Tracking what you're doing

[jenett]

So. I have a lovely new job, and I am at the stage of the lovely new job (this is the end of my 4th week) where I am beginning to figure out what I want to do going forward.

In particular, I'm looking for a good way to track ongoing projects. I have a todo list I like (Todoist, which I use for both work and home stuff), and I have a tracking method (inherited from my predecessor) for tracking actual reference requests (an Excel spreadsheet).

But I also have a bunch of other things (right now, the list includes rearranging the office shelves and piles of things, creating some handouts and materials for researchers, shelfreading, reading through the annual reports so I get a sense of what's in them, building a knowledge base document with things like "What are the names of the bells in the bell tower" and "why is this particular sculpture unusual". Lots of stuff that is long term but has segmented bits, in other words)

And I'm trying to figure out the best way to track "Made X handout" or "reviewed Y materials and edited" or whatever, so that later, I can figure out what I did when, or so that if my boss asks what I've been up to, I can summarise quickly.

I'm reasonably open to technology, but my work computer has less memory than it might, and complains with more than about 10 open browser tabs.

So. What do you all do? What have you tried that didn't work for you?

(This is a public post: feel free to invite people to drop in and comment. Same requests as my previous Salon posts, namely assume people have reasons for what they're doing, comments that improve the conversation or ask questions are entirely welcome, if you do not have a DW account, please put a name we can call you in your comment.)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This is Venecia. First, I'm also a huge fan of Todoist (paid).

I feel like OneNote might be just the thing for you. It comes with Office and is relatively lightweight. It's like a hyper flexible text editor where you can keep all kinds of stuff, from notes, lists, links (websites, emails, documents on your network). You can type anywhere on the page and if you have a tablet even hand write.

The context hierarchy is Notebook (dropdown) / Section (tab) / Page (side menu). Navigation is easy and intuitive. You can have everything in a single place or categorize as necessary. And it has fast text search where you can set scope (all notebooks, this notebook, this page) and get sorted results. It autosaves and keeps history.

Finally, there are apps for your smart phone so you could, in theory, be in the stacks with your phone referencing your notes.

[jenett]

Ooh. That's worth exploring on Monday.

I use Evernote for some things, but the web version can be a bit demanding.

[(Anonymous)]

I use evernote exclusively for saving recipes from the web (both food and crafts).

Something new I've been experimenting with very recently is WorkFlowy, which is like the ultimate flexible bullet list. I like it for notetaking and big brain dumps because it's got keyboard shortcuts for everything (no mousing required). Plus you can see the overall heirarchy, but focus quick on a particular level. The thing I don't like is the lack of linking (it turns URLs into links, but you can't link to files or other locations).

To me a bulleted list works like a mindmanger. I can brainstorm very easily and make sense out of all kind of disparate thoughts and data. So it might be used just for that.

Otherwise the tools set looks like:
Events and appointments: Outlook (work) and Gmail (home) -- both appear together on my phone
Todos and tasks: Todoist

[aedifica]

Oh, I wouldn't have thought of OneNote but yeah, I think it would do what you're looking for, Jenett. With the caveat that it doesn't exist for Mac...

[jenett]

It looks like it might? (Though I don't need Mac, but portable device aka phone would be nice.)