Getting a grip on my daily routine
Well I need to force myself to be better at time management and project management. It has been a long time since I taught my time management course and I find that without that regular refresher my time management skills have been slipping.So what to do. Well obviously start researching time and project management again, dust off the course and start collecting data.
So far I have found some very interesting things.
First off there is the Borg-Calendar program. Which has a lot of project management stuff built into it. But I am not happy with the fact that I can not have sub-tasks, and that the completion data nor the dates a project moves from one state to the next are not tracked. Admittedly they do say that the project management stuff is tacked on.
So poking around the forums for the BORG-Calendar I found a reference to another project called Memoranda that does not have the ability to for enforcing the project management aspects (states of the project etc), But it does have a very nice task manager...
I am now poking at that one a little hard. It is not really finished, looks a LOT better the Borg-Calendar but still I want something that will let me do my tasks, to-dos, calendar and other things from multiple computers that have a shared drive or at least a copy of the recent "data set." Preferably using a system that keeps NO locks on the files so they can be dynamically shared between computers with the soft ware continuously running.
I also ran across a great web site for project management skills and knowledge apply named Project Management Institute.
I also found a very cool tool called TimePanic which is designed to fulfill the tracking needs described in paper by Watts S. Humphrey’s article “Why does Software Work Take So Long”. The paper discusses learning to work better by improving your work style. But you need to know what you are doing in order to fix it, hence, TimePanic.
I sense a whole new short course coming into being...Well first I need to find a way to get things done. I still love the ABC system by Alan Lankein as described in his book "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life" (out of print). If only I could find something that is NOT as complex as MS Project, lets me do what TimePanic does combined with Borg-Calendar's enforced project stepping stones with Memoranda journal and date time stamps. Oh and for less then $50.
Let me know if you know of such a product please.
Labels: Borg-Calendar, Memoranda, project management, time management, TimePanic
posted by Leeland @ 12:42 PM
2 Comments:
Leeland, you might want to check out the offerings at http://www.37signals.com/ - a lot of lightweight management software, collaborative at that.
I use Ta-Da List to maintain my grocery list - when I'm at work and think of something, I put it on there. No matter where I'm at, I can get a copy. Pretty handy.
Might not be robust enough for your needs, but you're the best judge of that.
Thanks grimmtooth I was already aware of Ta-Da. What I am looking for is something that will work while I am on a bus on a laptop without Internet access. But, when I get to a network the data bounces out to all my other computers (and cell phone too if I can).
Ta-Da is very cool. There are a lot of products out there. I will probably be assembling a list of them for the short course I will be making of this mess. ;^)
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