My transition from memory loss to a prompt organiser

Year of 2023 ended with a good note for me. One of the things that made 2023 special was a consistent feedback from peers and manager that I am highly organized in my work and I bring the things to closure. I am elated with the feedback as till a couple of years back, quality of my work suffered due to lack of planning. Infact, even now i used to forget things. Funnily, today, I left my lunch bag in the food court and retrieved it from lost and found when I left for the day.

Step 1 : Identifying what is important and what is not

Eisenhower Matrix is a good starting point.

Eisenhower matrix

The challenge comes when everything is asked to you as a critical or urgent item. What is important is to identify them in specific bucket using

1. Asking proper questions
2. Using your own thoughts

Below are the key productivity tools I use

1. Memo
2. Microsoft One Note
3. Google Calendar
4. Confluence

Life Cycle

When any work comes, it could be a outcome of a email with specific action item on me or my team, or a slack discussion which needs further exploration or a specific things that needs to be worked out and mentioned in a meeting, or a random thought occurring me, below is what I do

1. Make a entry on a note sticker in Memo desktop app. If it is really critical, I make sure to mark it as Bold. I add any reference like Jira ID etc if needed. I also make a note of to whom I should delegate or follow up.

2. I have multiple Memo’s (similar to sticky notes). I add the activities/or what i need to do in the respective. For e.g i have below notes

1. My task list
2. Things i should discuss when i discuss with my peer or team mate A
3. Things i should discuss when i discuss with my peer or team mate B
4. Trainings to do
5. Blog posts to write on
6. …
   And the list continues

I look at the things based on the type and edit/remove them. AT regular intervals, i also delete the unwanted note category

3. If I have a note to follow up or delegate to someone a task, I ask them to do it in Slack or call. After that, I have a task in Google calendar to follow up with the specific member. If it is a long-running task on initiative, I set up a recurring call or task based.

4. If there is any Jira ticket or a similar ticket in any project management tool, i subscribe/watch to the specific

5. If some thoughts need explanation, I detail them on a confluence page. I tag and comment on the relevant people to add thoughts on the same or ask for their review.

6. While slacking or emailing any people beyond the office hours, I also make sure to delay the delivery (unless I am sure that the recipients are working at the time and my communication is expected) so that it reaches them at a time which ensure their attention.

Effective Use of OneNote

I use OneNote effectively to capture the knowledge or notes which are worth saving for a lot of time. E.g Decisions taken, key workshop notes, training notes etc. Generally on all these things, there is also a need to save any multimedia content (Images, video link) and also elaborate with my thoughts.

The hierarchical nature of OneNote helps me to maintain and organise the contents in a logical manned.

I have following NoteBooks in One Note

1. Personal (used to takes notes on personal activities, trainings etc)
2. Employer (Used to store organization related training notes,decisions etc)
3. Project/Customer specific notes

Each note book has various section based on the category and each section has various pages. Below is the snapshot from my personal note book

My OneNote view

Why I do not use a personal trello board

I like trello boards, but I do not use them for my work tracking as it is a over engineered solution for my current needs. Below are the things

1. I like to track and make a note of even small things. This would mean lot of of records.
2. Benefit of trello board comes when you create multiple swimlanes. Given i have various types of tasks and each type has different stages, the board might look very cluttered.
3. Trello or any equivalent gives a maximum value when lot of people collaborate and contribute.
4. I can use the same toolset for my personal tasks too. For e.g I have a recurring task for every night to soak Chia seeds, Sabja seeds, start fermentation milk to curd, call a specific person with agenda etc

My view in a nutshell