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activity journalling / task management - strategies and tools?
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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Sep 18, 2011 at 10:44 PM
P.S. I’m currently trying out the following: I created a Yammer account where I post short status updates of my work; I have set Yammer up to mail me a daily digest with all my postings. Let’s see how this works out.
Posted by John
Sep 19, 2011 at 02:32 PM
I do keep a journal of all my activities:- on for work, one for personal, one for a particular topic etc
I am using MyLifeOrganized which is a task outliner, with categories etc. However I can use it as a text outliner also.
If I don’t want these Text outlines to appear tasks, I categorize the To-Dos with TASK. I use the filter
to exclude Text outlines when I want to see only To-Dos
http://mylifeorganized.net/
There are other alternatives, but I prefer MLO because it has an Android version
If you have used Ecco, you will like the flexibility of MLO. You add multiple categories to any outline, move, cut & paste them, use saved filters etc
John
jimspoon wrote:
>I keep a detailed journal of my activities. I wonder if any of you do the same? I have
>found it to be a very useful habit. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed to
>remember something, and then gone back and found the information in my daily journal.
>Without my journal, my life becomes one big confused blur.
>
>Now the trick is to find
>the best way to tie in my journalling with task management. Practically everything I
>do is in some way related to some project or task I’m working on. Ideally, every journal
>entry would get filed under the project and task and subtask to which it relates. That
>way, I could easily review my hierarchy of project / tasks / subtasks, and see the
>related chronology of activities. On any task, I could readily see what I had already
>done, where I left off, and where I needed to pick up again.
>
>I need the ability to make
>my journal entries in one big chronological list, and then to be able to go back later
>and categorize each action to the appropriate project / task / subtask. Ideally -
>there would be some intelligence in the program, so that it would monitor what I’m
>typing, and figure out the related projects / tasks and let me confirm them. (I know,
>that’s asking a lot.)
>
>I’ve been using Ecco for my journalling, but haven’t yet been
>doing much in the way of categorizing the journal entries. (For me a major problem with
>Ecco are the limits on the number of items. With my heavy journalling, I am very rapidly
>hitting the item number limits and getting error messages.) I’ve experimented a bit
>with InfoQube, but haven’t been able to find the time to work on learning it.
>
>So, I am
>just curious regarding what you all might be doing in the way of recording your
>activities, and tracking your status and progress on your various projects, and what
>strategies and software tools you are using for that.
>
>Jim
>
>
>
>
>
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Sep 19, 2011 at 07:04 PM
I don’t want to beat a dead horse (don’t want to beat a live one either), but an interesting option in the journaling department is Debrief. Perhaps you’ve already checked it out and dismissed it… I can’t blame you if you did. But if you’ve only given it a quick look, it may be worth trialing again, especially if you don’t need to sync with a mobile device. I wrote about Debrief on my blog, highlighting some of its interesting and not-common features, as well as some of its issues:
—http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/a-brief-look-at-debrief/
Steve Z.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Sep 19, 2011 at 07:31 PM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
> Perhaps you?ve already checked it out and dismissed it?
Not at all; I found it in the original journaling threads and wondered how come I had never tried it, as I’ve heard it mentioned a few times before.
You’ll actually find a comment/question of mine waiting to be moderated at your Sherwood blog :-) I might as well repeat it here, as it might be of interest to others as well: the one thing I was unable to tell about Debrief (without installing it, which I would prefer not to do at this time) is whether its folders are of the ‘an item can only go into one folder’ kind or they work as tags/categories, i.e. an item can belong to several. This is quite an important issue, as my activities are often linked to more than one projects etc.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Sep 19, 2011 at 08:08 PM
Hi, Alexander,
It doesn’t appear that a note can be included in multiple subject folders. However, you can “tag” notes with the index function. You can give each note multiple index tags. Then select the index topic and see all the notes associated with that topic. It isn’t elegant, but it seems to be pretty functional. Here’s a screen capture of the Index function:
—http://dl.dropbox.com/u/155244/Debrief%20index%20feature.jpg
Steve Z.