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How to Organize
Posted on September 10, 2007
Staying somewhat organized or at least having a method to your madness is essential to being a good professional. Organize too little or too much and you'll quickly become the laughing stock of the office. Read below to find a good way to find that happy medium that has worked for me time and time again.
Tools for Organizing
Pen and Paper
The cheap and popular BIC ballpoint pen has been around since 1953 and is still my preferred method for tracking tasks and staying organized. Combining my ball point pen with a Steno notepad is the most useful set of tools one can own. I know this sounds silly, but we take these things for granted because they are so readily available. We feel like the best way to do something is to do it with a mouse in your hand. Sure PCs are absolutely remarkable, but they will have a hard time replacing those things like pen and paper.
Task Pads on Your PC
Most development software in any field of work will have some type of task pad built into it. ASP.Net developers have the “Task List” from the View menu in Visual Web Developer. This feature gives the developer a chance to add a new, one line task and the option to check it for completed. My biggest complaint on this “Task List” is that it forces you to open your development environment when your intentions may not even be development related.
Microsoft Outlook has a fairly complex task list which is my second choice. More than likely your email client stays open all day while you’re working so using this method means you won’t need to open additional programs. New tasks are easily added by double clicking, a feature that many other programs leave out. You have the ability to enter a subject, due date, start date, status, priority, % complete, owner, reminders, add contacts, add categories and enter large amounts of description text. Most of these features are hardly ever used, but with a little imagination and discipline you can easily begin to work 1 or 2 new features into your process.
Method to My Madness
I know you’ve known someone with a VW Beetle size mound of papers and folders scattered on their desk, that have old lunches and stale coffee cups beneath them. You’ve probably heard them say “There’s a method to my madness”. As disgusting as their desk may be, humans have very good memories and their memory is the method to that madness of a desk. With a desk in the shape that I described earlier, a memory is the only thing that will save them from losing or forgetting things. Avoid this.
What’s true about “Methods to madness” is that everyone has their own way and style of organizing and likely works to an extent. Your personal life is the best judge of how well you will do at work. Paying bills on time, sending birthday cards on time, and tending to animals are repetitive tasks that occur frequently or infrequently, but must be organized in some manner or they will be forgotten. Being good at home makes you better at work and vice versa. I worked with a senior developer with 15 years of development experience and within 2 months I had already earned the trust of my coworkers 5 times more than he had. His personal life was a wreck and it proved true in his work as well.
Focus on Your Responsibilities
Only maintain organization for those things that you are directly responsible for. If you have a project manager, let them maintain the most recent schedule. If you have a front-end developer, let them manage the look and feel. But if you are leading the development of a project, you’ll need to keep your things in line.
Choose your two most important responsibilities. Organize them well and you are in the right direction. Trying to organize your desk into the Dewy Decimal System will only lead to failure. Take baby steps. Try keeping all your writing utensils in a cup, or better yet dig through your mound of papers, find a dingy coffee cup, wash it, and stick your utensils in there. Day to day tracking is priceless as well. Each night before you leave the office, write down the lists of things that you’d like to get done the next day. When you come in the next morning, your day is already planned out for you.
In closing...
Don’t go overboard when organizing either. Complete organization leaves no room for creativity which leads to unhappy workers. For related information, read this article by Rob Walling of Software By Rob, Nine Things Developers Want More Than Money. We recently lost one of our brightest developers and I emailed this article out to the managers so they can get a feel of what is really going on.
Your first few trys will often fail, but don't give up, try to determine why you couldn't stick with your attempt and try something else. I'm still trying to implement an issue tracking software, I just can't figure out why my team mates and I can seem to discipline ourselves to use it.
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