i've been reading the pragamtic programmer series for the last few years now. i've been trying to incorporate their ideas into my daily work routine whenever i get a chance.
i was reminded of one this week when i realized my todo list at work was getting a little out of control and consisted of a piece of paper with my ugly hand writing on it. Having a todo list is definitely the first step in getting organized, but i was not doing one thing correctly. One of the rules (from Pragmatic Programmers: Ship It!), was that the list must be publically available and easy to update/publish. So, here I have this massive list of things to do, and my team wasn't aware of it.
to correct this grave mistake, i signed myself up for a Remember the Milk account. It is a simple to do list manager that allows multiple lists, tagging, notes, calendar integration, rss feeds, sync-ing with smart devices (if u pay for pro) on top of the standard to do list features. so far, i've found this quite easy to pick up. i'm still poking around, so i'm a little slow at putting in my massive list into the system, but there are a lot of keyboard shortcuts that I'm sure will make things lightning fast when i manage to remember them. One other cool thing is that it supports Google Gears! the only thing that i dont like about right now is... when i add a priority to an item, it automatically updates the list to keep it sorted (the default sort is by priority). however, i feel like i "lost" my item, b/c i dont know where it is in my list anymore. i would much rather that I have a manual refresh button that i could click when i'm ready to re-sort the list.
i guess a simple test of the product's effectiveness is if i'm still using it 4 wks later? stay tuned to find out!!!
By the way...here are the tips for maintaining a good list as per the author of "Ship it!".
Tips:
- Organize whatever daily task list you do have into a formal copy of The List.
- Prioritize your work and add rough time estimates.
- Start working on the highest-priority item on The List. no cheating! If some crisis forces a lower-priority item higher, record it. You should be using your list to help you determine what you are working on next.
- Add all new work to The List, make sure it is an accurate reflection of your current tasks.
- Move items to your finished list as you complete tasks (this makes surviving status reports and "witch-hunts" much easier).
- Review The List every morning (aka updated daily)
- Make sure the list is publically available
- Maintaining The List should not require too much effort.
Signs you are doing it wrong
- You're too busy to update the list or it takes too long.
- The list gets outdated because you don't update it frequently enough.
- It takes a long time to complete one item on the list (the items are too large)
- No one else knows about your list or there are mulitple versions
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