Archive for ‘Task Management’ Category

Organize To Reverse a Bad Day

Posted on: January 24th, 2022 by Julie Bestry | 26 Comments

Summer Tears by Mark Seton (Creative Commons License)

In a perfect world, our time and task management wouldn’t depend upon our moods. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.

In theory, our organizational systems should be designed so that we can accomplish our goals whether we’re feeling motivated or not. That’s the whole point of a system, to give us a framework when something external or internal prevents us from feeling our usual drive to achieve.

Last September, in Rhymes With Brain: Languishing, Flow, and Building a Better Routine, I wrote:

We also depend on activation energy. Because the hardest part of what we do is the getting started, we have to incentivize ourselves to get going. There are all sorts of ways we can trick ourselves (a little bit) with rewards, like pretty desk accessories or a coffee break, but the problem is that action precedes motivation. We’re not usually psyched to get going until we have already started!

Action precedes motivation. We're not usually psyched to get going until we have already started, whether it's a runner's high or Csikszentmihalyi's flow. Share on X

We may not feel like working out, but once we’re dressed in our best approximation of Venus and Serena, or the yogi of the moment, or whichever quarterback is getting all the endorsements, and have gotten ourselves warmed up, we’re well on our way.

When we lack our usual oomph, our knowledge of the benefits of staying organized may not be enough to keep us motivated to track our expenses, pay our bills on time, file our papers, and stick with our routines, but if we nudge ourselves with giving it just a little try (“just five minutes” or a Pomodoro of 25 minutes or whatever), we may find ourselves able to get into flow.

In other words, well begun is half done.

In that post on languishing, I talked about how to get past the (likely pandemic-induced) blahs and generate flow. We looked at several rhymes-with-brain solutions:

  • Abstain from the distractions that steal your focus.
  • Retrain your brain by shaking up the synapses and making different connections.
  • Restrain yourself from frequenting the people who eating up your time and energy.
  • Constrain your work areas and minimize the space they take up to keep from spending all your energy looking for your supplies and resources instead of using them to achieve your goals.
  • Contain those items in the areas you’ve constrained (above).
  • Maintain your successful routines.
  • Attain (and explain) knowledge to keep your brain active.
  • Gain momentum and jump-start your enthusiasm.

If you haven’t read that post, skedaddle over to it first, as conquering languishing might be just what you need.

BEYOND LANGUISHING

The problem with productivity is that sometimes, we’ll be going along just fine and hit a brick wall. If languishing is the “blah,” a really bad day is the “waaaaaaaaah.”

Cry Baby GIFfrom Cry GIFs

Judith Viorst captured it best in the title Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Whether you remember it from childhood, babysitting days, or from parenthood, you know what she means. There are days that can go wrong and completely wreck our moods and take our whole day off course.

N/A

Maybe it starts small: you accidentally pour the orange juice into your cereal or realize your gas tank is almost on empty when you’re running late for work.

Perhaps you have a fight with a loved one or the person with whom you get along the least well (that’s a nice way of saying it, right?) gets a promotion or media attention or some other kind of success.

Or maybe something truly terrible (but still in the realm of “bad day”) happens, like a fender bender or news of impending layoffs at work. 

When a few small bad things happen in sequence, no matter how strong your intention, the collective experience tends to upend your schedule, foul your mood, and destroy your day. If you let nature take its course, you may feel better after a delicious grilled cheese sandwich or a tearful phone call to your bestie, or your bad morning may turn into a bad day that scrolls into a bad week.

So, let’s not let nature take its course. Let’s stop that bad day in its tracks.

ORGANIZE YOUR WAY OUT OF A BAD DAY

Organizing your space, time, and thoughts can be powerful. It can even prevent catastrophes. But other times, the best it can do is make catastrophes less catastrophic. At those moments, we must accept what has happened, or what is happening, and turn inward to control our response.

Insert a Break

Anyone who has ever used a word processing program knows the command to Insert Page Break makes sure that there’s ample white space between one set of content and another. You insert a page break between chapters in a book, or between sections in a report. It keeps unrelated material from flowing together.

In your time management, when you’re having a bad day, take a pause to keep your bad morning from flowing into a bad afternoon.

Let’s say something annoying happens at 9:45 a.m. Depending on how resilient we’re feeling, we may get a fat-laden snack from the vending machine or take a walk to get some fresh air, and then regroup. If that little break is enough to reverse course on your bad day, count it as a win!

Embrace Time Blocking

But if you’re feeling resentment from multiple recent annoying things bubbling up inside of you, you may be at risk of bringing the whole day down. Here’s where your break needs to be a little more focused. This is where we can steal from the concept of time blocking.

We’ve explored time blocking often, most recently in Playing With Blocks: Success Strategies for Time Blocking Productivity. At its most basic, time blocking focuses on creating chunks of time for particular activities. 

The whole notion is that an endless to-do list never sets aside fixed time for the categories of activities we claim to value. If we are constantly putting out fires and dealing with interruptions, the most important tasks never get done. With time blocking in the way we normally approach it, there are some basic tasks:

Start with a brain dump of everything you need to accomplish. 

Group all your tasks into categories. At the time, I said, Work categories may not be all that different from school categories. You had math (now it’s bookkeeping or bill-paying) or English (now correspondence, marketing projects, or reading for fun). All of those activities were regulated by a fixed schedule that ensured you had ample time to focus on each subject. A bell triggered transition time. Your schedule even accounted for lunch and phys. ed. to keep your brain and body healthy.

Schedule your blocks so that you guarantee yourself set time for dealing with each important category.

I also said to “bubble-wrap” your time blocks with buffer time, so instead of trying to having Zoom meetings and major projects back-to-back, you’ll have recovery time. 

Sometimes, life circumstances require you to replace a planned day with different activities. But by grouping categories of tasks into blocks, it’s easier to slide the tasks around and move them to where they’ll fit.

And this is where time blocking comes into play on a bad day. When teaching clients how to time block, I usually suggest they make use of 90-minute blocks. Just focusing on the workday, and not taking into account your early mornings and what you’re trying to deal with from dinner to bedtime, it’s easy to see we have not one big blob of a day, but multiple blocks:

  • Early Morning
  • Late Morning
  • Early Afternoon
  • Mid-Afternoon
  • Late Afternoon

Let’s say you have a run-in with a co-worker or get bad news from your boss in the early morning. Or you have a fight with your spouse or a frustration with a parent in the drop-off line at school. Or, someone is wrong on the internet!

©XKCD/Randall Munroe (Creative Commons License)

It is so freakin’ easy to let an ugly mood settle into your day like a bad cough in your chest. If inserting that page break into the story of your day did work, your next option is to tell yourself that the day isn’t lost.

Take a deep breath. If you’re actually time-blocking, look at the the blocks you have on your calendar and figure out what’s the next possible block you can slide to a different day so that you can use your Bad Day Rescue Toolkit (see below) to get out of your funk.

If your day is not so carefully blocked out, mentally flip through your obligations for the next several hours until a good dividing line appears. If it’s 11:30 a.m., declare bankruptcy on your late morning block, know that lunch is a built-in daily mental health repair kit, and try to move or cancel whatever is in that first block in the afternoon.

The point isn’t to run away and join the circus, but to give yourself ample time to treat the yucky experience as a bad chunk, rather than an entire bad day. Then apply chocolate, or a soothing phone call, or an unplanned yoga class, or whatever, to the bruise forming from your crash with whatever ruined your mood. Instead:

  • Acknowledge that something unpleasant happened.
  • Give yourself permission not to deal with all of your emotions regarding the experience right now.
  • Take responsibility for clearing the decks for the next block (or two) so you can recuperate.
  • Use your Bad Day Rescue Toolkit.
  • Find your path to resilience. 

Create a Bad Day Rescue Toolkit

More than a decade ago, Daniel Powter had a hit with the song Bad Day.

My favorite part of the lyrics is when, after cataloguing the various travails, Powter sings, “You need a blue sky holiday.”

Every person’s Bad Day Rescue Toolkit will include different items, but use these ideas as a guidepost. The key is to organize as much of this now, when you’re having a fine or neutral day, so you’ll have it when you need it.

  • Make a list of the phone numbers of your most upbeat and/or most supportive friends.

Note: these may not be the same people. Scroll through your phone and think about who you might call if you need to vent or need to be perked up. My BFF is my go-to when I need to vent, and I try to be that for her. I’m not as good at refraining from trying to fix the situation as she is. (If you just want to vent, tell the person that before you get started.)

But here’s a sneaky tip. Try to tell the whole story of whatever frustrated you only once, to just one person. Get it out — all the “grrrrr, arghh” — and then move on to the rest of the experience. If it’s the right time to start looking for support with solutions, do that. Otherwise, invite your callee to distract you. Let them tell you about an awful situation at work, something ridiculous their mother-in-law said, or what’s making them bananas these days. (Try to avoid politics. That’s giving us all bad days.)

  • Keep a browser-bar folder on your computer or phone for websites that distract and amuse you — better yet, sync them for easy access. On Mac/iOS, back them up to iCloud. And here’s an article for How to Sync Browsers Between Your Phone and PC.

Similarly, start maintaining a folder (digital or paper) of jokes, funny stories, cartoons, or goofy memes. If you’re on Twitter, use the bookmark tool to save those long, ridiculous threads where people report silly family stories or embarrassing tales.

 

This classic is one of my all-time favorite threads, and by the time I get days into the contributions, I usually end up looking like the laughing-crying emoji.

For professional humor, I particularly like comics that are gentle. My favorites are:

Liz Climo’s The Little World of Liz books and Twitter feed

Dinosaur Comics and Twitter feed

Nathan W Pyle’s Strange Planet comics, books, and Twitter feed

 

  • Start saving videos that make you happy.

It’s shockingly easy. Make sure you’re logged into Google (because Google owns YouTube) and then whenever you come across a video that makes you laugh or lifts your spirits, click on the SAVE button to the lower right of the video.

This is how you create a playlist. When the little window pops up, click “Create New Playlist” and give your playlist a name, like Make Me Happy! You can also decide whether this playlist is public or private.

  • Consider making YouTube playlists of other kinds of videos, like travelogues or workout routines — anything that focuses on what take you out of your head long enough to regroup.

Sometimes, you don’t even need to do the workouts (though it helps). Consider watching The Kilted Coaches. (Your mileage may vary.)

  • Create a playlist of songs that reverse crankiness.  

Having grown up in the era of mix-tapes, I found the late-90s/early-00’s experience of trying to make CD mixes frustrating. 

Nowadays, most folks are going to make playlists directly in Spotify, so whether you want to do it on the desktop or via mobile, here are Spotify’s directions for creating playlists. (And, of course, if you prefer to watch videos along with listening to your music, you can search out your favorite songs on YouTube and follow my directions above.)

If you’re not that up on popular music, you can also search online for happiness-including playlists that other people have created. For example, The Ultimate Happy Playlist on Spotify runs almost two-and-a-half joy-inspiring hours and has more than 10,000 followers. From Katrina and the Waves’ Walking on Sunshine to Pharrell Williams’ Happy to many less obvious choices, it’s a good starter for dissipating a bad mood.

 

  

  • Build up your success folders.

As we’ve discussed before, having tangible folders for papers and digital folders (generally for email) allow you to keep proof of your successes to read when you’re feeling down on yourself.

In my prior career, I had one particular manager who bore a striking resemblance to Dilbert’s evil, pointy-haired boss — I’m not sure what exactly went on during his long lunches, but depending on his mood, he’d either hunker down in his office or roam around to a pick a fight. He was once heard to scream at a hapless employee, “Everyone hates you because you use too much copy paper!”

That was the point when I first recognized how valuable and life-affirming it can be to keep written copies of positive comments.

You might have an email from a client saying that they couldn’t have accomplished their goals without you, or a handwritten thank you note that shows appreciation for something you’ve done for a friend. Or you might just get a note that says, “You’re the best!” or “You really made me laugh.”

The point is that we never know when an evil, pointy-haired boss, or a bad boyfriend, or a good person having a bad day is going to do or say something to puncture our self-confidence. You can’t organize your way out of being disappointed in a representative of the human race, but gathering up the equivalent of a positive affirmation in the form of someone else’s handwriting (or over their email signature block) can really help reverse a bad day.

Other options to develop for your Bad Day Rescue Toolkit might include:

  • a happy list — Whether you keep a note on your phone or have a sprawling list at the back of your journal, keep a running list of things that please you. My own list is a heady mix of things my friend’s four-year-old has said (most recently, with a big sigh, “HOW am I ever going to find a wife?), experiences I love (like waking up, seeing I have hours before the alarm will go off, and going back to sleep), funny lines from beloved TV shows like The West Wing and Ted Lasso, and a sub-list of just completely unexpected experiences that always remind me that you never know what might happen next!
  • a workout plan with moves that boost your endorphins, or a bookmarked schedule of live exercise classes (in-person or remote) for when you need some human interaction along with your running/biking/downward-dogging.
  • a set of mantras to get you going again (whether it’s a serious one, like “I am not defined by one mistake” or one that makes you laugh, with expletives not deleted) 
  • a meditation app —  Good Housekeeping has put together a list of the 15 Best Meditation Apps of 2022. Calm and Headspace get all the media buzz, there are lots of good alternatives, including quite a few that are free.
  • essential oils — OK, to be fair, I really don’t know anything about essential oils. Mostly, I know that my favorite scent is a grilled cheese sandwich, but many people swear by essential oils, either in the bath or through a diffuser. And I hear lavender oil can release tension. (If you’ve tried this option, let us know in the comments.)

When It’s More Than a Bad Day

Obviously, all of these suggestions are for resources that will help you tackle a garden-variety bad mood or bad day. If you find you’re having more back-to-back bad days or weeks than simple organizing can handle, please give yourself the gift of qualified professional support.

Call your health insurance Member Services number or check their website for mental health providers in your network. If you are experiencing a mental health emergency, please know that you can call NAMI (the National Alliance of Mental Illness) hotline at 800-950-NAMI or text “NAMI” to 741741, or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255)

A Parting (Musical) Note

I hope you’re having a good day right now and that this post has helped you prepare for the future, in case you need to turn a bad day around. Please share your own ideas for organizing your way out of a bad day in the comments section below.

Finally, when I originally created this post, YouTube would not let me share the official video for Bad Day, which you can now see up above. Over the past few years, so many people have told me through the years that it lifts their spirits, so in case YouTube makes the official video unavailable again, I wanted you to have the option to at least year the song and read the lyrics. While there are a variety of explanations for the neurological or psychological mechanism, but truth is that sometimes a sad song helps turn a bad day around.

Cross-Training for Families: Organize for All Eventualities

Posted on: October 11th, 2021 by Julie Bestry | 21 Comments

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH CROSS-TRAINING?

The term cross-training appears to have originated in the fitness and athletic world. One’s usual sport strengthens certain muscle groups and develops a specific set of skills; training in different disciplines, allows you to address other muscle groups, gain and sharpen different skills, and create a more well-rounded overall performance.

Photo by Marta Wave from Pexels

Cross-training in business yields the same kinds of benefits. Let’s say you work for a widget-making company. (“Hi! I’m <insert you name here>. I work for a widget-making company!”) Your job might be to oversee the complicated machine that cuts out the widgets; your friend down the factory line has a complementary job, making sure that the widgets are quality-controlled to meet international widget-production specifications.

If your company is run smoothly, each employee must be crackerjack at his or her job. But what if there’s only one person who knows how to do a specific thing? What if that person wins the lottery and quits, or gets hired away by a competing widget maker? Sure, the company can hire and train a new widget quality-control specialist, but until that happens, a manager with prior experience might have to step in, reducing the time the manager can, well, manage.

But what if the staff were cross-trained so that in addition to knowing your own job up, down, and sideways, everyone had at least a little training at other people’s jobs? Wouldn’t that make things better?

When I worked in television, I was a program director at local network affiliates. My assistant and I each had our separate spheres of influence, but the truth was that on most days, I was handling managerial tasks (research, contract negotiation, meetings with syndicators, etc.) and my assistant was handling day-to-day operations (maintaining the film vault, overseeing satellite operations, quality-controlling programming tapes — because this was in ancient times, before programming all lived inside computers).

Ours was a two-person department; without cross-training on the intricacies of satellite operations and whatnot, my assistant would never have been able to call in sick, take a vacation, or move onward professionally without things grinding to a stand-still. Cross-training saves butts!

Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels

Major advantages of cross-training in business include:

  • Better efficiency, because the more people have a good handle on how to do any one thing, the better it will get done.
  • Improved flexibility, because the organization as a whole can be nimble.
  • Clarity for emergency response planning. Back-up plans can save companies and that can save lives.
  • Better “coverage,” so that if there are greater needs in one area (like greater demand for boxing up widgets) employees from other departments can fill those roles.
  • Better integration and institutional knowledge across the company. If you only know how your department works, and are fuzzy on the operations of the rest of the business, not only does it hold you back from spotting potential problems and making suggestions (for the company’s benefit), it keeps you from achieving personal growth by seeing what other possibilities exist for you.
  • Better morale. The more you know how to do, and the better you are at it, the more self-confidence you’re going to have.
  • More satisfied customers. If you are involved in client/customer-facing work, cross-training means you can respond wisely, deftly, and quickly to questions, yielding more confidence in the company and in you as an expert.

Cross-training in your family, especially with regard to essential paperwork, information, and rituals, has the same benefits. Think about what happens when one parent is the main caregiver for a child but has to leave for a business trip or to help an ailing grandparent. The other parent (or other adult in the household, if there is one) needs to step in and step up!

Cross-training in the family has the same benefits as with companies.

  • Better efficiency, because the person who usually pays the electric bill, does the carpool drop-off, or renews the car insurance policies may not always be available without difficulty or overwhelm.
  • Improved flexibility, because the family as a whole can be nimble.
  • Clarity for emergency response planning. You back up your computer; shouldn’t you have backup for when you’re headed to give a career-defining speech and the school calls to say your child just threw up?
  • Better “coverage,” so that when one adult in the family is overloaded, the other can pick up the slack without having to explain what to do, how to do it, what the pitfalls may be, and who may complain (about the color of the frosting or how the sandwich is cut).
  • Better integration and “institutional” knowledge across the family. It’s not 1957; it’s unreasonable to expect that one member of the household is “in charge” of all things related to the kids or that one (other, or the same) person is “in charge” of all financial, legal, and organizational goings-on.* 

*This is a really complex topic. Being a caregiver for children and running a household, even when one works outside the home for pay, involves not only the physical labor but the mental load and emotional labor of anticipating cognitive, emotional, and other needs of stakeholders (but instead of CEOs and shareholders, it’s tiny humans and life partners). I’m excited to note that my colleagues Regina Lark, PhD and Judith Kolberg have written Emotional Labor: Why A Woman’s Work Is Never Done. It was just released, and deals more specifically with this concept.

  • Better morale. It’s a reality. The more active a part of your family you are (or your partner is), knowing everything from which lullaby scares away the monsters to which color notebook into which the teacher requires permission slips be inserted, the happier everyone will be.
  • More satisfied “customers.” OK, your kids and your spouse/partner, and maybe even other members of your household (like aging parents) want to feel confident that you’re a full-fledged member of the family, that you know what you’re doing and that you want to be there doing it.  

Cross-training rocks!

SO WHY DO PEOPLE AVOID CROSS-TRAINING?

If cross-training is so great, why do people groan and avoid it? (I’m so glad you asked!) The sticking points are the same at work as they are at home, though they are expressed differently.

Inertia

At work: businesses tend to focus on urgent priorities, so even if there are directives from on-high requiring quarterly cross-training sessions, management often finds a way to avoid taking time away from meeting deadlines to carve out slots in the schedule for cross-training.

At home: same deal. Your life is busy. Maybe you read a blog post like this, or your professional organizer calls your attention to a problem waiting to happen. 

Baby & Teddy Bear Image by StockSnap from Pixabay 

Or you hear a horror story about spouse who went on a business trip and the at-home parent couldn’t find the right sleeping stuffie, and so the child cried for two days straight. Or you hear about a widowed friend of your parents who didn’t pay the insurance bill because they didn’t know it came to the deceased spouse’s email address, not via mail. These are cautionary tales.

Focusing on the benefits rather than the inconvenience will help everyone acclimate.

Learning curve on new material 

At home and at work, nobody gets everything right on the first try. It’s human nature to avoid attempting something if you fear you won’t do it well. In the workplace, Impostor Syndrome may kick in, and an employee may fear attempting something outside the usual skill set, fearing the inability to get it right immediately might lead to firing. And at home, someone might feel nervous about being slow to succeed at a task one’s partner already does well.

When you invite your partner to join in household cross-training, acknowledge that you have different skill-sets and you may not be equally adept at everything. The point at home isn’t to be perfect, it’s to be perfectly satisfactory as a back-up.

Job security

At work: If you’re the only one who knows how to do something, you may feel like you have job security. (Of course, the flip-side of this is that management will tend not to promote you if you’ve convinced them nobody else can master your area.)

At home: While most people aren’t afraid that a spouse will divorce them if they don’t pick up right away on how to use the digital password manager, we all feel a little anxious about being seen without our halos. 

Fear of higher expectations, higher workload, and being taken advantage of

At work: It’s a reasonable fear that if you know how to do more, you might be expected to do more. To some extent, this can be a positive thing, allowing you to do your own rendition of “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine!” This is your chance to step up!

But if your workplace tends to be firmly on one side of the continuum, anywhere from moderately dysfunctional to toxic, you’ll want to watch for signs that you’re being taken advantage of, and be prepared to negotiate for better pay and benefits (or depart for greener pastures with your newfound skills).

At home: Unlike in businesses, where capitalism is the basis of everything and mutual loyalty can be a dubious concept, families are based (or should be based) on love, mutual respect, and loyalty. The point of family cross-training is to strengthen the family, for the benefit of everyone!

Focus on how improving skill training and sharing knowledge will support the healthy growth of the partnership and create a financially and emotionally sound foundation for the kids, the parents, and everyone in the family.

AREAS FOR FAMILY CROSS-TRAINING

Your family is unique, so I won’t presume to know everything you should consider when cross-training. However, this list should get you started.

Organize financial paperwork together

Smead All-in-One Financial Planning Organizer

Get clarity on the status quo. Do both partners know the following:

  • What household, credit card, and other bills does the family receive?
  • What is the frequency of the billing? (Sure, most utility bills come monthly, but your water and sewer bills may be quarterly. Some insurance premiums are paid monthly, others quarterly; car insurance is often paid every six months.)
  • When do the bills usually arrive? (The partner regularly paying the bills may have a gut sense of these dates and know there’s something wrong if the Capital One bill doesn’t arrive by the 10th; with the postal service continuing a massive slowdown, the other partner might be in for a shock if the bill arrived days or weeks late.)
  • How do the bills arrive? Via U.S. mail on paper? Via email notifications prompting logging in? Are the bills auto-paid?
  • How are the bills usually paid? If you were in the hospital and your partner sat down to pay the bills, not knowing that a particular bill is auto-paid could lead to an expensive double-payment.
  • What’s the typical amount of each bill? If you don’t have a chat about these things periodically, you or your spouse might not notice an error in billing or a significant jump in costs.

This probably won’t be a one-time cross-training event. Discuss these issues, then consider spending one month with the partner who usually doesn’t handle the bills taking care of things and “reporting” back; alternatively, you can go through the process side-by-side. The key isn’t to micromanage, but to support one another for common financial goals.

Once your kids are tweens/teens, you might want to include them in some aspects of this cross-training so that they understand the complexities of household finance.

For more guidance on organizing financial paperwork, you might want to start with a classic Paper Doll post, Financial Filing—Scrapbooking snapshots of your money’s life.

Know your household computer set-up

Depending on your ages/generations, you and your partner might be a digital immigrant (a person born or brought up before the widespread use of digital technology) or a digital native. If one of you has discomfort with technology, you’ll need patience to approach these topics. If both of you are digital immigrants, consider hiring someone to help walk you through making sure you’re fully trained on how to achieve your computer-related goals.

Computer security image by TheDigitalWay from Pixabay
 

  • How and where do you keep the essential passwords? It does no good for your partner to be willing to pay the bills if, in an emergency, they can’t log into the credit card or auto loan account.
  • Are you happy with your password management system? (Do you HAVE a password management system?) Know where to find all the passwords that allow your household to run smoothly.
  • Do you know (and know how to use) your computer backup system? From family photos to your browser’s bookmarks/favorites to all of your documents, everything needs a backup. I recommend a belt-and-suspenders approach, with local back-up to an external hard drive and cloud back-up via one of the popular backup companies. (I use Backblaze.) For more on backup, you might want to read a guest post I wrote for Alexa Bigwarfe’s WritePublishSell.com called 9 Ways to Keep Your Writing Safe.
  • What about all your household tech? Do you know your DSL/Cable modem configuration URL (and the user name and password)? What about security settings for your internet router? If you (or your partner, or the internet tech) set up your Wi-Fi password eons ago, would you be able to find it to set up a new device?

Do you know the state of your estate?

From wills to beneficiary lists, from a Power of Attorney for financial decisions to your healthcare proxy, from your advanced care directives to how much (and what kind) of life insurance you have, chances are good that one person in your family took point and the other is only vaguely aware of what’s going on. Or, maybe you haven’t gotten around to squaring any of this away yet?

Either way, start with making sure you’ve both read up on the topics. You can begin with:

How to Replace and Organize 7 Essential Government Documents

How to Create, Organize, and Safeguard 5 Essential Legal and Estate Documents

The Professor and Mary Ann: 8 Other Essential Documents You Need To Create

Nobody ever likes talking about death. But talking about your estate documents, and maybe even working together to create them in the first place, is the first step to knowing that your family is safe and covered in case of the worst eventualities.

Other ways you can cross-train in the family

There’s obviously so much more than financial and legal paperwork and information to consider when cross-training. Your entire family might want to sit-down to brainstorm ideas. Some possibilities:

  • Medical issues — Does everyone (or at least every adult) have a working knowledge of what to do in a medical emergency? My friend has Type 1 diabetes, and her 10-year-old has known, from an early age, how to help his mom by fetching a juice box to raise her blood glucose. Kids should know how to make a phone call to 9-1-1 and how to identify themselves, their address, and some basic information to relay about their parents.
  • Medical care — Do you and your partner both know the pediatrician’s name and phone number? Where to find the First Aid kit? What medication you and your kids regularly take, so they can convey this in case of an emergency?
  • Parenting essentials — This could be a blog post (or a book) all unto itself. From favorite sippy cup to which kids (and the kids’ best friends) have specific dietary requirements and preferences, from the name of the kids’ teachers to how to contact their friends’ parents (in case one of the tiny humans independently decides to get off the bus and go to a friend’s house without informing you), there’s a lot of essential information and skills that go into parenting. The grownups in the house need to share that wealth of information with one another!
  • Laundry and household care — Are there sneaky tricks to getting household appliances to work properly? If something in the basement makes a weird, loud teapot-whistle sound, would you know that it was the sump pump having run out of distilled water? Does it do any good if your partner knows that and you don’t? (So much NOPE!)
  • Auto care — Does one partner always handle the interactions with the mechanic? Maybe you need to share the knowledge so that you can speak authoritatively when you’re pressed to make a pricey decision.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION from Pexels 

HOW TO PROPOSE FAMILY CROSS-TRAINING

You are the expert on how your family and household works. This post is just designed to give you an idea of how you can not merely share the load (and the information) but do it in a way that ensures your family’s immediate and long-term security. Whether the stakeholder is your toddler (who is sobbing that “that’s the wrong bedtime book”) or the finicky garden hose, the mortgage company or your partner’s grandmother, having a complete sense of what gets done — when, where, and most importantly, how — is essential. 

I encourage you to share the concepts of this post with your partner. Talk about the benefits: efficiency, flexibility, clarity for emergency response, better coverage when one family member is overloaded, more integrated family “institutional” knowledge, greater morale, and a happier constituency of family members.

But don’t just talk about the benefits. Speak honestly about potential fears and reasons for avoidance (including inertia, worries about learning curves, the sense of “job security” and higher expectations). Ignoring them won’t make them go away, but talking may be just what you need to conquer those challenges and support your family team.

WHAT IF YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN?

I get it; not everyone has a partner. There are a lot of single parents, widows or widowers whose children are “grown and flown,” and just random singletons (like Paper Doll). That doesn’t mean that you’re completely on your own. Think about who you’d call in an emergency. To whom would you reach out if you needed someone to watch your tiny human? Who would you trust to log into your accounts and pay your bills for you?

These may not all be the same person. You may need to do cross-training with a number of someones: your ex, a sibling in another city, a best friend, a professional organizer trained in financial organizing (whom you can find through NAPO and AADMM), an accountant, an attorney, a hoc nanny, and others. The key is to start thinking now: 

Who can be you when you can’t be you? 

Back-to-School Solutions for the Space-Time Continuum

Posted on: August 30th, 2021 by Julie Bestry | 16 Comments

According to the Einstein page at Stanford University covering questions about Special and General Relativity:

This new reality was that space and time, as physical constructs, have to be combined into a new mathematical/physical entity called ‘space-time’, because the equations of relativity show that both the space and time coordinates of any event must get mixed together by the mathematics, in order to accurately describe what we see. Because space consists of 3 dimensions, and time is 1-dimensional, space-time must, therefore, be a 4-dimensional object. It is believed to be a ‘continuum’ because so far as we know, there are no missing points in space or instants in time, and both can be subdivided without any apparent limit in size or duration. So, physicists now routinely consider our world to be embedded in this 4-dimensional Space-Time continuum, and all events, places, moments in history, actions and so on are described in terms of their location in Space-Time.

Whew. That’s a lot. But I’ve got good news. This won’t be on the test! (We’ll leave it to the physics majors.)

But as a professional organizer, I often have to solve problems that involve time (and the management of tasks) and space (and the excising of clutter and the rearranging of the molecules of what remains). So, in this second week of looking at solutions that help our students go back to school, I’m sharing two products I praise often for handling the “time” part of the equation, and a few new delights for the space aspect. 

TIME AND RELATIVITY

Getting firmly back onto “clock time” is key to the back-to-school process, and not just for little kids. Parents, teachers, and college students are just as much in need of time management support as little ones.

Getting control over the clock, especially after the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer (and whatever these last 18 months have been) means really having a sense of time as it passes. Getting the “feel” of how long a quarter hour or ninety minutes really is can be hard, not just for kids, but for people with ADHD and various executive function disorders, and for any of us who’ve had a “flexible” relationship with time over this recent while.

It’s not just kids (or adults working in loosey-goosey fields) who have trouble with time. I’ve worked with engineers and scientists — professionals for whom precision is essential — on their productivity skills. We’ve started with an exercise where I tell them to begin a task we’ve discussed, and I will stop them after they’ve worked for eight minutes. I’ve seen two things happen.

When doing administrative work, like expense reports or employee reviews, these clients struggle. 90% of them have looked up at me early, insisting that surely it’s been eight minutes already. For about a third of those, they are certain at least that much time has passed before even the five-minute mark! They may as well be kicking the back of my seat and whining, “Are we there yet?”

In contrast, when these same clients are set free to work on their passion projects, to delve into whatever science-y, engineering-y thing they love (think: the Professor from Gilligan’s Island), they are often shocked when I call, “Time!” Sometimes, in just eight minutes, they’ve forgotten I was even there! (I try not to be offended by this.)

I guess Einstein was really right about time being relative, eh?

When you’re not “in flow,” when you’re focused on the time but not enthusiastic about the task, time passes slowly. If you don’t get into the flow state, into the groove, you’re constantly checking on the time and not embracing the task with your whole heart and mind, a recipe for dissatisfaction and unfinished work.

Or, you find ways to self-soothe, to do anything but what you’re supposed to, and you get into a flow state but doing the wrong thing. An analog clock, one that shows you the time as it passes, can be a comfort, to assure your “monkey mind” that you won’t be forced to do something boring and distasteful forever. The clock makes time a concrete concept; if you can see that you only have to do your workout routine for 20 minutes, your brain will back off of the obsession with how long it’s taking to do those downward-facing dogs or lunges or whatever.

Conversely, if you are in flow (on work or homework and hopefully not scrolling through social media), it can be hard to effectively transition from what you’re doing now to what you’re supposed to be doing next. Again, an analog clock with a gentle alarm can help you do this.

Also, friend-of-the-blog Dr. Melissa Gratias has a great post, “What is a “Task Transition” and How Can It Make Me More Productive?” on this very topic, and while the advice is geared for grownups, you can modify the instructions to help students get better at transitioning between projects.

For more on flow, check out the “Sidebar on Flow and the Unpronounceable Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi” in my post from last March, Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek or watch Csikszentmihalyi’s superb TEDTalk, below.

 

Longtime readers know how much my profession loves one particular kind of analog clock/timer.

Time Timer

Time Timers aren’t just clocks. They have three important features:

  • They’re analog. Most clocks and timers these days are digital, and for a lot of people, digital time is pretty amorphous. 11:12 and 12:11 don’t feel appreciably different.
  • They’re visual. Digital clocks don’t show you the passage of time, they just show you numbers. You can ask Siri or Alexa to tell you when 45 minutes are up, but depending on where you are in the flow state, not really sensing the passage of time can lead to anxiety. But all of the Time Timer products (including the Original, the Plus, the Mod (my favorite!), the watches, and the apps) have a colored disc that shows the passage of time so you or your kids can have a more sensory experience and see time passing.
  • They’re not distracting. You don’t hear Time Timers tick like most analog clocks or timers. There’s an optional audio alert when time is up, but otherwise, there’s nothing to steal your focus.

There are many different ways to corral the benefits of analog clocks, especially the Time Timer, into your back-to-school process. For example:

Busy parents are trying to get their kids up, get themselves put together, make sure some kind of breakfast is attempted, pack lunches, sign permission slips, and get everyone out the door. That’s a lot to do, and mornings can be a slog. Setting up a colorful Mod in the high-traffic kitchen keeps everyone’s eyes on the prize.

Got tiny humans who take way too long on morning grooming, meaning that making the bus is an iffy proposition? Setting the Time Timer PLUS 20 Minute on the bathroom counter will let them see that washing the breakfast off their faces, brushing their teeth, combing their hair, and getting dressed need to be accomplished in a bit more orderly fashion and look…that’s another five minutes or more of the red disc disappearing! It’s helpful at both ends of the day, because an orderly bedtime ritual (with a combo dry-erase board and TimeTimer) can make mornings flow better, too.

Note: I’m not sure what kind of societal norm we’ve developed to keep clocks out of bathrooms, but Paper Doll is coming out firmly against that. As someone who has occasionally been known to hold a book in my left hand while lackadaisically holding the hair dryer in my right hand, I think an analog clock, particularly a Time Timer, belongs in the corner of any bathroom countertop to keep our attention where it belongs. (Speaking of bathrooms, last November, when we were in the thick of the pandemic, I wrote Organize Your Health: Parental Wisdom, Innovation, and the New Time Timer® Wash. Given Delta, Delta+, Lambda, and whatever Greek letters might come our way, it’s worth revisiting.) 

Are your older students (in high school and college) going to be taking standardized tests this year? SATs? ACTs? GREs? LSATs? M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-Es! (Sorry. Got carried away for a minute.) These timers are ideal for practicing timed sections of those exams.

And, of course, Time Timers are a great way for high school and college students, as well as office workers, to get (and stay) in the flow when using the Pomodoro Technique, whether you’re using the standard 25 minutes of focus/5 minutes of break method, or a modified 45 minutes of work/10 minutes of break approach.

For more ideas, check out how the Time Timer can be used:

Academic Planner: A Tool For Time Management®

If you’ve been reading Paper Doll for even a little while, you should be familiar with the Academic Planner: A Tool For Time Management®, the brainchild of my colleague (and fellow Cornell University alumna) Leslie Josel of Order Out of Chaos. Last year, when Leslie’s latest book launched, I interviewed her for Paper Doll Peeks Behind the Curtain with Superstar Coach, Author & Speaker Leslie Josel.

Back in ye olden days (that is, when Paper Doll went to school), middle and high school students didn’t generally have planners. The more organized of us had top-bound spiral notebooks, as though we were junior reporters (or youthful spies) and we used them as assignment notebooks. Teachers recommended faithfully copying down each assignment before leaving the classroom. If these instructions were followed, you’d get home at the end of the day with a page or two of clear notes of what pages you had to read, what problem sets you had to complete, and what essays needed to be written.

Unfortunately, assignment notebooks are like to-do lists. They tell you what to do and when it needs to be finished, but provide no context. (Maybe students should read my post from last month, Checklists, Gantt Charts, and Kanban Boards — Organize Your Tasks?)

So, somewhere in the 1990s, middle and high schools started giving out school-themed paper planners for students to track their projects. It was an improvement, just like planners adults used. Those planners gave kids space to write due dates, but no guidance for keeping track of all the granular details of a complex teenage life—not just classes, homework, projects, and exams, but extracurricular activities, part-time jobs, and family obligations!

This is where the Academic Planner: A Tool For Time Management®, a Family Choice Award-winner, comes in. Leslie’s patented calendar layout helps students see their school assignments right along with their after-school activities so they can plan when they have time to get work done and not merely know that they have to get it done. 

© 2021 Order Out of Chaos

The planner has a wide variety of features and benefits:

  • Instead of having to write course names over and over as assignments come up, the planner has unique subject pages at the front and the back so students only have to record class subjects (for which 7 subject boxes are provided) once! If it’s written once and always there, you can’t forget it!
  • The planner has oodles of space to enter all Monday-Friday school/after-school activities from 2 p.m. until 9 p.m. as well as weekend obligations. This makes it easier for students to plan and manage their time and tasks.
  • The pages of the planner line up with the grid of classes on a class-by-class basis, so it’s easier for students to record their weekly schedules and review them. (This is a plus for all those schools that use those weird modules so that every week’s schedule is different!)
  • The planner lays out the days of the week horizontally across the top of the weekly two-page spread instead of putting half a week, stacked, on either side. This is much more like the kind of layout most adult paper planners use, and the grid format makes it easy to enter and view assignments and due dates.
  • Because a weekly view gives a pretty constrained sense of what needs to be accomplished, the planner also has monthly pages and large pages for writing complex assignments and activities.

See it in action:

In addition to the planner itself, there are a variety of downloadable extras, including a project planning guide, a study planning guide, printable academic planning worksheets, and an accessories pack with a page marker, a monthly tab sheet and a sheet of student stickers.

The whole kit-and-caboodle is $19.99. (If you’re in the US, be sure to use the code FREESHIP60 when you check out to get free shipping on all orders above $60.) You can also get a pack of extra stickers and accessories for $10.79, if you’re so inclined.

Personally, I think adults would get more enjoyment out of their paper planners if they felt at ease buying stickers. In a cool stationery store in London in 2019, I bought a packet of stickers with motivational messages and cool graphics, like luggage tags to mark vacation days. Adult coloring books became a self-care powerhouse. Why not stickers?

Paper Doll thinks adults would get more enjoyment out of their paper planners if they felt at ease buying stickers. Adult coloring books became a self-care powerhouse. Why not stickers? Share on X

Finally, as we wrap up the “time” section, I want to point out again that Leslie’s book, How to Do It Now Because It’s Not Going Away: An Expert Guide to Getting Stuff Done is top-notch for high school and college students needing support on time management and productivity. It’s one of only two books I recommend when parents ask for organizing advice for their students. The other is Donna Goldberg’s classic, The Organized Student: Teaching Children the Skills for Success in School and Beyond. It’s also superb, but was published in 2005, so unlike Leslie’s book, there are few tech solutions. (It’s also much more geared for tangible organizing vs. Leslie’s, which focuses on tasks, time, and overcoming procrastination.) 

SPACE: THE FINAL (and limited) FRONTIER

Last week, in Vibrant and Vertical: Organizing Paper for Back-to-School, we looked at products for helping students of all ages manage their paper. Today, we’re focusing on organizing space, particularly for college students in dorm rooms, where space is in short supply. 

Flat-Plug Power Strips and Surge Protectors

If you’ve moved a college student into the dorms, you’ve probably noticed two things about the space. First, it’s at a premium and you can’t afford to waste an inch of it. Second, the room wasn’t designed by professional organizers, which means that it’s not optimally functional.

For example, the built-in heater is right next to the desk, putting the expensive new computer at risk. The short cord for the mini-fridge limits where in the room you can actually put it. And the electrical outlets are all behind desks and beds, so a traditional extension cord plug needs up to two inches of space to accommodate the plug head!

Aha! But did you know there are power strips and surge protectors with flat-head plugs, so instead of poking straight out, they extend to the side, taking up minimal room, allowing furniture to sit, if not flush against the wall, much closer?

I like this tiny Anker Power Strip with USB PowerExtend. Not only is it designed with a flat plug, it has a 5-foot extension cord, two outlets, and two USB ports.

 

 

At only 3.3″ long and 1.8″ thick, this isn’t going to power everything in the room, but it’s ideal for bed-side or desk-top items you need to charge, and at $12.74 from Amazon, it’s an inexpensive solution to the “I can’t plug it in!” frustration.

The Anker Power Strip comes in black or white, and in 5′, 8′, and 10′ lengths, but for some reason, the black versions are more expensive than the white ones at every length. 

If you want an actual surge protector and one that accommodates charging multiple devices, there are a variety of options. I like the style and functionality of this Tessan Power Strip Surge Protector.

In addition to the flat plug, it has nine AC outlets and 3 USB ports, and a 6.5′ cord. But what appeals to me in particular is the functionality of the design in how the outlets and ports are laid out, with three outlets on the two sides and top of the surge protector, and the three USB ports on the small front end. By not squishing everything on the top surface, there’s more room to use those occasional oversized charging plugs. It’s $19.00, and in the reverse of Anker’s odd pricing, the white version is more expensive, at $24.99.

USB-USB-C Adapters

I recently purchased one of the gorgeous new 24″ iMacs. When I got it, I was so focused on the front:

that I didn’t really pay that much attention to the specs or the photo of the rear view:

If you’re an old-time iMac user, you may (or may not) peek at the lower left corner of the rear of the computer and see the problem. You see, on my old iMac, I had four USB ports, two Thunderbolt ports, and an ethernet port. On the new iMac, I have just two itty-bitty, teeny-weeny USB-C ports and two ittier-bittier Thunderbolt 3 ports. 

The problem? Computers don’t come with CD drives anymore, so I have an external one with a USB connection. And I have a 2TB external hard drive for backing up locally, also with a USB connection. I have a USB Fitbit charger, a little USB fan for hot days, and a USB podcast-quality external microphone. And now none of them fit my new computer!

Now, this isn’t a tragedy. I use an old-timey Space Bar monitor riser with two front-facing and three rear-facing USB ports, and two front-facing USB charging-only ports, and I just need to plug the new iMac into the old riser. But during the transition, I really need something to make everything fit in a tiny, tidy way. (And the Space Bar monitor riser is ancient, so I can’t count on it forever.)

So, if you’ve got a high school student or college student with a new computer and a lot of (slightly) older devices and chargers, you don’t need to rush to purchase a desktop space-hogging USB hub adapter. Instead, get a sense of how much your student needs to modify the space part of the space-time continuum.

There are miniature adapters, sans cables, you can plug in to the USB-C ports of your new devices and plug your older USB items into them. I purchased a Syntech USB C to USB Adapter 2-pack in Rose Gold (to coordinate with the purple iMac, of course) for $10.99.

Instead of shelling out for a big hub that I probably don’t need, for a little more than $5 each, these little 1.08″ long x 0.65″ wide x 0.32″ high doohickeys save space and minimize the number of cables in my space. 

If you’ve got a dorm-based student, looking for space-saving items for electronics, check out the wide variety of tiny USB-to-USB C options.

 

I hope you and your families have a great school year. Good luck taking up your share of the space-time continuum!

 

Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, and I may get a small remuneration (at no additional cost to you) if you make a purchase after clicking through to the resulting pages. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Seriously, who else would claim them?) For more information regarding how Best Results Organizing handles affiliate links, please see the affiliate section of the site’s Privacy Policy.

Checklists, Gantt Charts, and Kanban Boards – Organize Your Tasks

Posted on: July 26th, 2021 by Julie Bestry | 18 Comments

Let’s talk about tasks.

How do you keep track of what you have to do? How do you make sure you’re doing the “right” things, the ones that are your highest priorities? How do you keep yourself from getting stressed out by everything waiting to get done?

Beyond your own progress and productivity, how do you make sure your team (whether that’s your department or committee at work, or TeamFamily) is being efficient, getting the right things done, and not duplicating efforts?

There are a wide variety of methods (originally created in analog formats, later adapted to the digital world) to collect your “aspirations” (things you want to do or should do) and track progress. The most common method of noting what you need to do (so that you don’t forget it) and monitoring what you have completed, is a checklist, but we’re also going to look at two other types of tools for keeping on top of your tasks and projects.

CHECKLISTS

The most basic type of checklist is a “to-do” list. You write down what you have to do — and hopefully, you do it. (Motivation is beyond the scope of today’s post, but feel free to check out Count on Accountability: 5 Productivity Support Solutions and Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek to address ways to get from knowing what you intend to do to actually achieving it.)

If you only have a few items, and you don’t have to worry about the order in which tasks are accomplished or who is getting what done, a to-do list is fine. If you have three or four tasks (say, two errands, a phone call, and a package to box up and mail), you can even get away without checking off the completed items. For our purposes, we’ll even leave aside the debate over checking things off vs. crossing them out. We’ll leave that for a future post! (But Paper Doll is Team Check-It-Off.)

Of course, there are more intricate checklists. In Dr. Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto, he wrote about the power of a checklist to combat the problems that arise from the sheer (growing) complexity and volume of human knowledge and our efforts to strive to be better, build bigger, and live more boldly. No matter how much specialized training we have and how we use technology to support our efforts, things go awry. Tiny steps get missed.

But the humble checklist can be the solution. In Gawande’s book, he looked at how mistakes in the operating room (contributing to both mortality and morbidity) have dramatically declined since the institution of the World Health Organization’s Surgical Safety Checklist in many countries.

©1942 Life Magazine, August 24

Since 1935, airline pilots have developed and used pre-flight checklists to ascertain that the maintenance and on-deck crews have accomplished all tasks, in the proper order, before takeoff.

Almost all manufacturers have training manuals with checklists delineating proper safety and other precautions for smooth production efforts. In the construction field, they’re called punch lists, and they ensure that the architect, the contractor, the sub-contractors, and even the building owner complete all of the dependent and interdependent tasks so that everyone can finish the job efficiently and safely.

Checklists can be analog (paper) or digital (anything from a document on your computer or in the cloud to a desktop or mobile app).

The appeal of analog is that it’s familiar. You pull out a piece of paper and start listing all of the things you need to get done. Voila. For greater granularity, you can develop sub-lists to improve your productivity. For example:

1) Group all of the tasks that involve errands in one list, then visualize where you’ll have to drive, and develop a sequence so that you travel the fewest total miles.

For example, if you had six errands, you could zig-zag from one to the other, or you could plan a route that would take you to the farthest location first and then complete more tasks as you travel back toward home. 

There are even apps that will optimize the most efficient routes, based on what is commonly known as the Traveling Salesman Problem, without you having to do all that math!

Most are designed for delivery companies rather than personal errand runners (and are priced for them, too), but there are a few worth checking out to amp up your out-of-the-house to-do list progress:

  • Circuit – free routes for up to 10 stops, then $20/month
  • MapZen – really for only the programmers you know, but this article can help
  • RouteXL – sadly, it doesn’t integrate with your phone’s GPS, but it is free!

2) Group conceptually related tasks into sub-lists. For example: calls to return, research you have to do, things you have to write. You will improve your productivity if you can get into a flow state, focusing on what task type. 

3) Prioritize tasks in your lists so that the most time-sensitive are done first. small victories breed success, and if you get the time-pressured tasks completed first, you’ll have more mental energy to focus on the things ones in line.

When you’re analog, you can easily see everything planned for the day or week (or your “life” lists) and you can make changes wherever you are, as long as you have a writing implement and (given that we just came out of a nine-week notebook series) paper. No charging, no waiting for something to power up, no waiting while an app updating. 

Of course, analog lists have a few downsides. The more information you add, the messier your list get. It’s harder to update when plans and priorities change, and then you get a page full of scribbles, and the only way to update to a clean list is to start a new page.

Then again, for some people, that’s the exact appeal of analog; the writing and re-writing of tasks gives you an opportunity to continually reconsider the relative value of tasks in your life. If you’re constantly going to the store to pick up a few grocery items, this frequent review may convince you to upgrade your grocery planning game or even outsource to a delivery service so that you can plan once a week and have food auto-magically appear. (Think: Instacart or Shipt.)

Also, it’s easier to lose an analog list than a digital one. You may prefer your task lists to be created digitally so that, once synced, everything you have to do lives in your phone and computer, going wherever you go. I bet you have at least one task app right now, and perhaps many. One site recently recapped The 82 Best Cross-Platform Tasks Apps of 2021, including their platforms, prices, and whether they support collaboration!

While having your ride-or-die key features may be important, as with most systems, whether it’s notebooks and planners, or software and apps, commitment to one system is generally the biggest signifier of success. Some of the most popular task apps for individuals include:

  • Remember the Milk – a classic! Free or $20/year for Pro with advanced sorting, sub-tasks, Apple Watch support, and unlimited task sharing
  • Teux Deux – free on mobile, $3/month or $24/year
  • AnyDo – free, or from $3-$6/month, depending on billing frequency preference
  • Things 3 – Apple only and pricey, but it has die-hard fans; $50/Mac, $10/iOS
  • Google Tasks – free with your Google account
  • Reminders – free, and built into all of your MacOS and iOS devices)
  • Habitica – if gamifying your tasks might give you a little more motivation

If you’ve got a team, and you’re looking for serious project management rather than task lists, you might consider:

  • Asana – free for individuals and small teams, $11/user/month for Premium, and $25/user/mnth for companies. Asana is a full-on project management tool.
  • Basecamp – the limited personal version is free; for businesses, it’s a flat $99/month
  • Trello – free for individuals and small teams, $10/user/month for teams up to 100 users. (Trello is a stellar tool and, in my opinion, much more user-friendly than the other options. More on Trello later.)

GANTT CHARTS

If you’re working through a repeated project, one that generally has the same set of steps performed each time (whether it’s prepping for a vacation, on-boarding new employees, or migrating to a new cell phone), a checklist will give you confidence that you haven’t missed an essential action.

When you’re the only one performing the tasks, and each step is fairly distinct and short-lived, a checklist is enough. But when you’re dealing with multiple projects (each of which have multiple dependent tasks), especially when your whole team is involved, project management devotees find that a Gantt chart is useful.

Gantt Chart Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay 

A Gantt chart is basically just a horizontal bar chart showing the timeline of a project. It’s one way to visualize the project schedule so that you can track the work as it’s getting done (or, not getting done) and noting the key milestones as you as your team hits them.

Each horizontal bar represents a task or element of the project, and however long the bar extends represents how long the task will (or should) take. Think the bars on a Gantt chart like how your cable TV menu shows the programs on individual, horizontal lines, one line per network, and how a sit-com takes up a short time range, a one-hour drama takes up twice as much space, a movie extends even further, and a football game extends off the screen and you have to keep scrolling.

Color-coding identifies which person or team is responsible for each task, and you can use symbols to identify dependent tasks.

While a checklist clarifies what needs to be done and tracking can be updated with a simple checkmark, it’s not very refined. A Gantt chart offers some distinct advantages. You can:

Get clarity – The Gantt chart requires that you have a project plan in place and that you develop a timeline to accomplish everything. A checklist starts as a brain dump of all related ideas, and then may morph into something orderly if precision is required. But a Gantt chart requires precision at the outset – what tasks will be done? By whom? In what order? Started when? Completed when? Which  elements are dependent upon other elements being completed?

See time – With a Gantt chart, you are going to estimate timelines with the knowledge that while some things may be completed earlier than expected, other stages will take longer. As necessary, you can update and lengthen the bar for applicable stages. If only the cable TV on-screen guide would update, in real time, when a sporting event ran long so you wouldn’t have to keep checking to see if your show was ready to start!

Each adjustment gives you the opportunity to evaluate potential changes to your process. Will you have to delay your project launch? Or might you authorize overtime or bring in people from other departments (or outsource) to deliver the project on-schedule. Visualizing time in, well, real time, means you know if you need more (human or financial) resources.

Give everyone the big-picture view – The more people are involved, the harder it is to see what’s going on with other teams. A Gantt chart offers perspective and serves as a real-time status report without need for a meeting that could have been an email, or an email that could have been “Just look at the Gantt chart!” With the chart, you know when it’s about to be your turn start, and to deliver, your part of the project.

A Gantt chart offers perspective and serves as a real-time status report without need for a meeting that could have been an email, or an email that could have been *Just look at the Gantt chart!* Share on X

Gantt charts have some downsides. It takes a while to set them up, and you really need to develop them digitally, as anything beyond the most simple kind will get messy on a whiteboard.

You can create free Gantt charts from templates online or in software you may already be using:

  • Airtable – which has the advantage of being pretty (and check out the video below for an in-depth look at Gantt charts in general, as well as Airtable’s approach)

  • Agantty – check out the company’s YouTube page for lots of helpful tutorials
  • Canva (another pretty option, with lots of templates and customization options, but less easily updatable than the spreadsheet-based options)

There are also web-based software options specifically designed for developing Gantt charts, available at varying price points, including:

  • Toggl (free for solo users; $8/user/month for teams, and $13.35/user/month for businesses)
  • SmartSheet ($14/user/month for individuals, $25/user/month for businesses)
  • ProjectManager.com (free for up to three users; $14.user/month for teams, $25/user/month for large businesses)
  • Clickup (a visually appealing solution, with a free level and an inexpensive ($5/month) unlimited option)
  • GanttPro ($15/user/month for individuals, $8.90/user/month for teams)

 

A checklist is simple. A Gantt chart is more complex, but streamlined and visual. Alas, neither is very inspiring. Luckily, there’s a tool that mixes the elements of both to provide visual motivation for your productivity.

KANBAN BOARDS

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

One of the most increasingly popular ways to track tasks is through the use of tasks boards, often known as Kanban boards. Kanban is the Japanese word for “billboard,” and I think a Kanban board can serve as a billboard, advertising and promoting your tasks to you.

Kanban is the Japanese word for 'billboard' and I think a Kanban board can serve as a billboard, advertising and promoting your tasks to you. Share on X

Kanban boards come out of the Japanese lean manufacturing process, but all you really need to know is how to make a simple one to work for you:

  • A Kanban board has columns, sometimes described as “swimlanes,” to help you visualize each element of your efforts at various stages in the process.
  • Cards, sticky notes, or icons depicting the task move, from left-to-right, through the stages represented in those columns or swimlanes. This lets you (and your team members, if applicable) see where each task falls in the progress toward completion.
  • At minimum, there are three columns: To Do, Doing, and Done. If you prefer, say Pending, In-Progress, and Completed. (But it’s so much fun to move it to the right-most column and shout, “Done!!!”
  • In the To Do column, set up all of your brainstormed tasks from that brain dump, just waiting to move forward. There can be a melange, or you can group them by task type.
  • When you start working on a task, move it to the Doing column. And, as you’ve probably guessed, once you’ve finished, it can move to the Done column.

Unlike a to-do list, you can see your status and feel motivated. Unlike a Gantt chart, it doesn’t feel so formal!

And you can absolutely make your own Kanban boards. Obviously, this has diminishing returns the larger your group is, but it’s great for you on your own, for your family, or for your small group (dorm suitemates, colleagues in the same office, etc.)

If you want a visual representation of what you (and maybe your family or team) needs to do, you can be as low-rent or as happily crafty and DIY as you prefer.

Me? I’m all about low-effort. If there’s no whiteboard in the space where my client and I are working, I’ll use two vertical strips of blue painter’s tape on the wall and a stack of multi-colored Post-It® notes. Instead of a massive list of tasks that creates a sense of overwhelm, we:

  • Put each task on a sticky note.
  • categorize tasks types by color – perhaps phonecalls in blue, things to write in red, bills to pay or invoices to send in green
  • Select the highest priority task(s) to put in the middle column. Get working!

You may wonder how you can be “doing” more than one task at a time, but the Kanban/task board works best looking at day-by-day progress. If you call the doctor’s office to make an appointment but have to leave a message, leave it in the “doing” column until the doctor’s office calls back and you’ve scheduled the appointment. If you’re writing a document but have to pause while you wait for some data to come in, for today at least, it stays in the doing column. Of course, if a task stays in “doing” more than a few days without any forward momentum, you’ll need to reconsider.

You can take a photo of your board and share it with team members via Dropbox, Evernote, GoogleDrive, etc. Post-it® even makes its own app for scanning, capturing, and sharing! (See what Post-it® has to say about Kanban boards!)

No painter’s tape? Try party streamers.

No wall space? No white board? How about a window or a mirror? Be creative and think vertically.

If you prefer something a little more artistic, office supply giant Quill has put together a nifty infographic on creating a task (AKA: Kanban) board.

 

If you want to DIY your own digital Kanban board, make a few columns in a spreadsheet like Excel or Google Sheets. Label the top row with column headers for To Do, Doing, and Done. As you work on a task, cut it from the first column and paste it into the second. When you finish a task, cut it from the second column to the third. 

But really, if you’re going to go digital, pick one of the Kanban-making apps. The bright colors, drag-and-drop features, and advanced resources will make it worth your while.

  • Trello – There’s so much built-in automation, I can’t think of a better place to start. (There’s a lot more you can do, as this video shows, but Trello was created to make Kanban can-do! 

There are so many sites getting into the Kanban game, that rather than list other apps, I’ll just point you to some recent round-ups:

The big advantage of a Kanban board is that you (and everyone else) can see it and stay motivated.  In your house or office, when the Kanban board is on the wall, it’s a great billboard.

But what if you have 15 people on your team, spread across five cities and two continents? Your Kanban may be in Google Drive or iCloud or in the dedicated software, but I find that things that “live” in your computer or phone just don’t have the same immediacy as brightly colored sticky notes on your wall.

Or do they? What do you think?

Checklists, Gantt charts, and Kanban boards: what do you use for yourself? What would you like best for your team? I look forward to seeing which techniques and which apps have caught your eye.

Newer Entries »