Time management

Theoretically, I'm of the post-daily-planner generation.  I don't operate off a paper calendar, though I'm starting to think I'd be better off if I did.  I've got one; the hard part for me is analog synchronization.

I started on a file reorganization project on Thursday afternoon.  I really shouldn't have; I had a car appointment at 6:30, and I forgot about it until 5:30, when I was midway through scavenging my filing cabinet for spare folders.  (I really need to go through the whole thing, since the bulk of it was inherited from my predecessor, and I don't know if I still need all of what's in there.)  The car place is about an hour from where I work, so I was a bit press for time getting there.

The punchline?  I was reorganizing my filing system to try to put into place something to help me better stay on top of projects I start.  I started an equipment "DNR" list on Thursday (DNR as in, do not resuscitate), and fleshing it out has several steps that I need to do.  (Consult with someone who knows about who paid for what, get an estimated remaining lifespan on what we've got, and determine repair/replace/abandon for everything.  Hopefully this will allow us to budget for equipment the library will have to pay for.)  I wanted to be able to keep on top of the project rather than popping it in a file and forgetting about it for a couple months.

What I've ended up with (for now) is a file box on my desk with files for the days (1-31).  It's not a new or revolutionary system; I've considered using it before.  I'm just now getting around to trying it, though.  The next step will be actually planning timelines for my projects and inserting them into the appropriate slots.

I've tried using tasks in Outlook to keep me on track, but I've found that it works better for reminding me to pay bills than for reminding me that I need to run reports in the ILS.  Perhaps this is because I can pay a bill at any time on the day I've designated for it to be done, but I haven't blocked out when to work on reports, which means I will handle other fires during the day and run out of time with it undone.  In this regard the paper file may or may not help.

On the other hand, physical surrogates for tasks will allow me to prioritize just by how I stack them in the folder in the morning.  Some things can be passed off to the next day; some things can't.  The queues in ILLiad are very useful visual reminds for me of what still needs to get done: they're little bars on a chart for how many transactions still need to be handled in each module (borrowing, document delivery, lending).

Ideally, I could have both the physical and the digital; if I kept both I could see what I needed to work on the next day from home, while still having the physical surrogates of the tasks to help keep me on track during the day.  I have looked at things like Evernote before, but for that to be really useful, I would have to pay for it.  I really don't want to do that.

So I'll try this box of days for a while, and see if it gets anywhere.  In the meantime, I need to clean out my filing cabinet and see how much space in it I can free up.