{"id":494,"date":"2018-02-05T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/?p=494"},"modified":"2018-02-06T07:36:29","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T12:36:29","slug":"getting-organized-in-2018-tracking-tasks-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/getting-organized-in-2018-tracking-tasks-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting organized in 2018 – Tracking tasks revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

Getting organized in 2018 – links to the series<\/a><\/p>\n

I was planning to finish my discussion of Evernote this week by describing how I use it and Dropbox to keep archives. The system I have isn\u2019t a system at all. It\u2019s haphazard and inconsistent. In spite of that, once I have notes or a document in one of them, I can find them wherever I am, since both sync to all of my devices. But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself. For more on Evernote and Dropbox, you\u2019ll have to come back next week.<\/p>\n

Instead, I\u2019m returning to tracking tasks and my everything notebook. Why? I happened to see a post on Cal Newport\u2019s blog, On simple productivity systems and complex plans<\/a><\/em>. Earlier he\u2019d described his ideas for a modified Bullet Journal<\/a> into a Bullet Journal Pro<\/a> that fit his ideas about weekly and daily plans, time blocks, etc. In his more recent post, he reports that his Bullet Journal Pro system didn\u2019t work. He\u2019s returning to a system that has a notebook for daily plans, printouts of text files for weekly plans (printed multiple times per week as plans change), and a collection of e-mails to himself. His system clearly works for him, but it wouldn\u2019t work for me.<\/p>\n

As I described earlier, I tried a Bullet journal last year. Like Cal Newport, I like the analog flexibility of paper and pen. What I don\u2019t like about the Bullet journal, is that it would only work for me if I always<\/strong><\/em> had it with me. Ideas about things I need to do or ideas I need to follow up on occur to me at all sorts of times in all sorts of places. If I\u2019m wearing a suit jacket or sport coat, I\u2019ll have a couple of fountain pens with me in one coat pocket and a Levenger pocket briefcase<\/a> in the other pocket. I can whip out the pocket briefcase and make a note on a 3\u201dx5\u201d card that I transfer to OmniFocus when I have time. That\u2019s less distracting to anyone I\u2019m with than making the same note directly into OmniFocus on my iPhone or iPad. So why not just transfer that note to a Bullet journal instead?<\/p>\n

Because I don\u2019t have my Bullet journal with me all of the time.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

At any one time I probably have a couple of hundred tasks, maybe more, sitting in OmniFocus waiting for my attention. They\u2019re not all waiting for my attention right now or even today. Some of them won\u2019t need my attention for several months, but all of the tasks I know of that I\u2019ll need to do – ever – are in there. Since they\u2019re there, I don\u2019t have to worry about forgetting them.<\/p>\n

But the only reason I can have all of my tasks stored somewhere and know that I won\u2019t forget them is that (a) the \u201csomewhere\u201d is electronic and accessible from all of my electronic devices and (b) I always have one of my electronic devices with me. That means that I can always check what needs doing now (or today) wherever I am and whenever I need to. I probably lack imagination, but I can\u2019t imagine how I could set use a Bullet journal, or an Everything notebook for that matter, to keep a record of everything that I need to do and<\/strong><\/em> have that record current and accessible wherever I am and whenever I want it.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s working well for me is a modified Everything notebook, a notebook in which I keep notes from every meeting I attend. Not only is pen and paper more flexible than my iPad, iPhone, or laptop, I find that they are less distracting, both to me and to those I\u2019m meeting with. For me electronic devices take me away from paying full attention to the people in the room. Pen and paper don\u2019t. To maintain the electronic advantage of accessibility and comprehensiveness, I simply transfer any to-do items to OmniFocus and scan any notes that I need ready access to into a PDF for Evernote or Dropbox.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what works for me. Your mileage may vary. As I said in the introduction to this series<\/a>,<\/p>\n

I am not a productivity expert, and nothing you\u2019ll read in this post or the posts that follow has been validated by empirical research. What I\u2019m doing to organize myself may not work for you, and what I\u2019m doing right now may not even be the best way I could organize myself. What you\u2019ll read here is what I\u2019m doing now. Adopt and modify anything that seems like it might be useful. Ignore anything that seems pointless.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Getting organized in 2018 – links to the series I was planning to finish my discussion of Evernote this week by describing how I use it and Dropbox to keep… Read more ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-productivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}