Personal Organization

What it takes to get my job done is a recurrent theme here. We are ending the semester, which marks my time here at a year and a half. This year has been dramatically different than my first. The first year was a collection of building things: relationships, instruction materials, community. There was no where to go but up and to the right with things to do.

This year has been characterized as more. More work, more commitments, more meetings, more opportunities. The volume has been alarming. And I found very quickly that the methods I was using to keep track of my work wasn’t working. I needed to be able to track projects over months and keep the relationships between elements in mind. I struggled through the spring with keeping momentum and making sure the little tasks keep on track. I never missed a deadline. But there were many projects I wanted to start that I couldn’t. There were others that I had to move deadlines on as well.

I very quickly got tired of shifting things around. I take it personally that I couldn’t implement what I wanted to. Our state is struggling with a budget. I’m certain that many of us have quit feeling optomistic about it in any fashion. And budget restrictions make it difficult to make decisions. But in some ways, it does make it easier. We have to have a laser-like focus on what is linked to curriculum and research. But I am in a vulnerable position contractually. Between the state issues and my drive to implement data management and other plans, I have a strong incentive to stay productive.

The hardest part is keeping that motivation however. I have tons of little tasks that need to get done. I was/am drowning in the volume and the ability to track it all. So I spent the month tracking down and evaluating software to see if there was a solutions somewhere.

Project management software is an evolving thing. Many of the tools are a cross between task management, collaboration tool, scheduler, and more. I needed some of these aspects but not all. And I needed to recognize what I often tell my students: that software isn’t going to solve your data managment problem. I’ll come back around to this idea in a minute.

About a year ago, I started with OneNote. I had a version I had been using at home to track some personal things. I needed a place to dump ideas that was flexible in format and type of information it accepted. I thought I could work without much structure, just assigning checkboxes and adding searchable icons. But either the structure I created didn’t fit or I needed more structure. I stopped using it for work months ago.

I didn’t use anything for a while but a weekly calendar. I am fond of David Seah’s task tools. I have a calendar the identifies the top priorities, allows for a list of the rest, and is a weekly calendar. It worked for a while. I used it to help document what I was spending time on and keep a running list for stats. But after a year, I have dropped using that as well. It didn’t give me enough long term planning control. I was only responding to things that were immediate. Additionally, it was like documenting two calendars.

This fall I heard of Trello. I tried that for a while. It was visually appealing, but I quickly found out that it allows for deeper levels of tracking, but not without burying the data. For example, I can create a task with several subtasks, but the subtasks are buried. This is not a workable solution for me. Also, it was too unstructured.

From here I spend several weeks exploring other options. There are several websites offering summaries of project management tools and their options. My criteria was that it needed to be free with unlimited projects. It had to be visually interesting and easy to use. The storage space is not too much of a problem, but having the option to add documents as needed is helpful. I also wanted something that would allow enough depth.

I recognize that no one tool was going to do all the things that I needed. But I found Asana, which for what I need now is solving some of the problems. I can color code. I can view by project, date, or assigned or unassigned. I can move things around and add details. All of it is in a easy interface and I can use it across platforms. It even has a brilliant feature of being able to add a task directly from email. And I can pull documents from a variety of cloud storage options. Lastly, I have the ability to integrate it with a calendar if someday my organization gets itself off Oracle.

So for the moment it’s getting things done. Or at least I feel like I am. And I am able to take a longer view when needed. But what I realized as I went through this process is that is doesn’t solve all my needs. I realized that I needed a place to put a accumulation of bookmarks. I reverted to Delicious for that. I needed a place for document storage. Box is working for me through work. Dropbox/Google drive is for personal.

Even with all of that, I am finding I need one more place. I need a place to put all the bits and pieces of information that I accumulate. The facts about data services and reference sources. Bookmaking doesn’t quiet cut it. I need a place to put conference notes and new ideas –ideas that may never end up to be projects. I need a place to put all the email conversations and random bits of nonesense that I find and are strewn in various documents, sticky notes, and have become marginalia.

So while I have made progress, I have a lot to do in terms of organization. I find the process rewarding. It is also helpful to have a supply of personal experience to help students and faculty along as well. I was just talking to a student about this today. The next steps are to finish cleaning out my email of all the bookmarks and links that should be in delicious. Next is to find a solution for that last type of ephemeral information and get all of it in there. I imagine I’ll be writing another summary about this in a year.