How do you stay organized?

[matsa]

Here are my thoughts on organization.

1. I believe in functional organization, rather than excessive organization.

2. By trade I am a project manager/system analyst, so a schedule is a must have for any endeavor I undertake, business or personal. To create a basic schedule think in terms of top down design.

a. Identify your desired end result. now you have two critical end points, start and finish.

b. Identify what milestones you will need to accomplish along the way. Now break down the milestones into what must be done to accomplish each of them. What tools do you need to accomplish each of them?

c. Sequence your milestones. What order must they occur in? What milestones are inputs to other milestones (predecesors/successors)?

d. Determine how much time is needed to accomplish each milestone. Sometimes this is determined up front as most projects/goals have a definitive date that they are needed by. But, if this is a plan for a personal accomplishment dates can be more loose, especially as you are the only resource working on them. if you are teaming up with someone it is best to figure out which tasks can be run in parallel (at the same time). Generally these tasks are isolated in that they might be an input to another task later on but starting on them is generally not contingent on the completion of a previous task. This way you and your partner can shorten the critical path.

e. Determine the critical path. What is the longest route through your visual project timeline? (REF: Gantt Chart or Network Diagram) This is your project's time to completion.

3. Use To Do Lists! I have a rolling to do list. I use a whiteboard to do so. I actually have 3 whiteboards in my office, one is 4' X 8', two are 3' X 5'. On the 4' X 8' board I plan/scheme/design/draw/etc. I visually represent my work and make notes on its current state and desired state. One of the small boards is my To Do List. The other small board is for whatever I need it for. My To Do List is generally for a week. As I accomplish tasks on it I cross them off and a spot is open on my To Do List. I only allow myself to have 8 tasks on my To Do List at any one time. I am a big believer in whiteboparding. It is really helpful to see your work in fornto f you in big, bold, color. Also, you must interact with your planning if using one, it is a physical means of organization and I believe that better integrates the thinking of my mind, if I can see my thoughts and interact with them.

4. Re-evaluate your workplan periodically.

5. Identify Risks to your workplan and formulate strategies to mitigate them.

6. Identify critical points in time of the workplan where you will decide to continue or not. It's good to ID these points in time upfront because it sucks to buy equipment for a project and then after 2 smaller tasks realize that the entire effort is obsolete.

7. Communicate with people to accomplish your goals. Seek the input of athers as you need to. Don't work in isolation.

8. Document your work so that you can learn from it later.

9. Don't be a meely-peely idiot that needs to have everything in a little binder with sticky labels and pretty little bookshelves everywhere. Be functional, not dysfunctional. If you are spending more time on organziation than on working you have failed.

10. A good manager should spend 40% of their time managing their own work and 60% of their time working through and with others. If you have a team, formulate the plan with them and assign tasks according to their expertise.

I love the way this starts out with buzzy bizzy phrases and then cuts the crap by point 9 with "Don't be a meely-peely idiot"
Alex, you'd make a fortune as a consultant over here, matey.

But what's whiteboparding, ffs? Just wish you could organise your fucking spelling a bit better.