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.
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
- Asking proper questions
- Using your own thoughts
Below are the key productivity tools I use
- Memo
- Microsoft One Note
- Google Calendar
- 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
- 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
- My task list
- Things i should discuss when i discuss with my peer or team mate A
- Things i should discuss when i discuss with my peer or team mate B
- Trainings to do
- Blog posts to write on
- …
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
- Personal (used to takes notes on personal activities, trainings etc)
- Employer (Used to store organization related training notes,decisions etc)
- 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
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
- I like to track and make a note of even small things. This would mean lot of of records.
- 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.
- Trello or any equivalent gives a maximum value when lot of people collaborate and contribute.
- 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