might actually be interesting in the future, like "Jim Campignolo workshop notes".