Tasktoy
Topic: My vote.....
http://www.tasktoy.com/ - is a nice lil online time management utility which provides access to your TO-DO lists from anywhere on the net....
This was mentioned in one of the recent issues of "Software Development" magazine (www.sdmagazine.com) in the editorial....in day to day life which is only becoming faster and faster, time management is very important to retain any remaining sanity...David Allen is a famous time management and productivity guru...it is said this tool was developed by someone who was impressed by his techniques.....
i like the tool but i have my own system. it's does not offer any other benefit than web access....
start making TO-DO lists and see how it makes your life simple....
following are my techiniques that have worked so well for me. take them or leave them as you find fit....
-always carry a small notebook and pen/pencil everywhere. keep noting TO-DO actions as and when anything comes to mind...do not worry much abt when to do them
-at work maintain notebook....at the beginning of each day, open up a new page and start making notes, action items etc....for easy identification tag to-dos as AI and notes as N and meeting minutes as MM and you can use the same scheme for other things....
- devote some time at the end of the day to review your pocket book and office note book....now is the time to transfer data to something which allows you to organize data better than a notebook does....
- have as many spreadsheets as you want to track your to-dos....mine are all project based and one general to-do for all non-project based....personal to-dos continue to stay in the pocket book....as work gets done, just cross it out.....
- spread sheet at the minimum should contain following columns, action item desc, owner, open date, target date, closed date, status (open, closed, cancelled etc.), comments....
- do the same thing at meetings that you hold, there it may make sense to capture the action items right on the spreadsheet that is ideally projected for everyone else...to make things lil faster and easier, you can write some simple macros to fill in default values for dates. for example, in my case, macros fill in today for open date, today+3 days for target date as default and status 'open'....the reason you want to capture action items right on the spreadsheet during meeting is to raise awareness among people...once people see their name against an action item, they normally tend to do a better job of following up...just natural....
- notebooks are better for rest of the day because they are much faster for quick data capture...the time saved there justifies their transfer into softcopy later in the day for further elaboration...somwhow electronic organizers, hand helds stylus etc. do not seem to come close to fierce scribbling one has to do to capture ideas as they cruise thru.....moreover, many ideas that come outside of meeting are not very organized to allow systematic categorization instantly....
- once action items are transferred to spreadsheets, you can sort them by target date in ascending order or sort by target date and priority....make note or print out top 5-6 things you need to get done and pin it out to your soft board and go home.....
regardless of what is best, making to-do lists is probably THE most important productivity tool ever invented....my belief is "if it is recorded, it gets done....sooner or later which is better than never"
just start making note of everything that you have to do, you will start seeing how it helps reduce stress, anxiety, worry, restlessness etc......this is the first step....planning, scheduling etc. comes later....sometimes writing down even trivial activities seems so redundant but make it a practice till you come up to speed.....
David Allen's books talk about these in much methodical way. all of us organize our to-do lists in one or the other way...why not do it methodically and save time to have some fun and retain sanity for lil longer?
happy hours (of produtivity)!
Posted by Mahesh
at 9:52 PM EST
