Apparently everyone has something to say about project management.  Recently, I had posted my replay to an email I had received from a fella named Adam who didn’t approve of the way I was building our application.  My thoughts were that the team and project were small enough that I didn’t need to waste my time documenting everything just for the sake of documenting everything.

I received a lot of email with people who wanted to share their opinions with me on the topic.  Several times, I heard that what I was doing was project management, just my own version of it.  I suppose I have trouble arguing against that.  I was also asked to share what methods I have been using to stay organized and motivated.  Well I’ll share, but I can’t say it’s pretty…

I keep a folder with me in my laptop bag with pretty much every idea related to this project in it.  I’ve tried to go electronic on several occasions.  Honest, I have!  But there are several reasons I still like using paper, here are just a few:

1) When I have an idea for the application or for marketing or anything related to our goal of obtaining “Financial Freedom in Five Years”, I pull out any old 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and scribble it down.  I don’t have to open up my laptop and type it in.  There’s just too much wasted time in trying to make it electronic.  for example, the other day I was about to get into the shower and I had an idea on how to optimize a screen I was working on the night before.  I grabbed some old article I had printed from Steve Pavlina’s site on staying motivated, flipped it over and used wrote down my idea.  After getting dressed, I took the paper and stuffed it into my iKollect folder.  I’ve tried using a tablet computer.  That thing was great in theory, but I just couldn’t get into it.  And my method merely requires paper and a pen.  It’s hard to go anywhere without finding those hi-tech tools

2) I like to review my ideas a lot, so I bring this folder with me all over the place.  I’ll be sitting in a worthless meeting at my day-job, when I find my mind drifting.  I can casually open the folder and go through some of my ideas.  And nobody in the room can really read it because my writing is so messy.  Heck, even I have a hard time reading it sometimes.  (It’s not unusual for me to write down notes for myself while driving down the highway.  Talk about illegible!)

3) Sometimes ideas just don’t fit well on one page or screen.  It’s hard to use a laptop to compete with spreading 10 different sketches or ideas out on the floor to work out some ideas.

I also keep a spiral bound notebook with me that I use to keep track of my to-do lists.  On a page in that notebook, you’ll see a heading like “Monday To Dos”, and a list of 25 or so items.  They are ranked in order of importance, and when the day is over, I transfer all the un-done items (and any new ones) to the next page and write “Tuesday To Dos” at the top of that page, and so on.  I absolutely hate recopying the same thing from one day to the next.  I really do.  So it’s in my best interest to get things done and cross them off the page.

That’s the front pages of the book.  I also start from the rear of the book and create a list of to-do’s.  But these are long term or “big” items that have sub-tasks.  For example, I have design database on my long term list, and on Wednesday’s list I might put “do stored procs” or some nonsense like that.  I re-write the lists in the rear of the book when they start looking cluttered or become hard to understand while I’m driving.

I also keep a spreadsheet (on Google Docs and Spreadsheets) with a row for each week of the year.  The spreadsheet is called “Staying Motivated in the New Year”.  Every week I enter what my big accomplishment was for the week, for that project, (which is the column).  And if I have an idea of a big accomplishment to get done for the next week, I will enter it in red in the next week’s row.  If I have a week where I didn’t accomplish anything major (that I feel proud about), I will work extra hard the next week to accomplish two major things. 

I know, this spreadsheet is a bit of overkill, considering I already have two a other list of to-dos, but this helps me keep myself honest (and busy).

And whenever there is an article or link I feel I should look at further, I simply email it too myself.  That almost-OCD condition I have makes sure I always stay up to date on my emails.  If my inbox gets overloaded, it hurts.

When I do actually do some work (like writing code), I find it very important to not multitask.  It take me at least 10 minutes to get into “the zone”, where I find I am most efficient and productive.  If I keep my email open, I will almost certainly be interrupted by my buddy who lives in London.  He seems to email me at the strangest times - and it’s never anything important.  So I try my best to stay in that zone if possible.  I do my emails and journaling when the kids around, and in fact, right now my six year old is asking me for chocolate milk, which is good timing, because it’s been a long day and I could really use a drink too.