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Keeping Track of All of Your Tasks? 99

Posted by Cliff from the all-about-the-organizational-skillz dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "I work for a Fortune 500 Company as a Unix sysadmin and at any given time I may be working with 10 different project teams, each with their own milestones, tasks/to-dos, notes and reportable status. I'm constantly losing track of tasks that I need to do, notes I've taken and status reports that I've written. I've tried paper solutions, PDAs, Microsoft Project and groupware type stuff and nothing really seems designed to allow me to track mulitple project with mulitple tasks and to-dos as well as keep up with the status and notes that I generate from each of these tasks. How do you keep it all straight?"
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Keeping Track of All of Your Tasks? More

Keeping Track of All of Your Tasks?

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  • it takes practice (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    keeping yourself organized in life takes some practice. most of all you at least have to try and stay organized rather than let something else (like a peice of software or a butler) keep it all organized for you.

    first, you need basic organization skills and then maybe you will be ready to supplement those skills with software.
    • A dictation recorder, for example. Sure, tapes are a drag to listen all the way through, to make sure you get reminded of everything on it.

      So...I bet as soon as someone rigs up one with a hard disk drive and a voice-controlled filing system, saving AND quickly finding recorded memos will attract a lot of buyers.

    • Re:it takes practice (Score:2, Insightful)

      by lahi ( 316099 )
      I think that "try and stay organized" is a rather unhelpful answer. It's precisely that which the original question was about.

      My guess is that donniejones belongs to a group of creative problem solvers who simply are less capable of staying organized in a systematic way - perhaps that "disability" is precisely what makes them (us) good problem solvers.

      In the good old days I suspect such people would have had a personal secretary assigned to deal with all the paperwork, deadlines, schedules, mail, etc so the

  • Xoops + xHelp (Score:2, Interesting)

    by darthgnu ( 866920 )
    We use a web CMS called Xoops for the IT departement intranet. We use a "bug tracker" called xHelp that is integrated with the CMS. Xoops also offers basic project management. It's a no brainer setup, real easy to get started with. For documentation, we use PukiWiki which does the job of organizing useful information. You may also want to look in "tracking" software (refered to as "trackers") which may be of use in your situation. Hope it helped.

  • E-mail (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Meest ( 714734 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @05:56PM (#13351271)
    I just personaly use e-mail as my To-Do list/Project list/Notebook

    I just made subfolders for each project and to-do list. then if someone wants me to do something and they're yelling it at me i just say "Send me and e-mail with it" that way i sit down, can organize it. or if i need to put something on a to-do list. i e-mail it to myself.

    Might not work for you depending on your spam count but for me it works perfect. And if spams an issue how bout just making an internal e-mail account to handel just that.... call me lowtech but it works for what i need.

    • "...call me lowtech but it works for what i need."

      Sometimes, lowtech is best. I find myself too often getting caught up in the wow-ness of technology that I find myself not actually using the technology. You know, getting excited about features, extendibility, wizz-bang stuff, but not actually using it as it to get stuff done. (The curse of a bleading-edge technophile!) My biggest hurdle is finding somthing that works and works well, but doesn't suck me into is inner workings, distracting me from its usef

    • Yeah but this method won't track your appointmets, deadlines and so one - it is simply a message storage. I've used to ude Ximian Evolution since it has a nice feature that allows you to convert email to a task (or meeting or anything) - so you select part of an email message, convert it to a task and it gets listed on your TODO list as well as calendar - it can even send out reminders based on mail headers to other parties of the meeting/task/project...

      So simply putting your email into different folders wo
      • It tracks my appointments just fine. If it needs to be done by a certain time i forward it to myself with a different Subject with the Due date. change the importance of it. Telling other people of the project to be there is not my job to do at my job. If your not there its your fault you didn't remember.

        As for organization by day i still use folders. lots of folders. one for each day. so if i get something on monday that needs to be taken care of on thursday i forward it I put it in my thursday folder mark

    • Re:E-mail (Score:4, Informative)

      by PerlDudeXL ( 456021 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `ekcideul.snej'> on Friday August 19, 2005 @06:49AM (#13354035) Homepage
      I just found this interesting approach:

      Living in text files:
      http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7567 [oreillynet.com]

  • Plan first, tech after (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MadChicken ( 36468 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @05:57PM (#13351281) Homepage Journal
    I've just finished reading David Allen's "Getting Things Done" http://www.davidco.com/ [davidco.com] and it's remarkably tech-agnostic. You can achieve all of your requirements with paper and pen. I'd recommend getting a good solid view of WHAT you want to record, and how to arrange it before deciding on any kind of tech solution.

    (Then jump straight to ShadowPlan [codejedi.com]... heh heh..)
    • The GTD site reads like an Amway pitch. Bah.

      Anyway, I just tried beta of ShadowPlan since the web site looked promising... the prc installs fine on POSE w/ Palm Vx emulation 3.5 ROM.

      But on running and trying to create a "File" It crashes all over the place with pointer exceptions.

      New, type a filename, click OK, then you get:

      Shadow (4.2.1) just read from memory location
      0x00004D52, which is in an unallocated chunk of
      memory.

      Hmm... too bad it's not open source, I'd be tempted to make some bugfixes.

      -- John.
    • I actually still use a "lab book" for many notes. I tell users to send email to the SA mailing list for all tasks; those, the SA internal responses and the final user responses (plus other, related emails) all go in an SA folder. Each year I start a new one and archive the old one. They're available for grep'ing for whatever text I need to find. Finally, I moved the task list from the white board (so I could do more than the 10 hot topics) into a web interface/simple database I threw together with mySql
    • Watch out. I just read the same book after my sister recommended it but when I posted my comments [slashdot.org] in response to a recent article some anonymous coward flamed me - apparently said coward seemed to think I was a shill.

      As someone else commented, learning to organize takes practice and I do have a way to go but I have already seen a significant jump in my organization and productivity since I read the book a few months ago and started using some of its ideas.

      As you say, it's "tech agnostic" - it's a book about
      • I actually love the Franklin system. Not the tote-bags, Palm plugins, etc, but a simple pocket sized paper franklin with no extras, and the training seminar on tape. I have to say that even when I'm not actively using the franklin planner, the habits formed and insights from the seminar are the best crash course I've come across in real organizational skills. That said, every "extension" to the system I've ever tried was a waste of time.

        The seminar isn't about hyping products, thankfully. It's really go
        • To be honest I don't have enough info to praise or trash Franklin specifically. Perhaps its all their slick stores that I walk past that made it the first one that popped into my mind. I suppose I could have said Dayrunner as easily.

          If it works for you, great. I haven't had much luck with the pre-printed organizers although I could see that for certain specific job categories or styles they could be quite useful.

          It's not that the Palm is the end-all either. Mine had pretty much become a paperweight until af
          • Right. It's about re-purposing the to-do lists. The preprinted to-do, or digital to-do lists are useless unless you know how to use them. That's I would recommend the seminar more than the actual planner ;)
      • GTD is a great book. Just finished it. Just in case you missed them, 43folders.com is a great site supprting these ideas.

        Also, I current use the "hipster PDA" with the NextAction SPADE app: http://trimpath.com/demos/nextaction_static1/nexta ction.htm/ [trimpath.com]

  • Does anybody know of a MS Project look-alike and/or work-alike for MacOS X? I got spoiled with it at the office, and I'd like to use it at home, but I can't find anything similar for Macintosh... thanks in advance for any tips.
    • I, for one, disagree with your sig. :)
    • MS Project?! Man, you are sick! I suggest some time going cold turkey to make your hair un-pointy...
      • MS Project?! Man, you are sick! I suggest some time going cold turkey to make your hair un-pointy...

        Heh, all well and good until your next project that has several thousand(!) discrete tasks spread out over several dozen people and at least another dozen or so checkpoints/milestones for integration with other projects that you, by the way, have no control over.
        It's very nice to be able to print out a Gant chart that's about 10' by 10' so you can visually demonstrate to the powers that
        • "Heh, all well and good until your next project that has several thousand(!) discrete tasks spread out over several dozen people and at least another dozen or so checkpoints/milestones for integration with other projects that you, by the way, have no control over."

          If that's your situation, and you're using MS Project to deal with it, then we should all offer our sympathy.

          Personally, I've found MS project inadequate for planning even small things, and most of your time is spent trying to manage the project m
          • ...then we should all offer our sympathy...I've found MS project inadequate for planning even small things...

            I'm not saying it's great, but it does the job. My only real objection to it is that it's a Microsoft product! :)
                  So, now that we know you don't like it, what do you use? :)
                  (As an old boss used to say, "C'mon guys! Don't give me complaints - give me solutions!")
    • Umm, google for Gannt charts and OS X and you will find lots of things.

      You also might want to check out Gantt Project [sourceforge.net] which is a java Gannt drawing tool. It does tend to be, in the way of java GUIs, slow. But if you have a well specced machine or do not need huge charts it should do you just fine.

  • Sharp Zaurus & K/OPI (Score:5, Informative)

    by crstophr ( 529410 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @05:59PM (#13351293) Homepage
    Hey there. I'm also a UNIX Admin for a Fortune 500 company. Recently I was promoted to "lead" and I just got slammed with tasks to track.

    I went out and bought a Sharp Zaurus SL-C3100. Google it. They're a great PDA, clamshell design with a real keyboard you can actually use. You can get one cheaper if you look at the SL-C3000 or SL-C1000 models.

    I'm using the K/OPI package todo function to do all my task tracking. It includes start dates, percent completed, etc. I blieve you can sync it with KDE and if you want to fuss with it even Outlook.

    Every week I look at my list of completed tasks and copy that information down as my weekly status report.

    Putting the PDA on WIFI gives me ssh access and I can actually get into boxes and look at things to answer question during meetings.

    It's a great solution for a UNIX admin.

    --Chris

  • B-B-B-But.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by wbren ( 682133 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @05:59PM (#13351302) Homepage
    I've tried paper solutions, PDAs,
    Microsoft Project...
    But I was just reading Microsoft's Project 2003 website [microsoft.com], and they clearly indicate they have the right solution to meet all your project management needs:
    Whether you manage projects independently or need a solution to align people and the objectives of your organization, the Microsoft Office Project 2003 product offerings have the right solution to meet your project management needs.
    You are clearly doing something wrong. Maybe you did not look hard enough for Microsoft's solution to your problem.
  • Try the Hipster PDA.

    Yes, it requires some organizational skills, but there isn't any system that will effortlessly make you organized if you naturally arn't organized.

  • Just switch jobs every few months... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mkcmkc ( 197982 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @06:00PM (#13351313)
    Yeah, I miss the dot-com boom... :-)

    Mike

  • Outlook (-1, flamebait) (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't know if you have access to a windows machine, but seriously Outlook is awesome at this. I have a list of tasks, meetings and deadlines all in one place. I get reminders of when all these things are due and I can get a synopsis each morning of what my day is going to entail and what my upcoming deadlines are. Im sure people will tell you its insecure and all that jazz, but you should have many layers protecting you if youre at a large company. Outlook organizes my life.

  • Get some Ginkgo (Score:3, Insightful)

    by linzeal ( 197905 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @06:09PM (#13351368) Journal
    Also eat healthy when you are dealing with a lot of stress. Diet can be as important as any new shiny peice of software in helping with memory.
  • I really can't keep it all straight. There's a limit to the number of processes (tasks) that you can have running concurrently before your poor organizational system starts to thrash....

    And on a more useful topic... for a long time I used to have my homepage setup such that the center section (bounded by links, quotes, and news) highlighted all my upcoming activities. Everything from birthdays to deadlines. I didn't keep up with it mostly because I had to hand edit it at the time and I hadn't learned P

  • Start/Stop drinkin a LOT of coffee. (i.e. if you drink it, stop. if you don't, start)

  • GTD TiddlyWiki (Score:3, Informative)

    by TeXMaster ( 593524 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @06:16PM (#13351405)
    I don't know if it's fit for "pro" use, but you might consider the Getting Things Done TiddlyWiki [snapgrid.com]. It's an extension/spinoff of Jeremy Ruston's TiddlyWiki [tiddlywiki.com], with enhancement specifics to getting things done.

    A single GTD might be enough to manage all the projects, using Tiddlers for notes and such. It's a single file that can be carried around on a stick, and needs a browser to be edited, so it might be simpler to set up than a more complex server-side tool like Trac [edgewall.com] (which you might look into, although I don't know how good it is for non-software projects).

    Biggest drawback of GTD TiddlyWiki seems to be the lack of timelines. These might be implementable via macros if/when GTD will use the most recent version of Jeremy's TiddlyWiki.

  • Time Management, not Document Management (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18, 2005 @06:19PM (#13351428)
    I'm in a similar situation, but perhaps the key difference is that my company requires me to maintain paper records of everything that I do. If I change the contents of a script, I have to print and file paperwork stating that I checked out the script from my configuration management tool, estimated how long it would make the change and what impact it will have, got management approval, made the change, tested the code, recorded actuals, and checked everything back in. Anal, yes, but...

    Everyone in my company is aware that I need to do this paperwork and it gets factored into the time I can spend on doing a task. In other words, if the PHB pops into my cubicle and asks me to change the font on a web page, he knows it's going to take at least an hour.

    I suspect your problem isn't so much that you can't find one solution, it's that you can't find enough time to fully utilize any of the solutions you do have. Even a plain old notebook works wonders if you have only one task to do each day and can devote several hours to managing your records for that task, each day.

    My suggestion is... and I admit it's paradoxial; jot down on a piece of paper the "title" of each and every meeting minute, form, document, record, spreadsheet, calendar entry, whathaveyou that you create or access during the day, for a week.

    Then go to your boss and say "I have to create, modify or review this many artifacts in a typical week, and it takes X hours of my time (where X is a rough number). Either reduce my workload so that I can complete all of the necessary paperwork, or consider dropping some of these artifacts."

    The important thing is that you're describing the cost of doing business. It's up to your management to decide if the value of the paperwork you produce outweighs the cost. I would imagine there's considerable value in a change log, especially if you apply patches every day, but in contrast, a status report that no one reads is a waste of company resources.

  • XPlanner (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dr. Bent ( 533421 ) <<ben> <at> <int.com>> on Thursday August 18, 2005 @06:24PM (#13351452) Homepage
    http://www.xplanner.org/ [xplanner.org]

    You don't have to be eXtreme to use it. We're not.

  • Believe it or not, a personal wiki might be one way to go. If you happen to be on a Mac, Voodoopad [flyingmeat.com] is a great standalone app that I use quite a bit; there are others available, and on other platforms.

    There's an article here, Getting things done with VooodooPad [mistercharlie.co.uk], which combines the GTD concept. I've got my own notes here [celsius1414.com] as well. I use the app for meeting and project notes, and the auto-linking wiki goodness puts it all together.

    Lately, though, I'm experimenting with the single plaintext file [celsius1414.com] todo list using

  • TiddlyWiki (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jbarr ( 2233 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @06:30PM (#13351483) Homepage
    First off, for me, I find it very, very easy to get caught up in the "how" and "why" of technology, often foresaking the actual use. In order to actually get things done, you need to USE the technology, not just be enamored with it.

    OK, that said, I'm currently using a customized TiddlyWiki [tiddlywiki.com] at work to track tasks, notes, and other useful information tidbits that I run into on a daily basis.

    TiddlyWiki [tiddlywiki.com] is a single, self-contained, self-updating, HTML file that contains HTML, JavaScript code, CSS data, and the content data all wrapped up in one file.

    The content presentation is Wiki-like, but differs in that the linked content (called Tiddlers) opens right on the same page, in context with the calling text instead of one page at a time. This makes working with and navigating the content very useful and easy.

    Its new Tag features let you organize the data, and it has a built-in Search feature that's quite quick. In addition, a new Macro feature has been developed to allow for feature extension by simply creating additional Tiddlers containing the appropriate extension code. Lots of new Plugins have been and are meing developed. Its community of users [google.com] and developers [google.com] is rapidly growing.

    TiddlyWiki [tiddlywiki.com] just has a real coolness and elegance about it that's hard to match. But most importantly, it's useful!

    [self-serving plug]
    I set up a TiddlyWiki Tips site [tiddlywikitips.com] with some Tips on using and customizing it.
    [/self-serving plug]
  • Since you are unix admin try this:
    http://www.rc0.org.uk/tdl/ [rc0.org.uk]

    It is a very small TODO manager, it manages tasks which are described by date, priority and so on. The most interesting part is that its hierarchy is mostly based on directories in filesystem, so you can have different TODO lists per project tree etc. It is also a text based application so it can be easly binded with shell scripts and entire unix userspace... Quite nice.

    I've tried a lot of similar (by tasks that they want to accomplish) tools, GUI,
  • http://www.trackplus.de/ [trackplus.de] has a nice open source jsp/mysql ( and other db's) based track tracking system.

    It is a bit rigid, but if you have any coding skills you shouldn't have any problems.

    I like it is web based, others here like its reports.

    It has things like role seperation; so you can allow a developer to log bugs, bug not close bugs; or allow test engineers to close bugs, but not open new ones.

    Over all a nice little system. Never had any problems over the last year or so using it, or more impor

  • Very customizeable as far as work flow and organization.

    http://www.taskperfect.com/ [taskperfect.com]

  • Discipline (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) * on Thursday August 18, 2005 @06:57PM (#13351654) Homepage
    It sounds as if your problem isn't with technology - honestly, some to-do lists in Excel would be adequate - but with self discipline.

    Any of these systems will help you, but it is imperative that you get into the habit of writing or entering details and logged items immediately when they happen or are brought to you.

    I suspect that only half of what you need is being entered into MS Project or whatever system you have tried, with you relying on memory to fill in the gaps.

    That seldom works well, especially when handling multiple complex projects.

  • Kontact (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Procyon101 ( 61366 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @07:13PM (#13351761) Journal
    Personally, I've just started using KDE Kontact. It's simple and intuitive and has most of the features of outlook. There are some things it's missing for me (tasks blocking tasks and task delegation) but for those things I plan on rolling up my sleeves, implementing them and submitting a patch. I've never found a system that does everything I want, so my plan from this point on is to adopt an OSS tool and make it do what I want, that way I get what I need and everyone else benefits.
  • It may be overkill, but at work I use "Trac" ( http://www.edgewall.com/trac/ [edgewall.com] ) tied to my personal SVN sandbox. You should have something similar for any big project anyway. Then I have different categories like "SysAdmin work" etc.
  • Don't you know that any true geek keeps everything in a honking big text file and writes scripts to process it?

    (This is less insane than it sounds, interestingly. Grep is a powerful tool.)

    Anyhow, I too am a fan of GTD (see above posts), but that is of no use to you at all as it is totally agnostic as to how you store your stuff, it merely insists that you must store your stuff in something that you trust absolutely.

    Of course there is a deeper truth here that fancy tools do not fix bad processes, they just h
  • I'm in the process of rolling out a wiki for our workplace. Since it's my idea / my push, I've been using it exclusively for the last month or so while getting the training stuff done (there's higher pri stuff going on right now).

    Anyway, I'm finding it really cool having a tasks page, and separate pages for each project. Makes it real easy to copy/paste from emails and docs, add bookmarks, even pasting into Word for status updates. Having the history is handy for reviewing what I've done. And it's all o

  • big freaking whiteboard (admittedly low tech) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Clover_Kicker ( 20761 ) <clover_kicker@yahoo.com> on Thursday August 18, 2005 @07:57PM (#13352000)
    There's something about seeing all your info at once instead of scrolling around all the damn time.

    If you're really busy, get 2 big freaking whiteboards.
    • Tried that, but they made it too hard to get in and out of my cubicle. Don't bother laying them across the top either. I can barely read my writing when it's in a normal orientation.

      On the plus side, I was out sick for 3 days once and no one noticed I was gone because the whiteboards were there.

    • Another HUGE advantage of this is that anyone who comes to ask you to 'just help me out with this' can see at a glance how busy you really are.

      Whining 'I've got 100 tasks in my to-do list and 250 unread mails' doesn't have the same effect on job-droppers as a wall covered in post-its, scribbled reminders and illustrations of dripping knives to highlight the 'important' tasks :)

      Of course, if you're not busy, it's a dead giveaway - but no-one ever cheks to see if what's on there is accurate ;)

      Mark
  • Quite possibly the best personal information management software ever written. Amazingly customizable/programmable yet with a fantasticly minimal (but sadly not intuitive) user interface. See http://www.compusol.org/ecco/ [compusol.org] Nothing else has come close.

  • You're having trouble managing all your projects. Take a project management class. Don't necessarily go for the certification. Then take a time management class. Get those fundamentals.

    On the topic of an organizer, organized people can make just about anything work, disorganized and undisciplined people can't make the most simple and efficient system work. With that said, I enjoyed the Q4 [q4systems.com] (a Franklin Planner type of system) as long as I followed the system precisely. If started skipping steps, then I

  • I use OSS Zentrack [sourceforge.net]. It may be a bit of overkill for you but it allows you to organize your projects, TODOs and support calls. You can even specify how much time you spent on each. It provides a nice set of default categories that you can categorize your tasks with. You can customize the categories if you don't like the defaults. A set of customizable reports are also available. In addition, multiple users are supported. It is PHP based and can use quite a few different DBs.
  • First of all you say you're working with 10 teams, but whose team are you on? You can't be on 10 teams, you can't report to 10 managers. I'm going to guess you are on one team and have one direct supervisor.

    If the teams are trying to make you work within your team structure that's a separate issue to task management. You need to inform them of the task management structure your department uses, and have them submit requests for work under that structure. If your deliverables are project deliverables, they c
    • You can't be on 10 teams, you can't report to 10 managers.

      Unfortunately the OP could be reporting to 10 managers (or more). In a matrix organization (I work in one) you have a "line" manager, who owns you, and project managers who have money and hire you to do work. When the project is done, they "go out of business" and your line manager helps make sure there's more work in the pipeline. If I work on 2 projects, I have at least 3 bosses-- one line, and two project. If I worked on 10 projects I'd have
  • I highly recommend the Franklin system. I suggest you do the paper planner for a year, then decide if you want to keep up with that or switch to their PalmOS package.

    I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but I am a happy customer of fifteen years.

    -Peter
  • (and despite just having written the same thing in reply to another topic on the same page, no, I'm not on comission or have any connection with the company).

    It supports multiple projects and tasks, with text notes behind each. The downside is that it's Windows only and doesn't run under Wine, so it may well not be any use to you.
  • Our company is evaluating EPM enterprise program management tools for project management time tracking. These system will organize support tickets, project tasks, and admin time in weekly time sheet to keep the key work activities visible to contributors. Frank M PMThink! Project Management Thought Leadership [pmthink.com]

  • "I work for a Fortune 500 Company as a Unix sysadmin and at any given time I may be working with 10 different project teams, each with their own milestones, tasks/to-dos, notes and reportable status. I'm constantly losing track of tasks that I need to do, notes I've taken and status reports that I've written. I've tried paper solutions, PDAs, Microsoft Project and groupware type stuff and nothing really seems designed to allow me to track mulitple project with mulitple tasks and to-dos as well as keep up

    • I for one love RT. Hooks up with normal (email) communication the right way. Things just tend to stay in order with it. Customizable like nothing else. I wrote a couple of fundamental changes to it at my last job. There's a Right Place for every unimaginable change in the source.
  • Hire an assistant. If they ever forget anything, fire them. Problem solved and you also have a nice scapegoat.
  • http://www.adamspiers.org/computing/ttm/ [adamspiers.org]
    • It's small: 756 lines of sane Perl (yes, such a thing exists).
    • Portable: tasks are stored in plaintext in a .gdbm file. Import and exports from text files.
    • Easily customizeable: Arbitrary flags/headers/etc can be added. The code is straightforward, and it's easy to add features.
    • Purely command-line driven (I suppose someone could build a GUI, but why?)
  • There is a solution to this problem of tracking your tasks, I use it every day. It is in two steps:

    Have one (1) boss.

    Have one (1) girlfriend

    that's it! whenever you are within earshot of either of those two people, THEY will tell you exactly what to do, when to do it, and where to do it. The why they keep secret on a "need to know" basis..... They are completely capable of accounting for your time 24/7, so you don't have to sweat it!

    %^(

  • I just discovered this the other day, but try out Backpack [backpackit.com]. Essentially, you could set up individual pages for all of your projects, post notes, add a todo list, post reminders, share the pages with your coworkers, etc.
  • I usually keep TODO lists on paper; always easy to access and add, to mark an entry finished I just cross it through, usually the total list is spread over multiple pages and post-it notes, because I don't always have my big TODO list present when I get an idea to put on it.

    This usually works well by just using multiple pages of a notebook for different subject; post-it's stick you know ;)
    I usually leave a decent margin on the left so I can numerically prioritize them should the need arise.
    It also helps to
  • I worked for a company that developped a web based project management application. It might seem a bit complex at the begining (includes task management, timesheets, test plans...) but it helps you keeping a To-do list and dispatching tasks to the different teams. http://www.e-val.be/e-val_web/doc/products/orchest ra.html [e-val.be]
  • I really like to use knotes application from kde. Advantages:
    1) You don't have to save
    2) you can access it from the taskbar (it minimizes as an applet)
    3) a lot of things for quickier finding: you can rename, change background color, put always on top

    But you can't put images. For urls you can, as in any application, just select them and middle click on a browser window.
  • I could recommend http://www.treffpunktsystems.com/ [treffpunktsystems.com]

    Of course, it's mine so I'm biased.

    ** Martin
  • Mozilla is working on a calendar program called Sunbird. It's still in a beta stage at this point, but it's fairly interesting so far. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/ [mozilla.org]
  • Try either of the above products--they're free, web-based organizers. You can find more info at http://www.37signals.com/>, but in a nutshell: Ta-da List are to-do lists you'll love doing: The web's simplest, easiest, and fastest to-do list manager. Make lists for yourself or share them with friends (or the world). Addictive usefulness. Backpack is easy: Gather your ideas, to-dos, notes, photos, and files online. Set email and mobile reminders so you don't forget the little things. Easily collaborate w

  • Getting Things Done (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chrisatslashdot ( 221127 ) <spamforchris@@@yahoo...com> on Friday August 19, 2005 @03:50PM (#13357596)
    Go read "Getting Things Done [amazon.com]" by David Allen and make yourself a Hipster PDA [43folders.com]. No joke, this system is magically effective. It keeps popping [slashdot.org] up [google.com] on slashdot.
  • you're a unix sysadmin... you have a problem... can't you just write some software to solve your specific problem?

    i mean if you can't get a PDA or microsoft project or outlook to organize your projects, then you are either completely retarded or suffer from a very unique situation that no one else's solution will solve. certainly ask slashdot isn't the place... these people obviously have problems with their work schedules to be bothering themselves with your problems.

  • In the spirit of the endless text editor wars, may I recommend the emacs planner mode [emacswiki.org]? But seriously, if your personal choice of text editor is emacs, then this really is the major mode worth looking into for keeping up with your tasks.

  • You're wel...(*snore*)
  • Backpack-It [backpackit.com] has a solid web interface, with sharable pages, but is fairly simple.

    Populicio.us pointed me late last week to voo2do [voo2do.com], and I am impressed.

    Shameless plug for Brett Walker [vertabrett.com]

  • I've been waiting for the community to chime in with some suggestions...

    I'm also a sysadmin, and I find myself with the same problems in logging and keeping things organized. A couple of issues that I haven't seen any project management app address include:

    1) Overlapping projects (i.e. projects which shar resources such as computers or software components) with contextual views. If I want to make a note about the Exchange server's antivirus autoprotect status, I want this particular system (and the note I
  • 1. Stick a wiki up where you can get to it from anywhere.

    2. Use your favorite source code control application to sync text files with your .plan.
  • If keeping track of everything is difficult, technology can definitely help... if you use it, of course. I'm biased toward a virtual approach -- having everything available online through a hosted service (NetOffice in particular) that makes all your information accessible through a browser on any Internet-connected computer (PC or Mac). You can list and track any number of tasks, link them to calendars (deadlines), colleagues and/or co-workers, and files and be able to logon from anywhere to check on or up
  • Please forgive the self-promotion, but my self-promotion arises from a serious attempt to address this specific problem. Go look at the team work management software called "Chirp" at http://www.plumcanary.com/ [plumcanary.com]. (Product info here [plumcanary.com]).

    I agree with what many others said: getting a handle on this is more about personal discipline than software. But software can help develop good discipline.

    I wrestled with this problem for 15 years. I started as a developer, became a product manager, then a VP, then a CE

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