Hello all (mince)

How do you organize the tasks you have to do? Ideally I would have yearly, monthy, weekly and daily aims but I can't work out a way to organize them all. I write on the accountability thread for my daily and weekly aims, which has really helped, but I'm not sure what to do about things of a bigger scale. Do people use wall charts or just diaries? Do you even have written-up plans, or do you just know where you are meant to be?

I'd be grateful for any tips.

Hi KC

I have a yearly plan, which I never stick to, as things take so much longer than I estimate. But since I have only 6 mths to go, I'm trying harder to meet my goals. I have a plan for the next 6 mths, broken down into monthly plans, each in an excel spreadsheet, along with things I've learnt or need to work on (eg less time skiving off on PGF! Use the timer at www.mytomatoes.com).

Each Mon I make a list of what I need to do for that week. At the end of the week I go thru and cross things off, then make another list for the coming week. I make these lists cumulative, so that they're all on one page - by the end of the month I will have 4 week's worth of work listed on a page. I think this helps me to see how far I've come, what a lot of work I've done in the previous month, and give me momentum to keep going. I've taken to keeping all the monthly lists, so I can track my progress. I also then update the next month in the spreadsheet.

This might sound really anal, but at this stage, I'm developing as many strategies as I can possibly think of to keep me going, to make me work even harder, and to be more productive when I work.

Thanks Sue,

I will have a go at making the spreadsheet in Excel for monthly plans. I always get so flustered and confused making large scale plans, but I really need to start.

Well if you're anal I am too, because I'm determined to get mega organized :-) I've seen how much difference having definite weekly and daily aims makes and, as you say, looking back and seeing what you've accomplished really makes you want to push on. I like the idea of keeping a cumulative list to look through. Also I have my mid point review soon and my supervisor said it's really impressive if you can show the examiners your plans for the past few months, as well as the ones to come.

I'll have a go tomorrow, here's hoping I don't get too confused again!

I have found planning beyond 6 months hard and useless at times (see comment below), but at the few months scale things are manageable. I have a monthly calendar in 3 months sections, cut out from a yearly calendar. It is a piece of paper that sits on my desk and I see it and look at it all the time. I write down deadlines and plan out the following weeks (maybe 2-4 at a time) as much as possible, writing down what I will do daily. Most of the time this has worked well, because I am aiming to achieve the daily target. When I started with this system, I was overly optimistic of what I could achieve, now I am much better at it, after revising plans and targets a lot!
For the bigger scale, written out plans have helped me sometimes, but they have sometimes changed drastically and rewriting them seemed like a failure, but I am over the "OMG I am moving goalposts"-thing now ( I Just want to finish now:p)