These days I find myself juggling with a lot things to do; both professionally and personally. The problem is that I don’t have very good coordination skills, which makes juggling quite a challenge. Struggle is the word coming to my mind.
It’s not that I’ve gotten bad at time management — I was never good at it — but nowadays I have many more things to take care of. It is the most obvious at work. Back in October last year I was promoted to a management position which meant that the number of projects I have had to keep an eye on increased at least 2-fold. Combined with a busier private life, my brain quickly gave up trying to keep up with everything going on.
Back in my student years I didn’t have such problem. Life seemed much slower and maybe simpler. Not to mention I was younger.
So what I should I do (I hear you ask)? Well, if my memory can’t hold all this information I need to give it some help. At first I tried making ToDo lists on paper at the beginning of every week. Unfortunately the list kept getting longer and messier as the week went by. Plus, I had to recopy my ever growing list every Monday. I quickly realised it wasn’t a practical solution. The more logical approach (especially given that I’m in the software business) was to use a software to help me keep track of my tasks.
Being a Mac enthusiast I stumbled upon a tool called OmniFocus from The Omin Group. It is build around the GTD approach. I’ve found it very simple and intuitive to use. Unfortunately my computer at work runs on Windows so it wasn’t an option. After some more research I came across My Life Organized — don’t you love the name? –. I’ve only been using it for about three weeks so far but I have certainly noticed a very substantial improvement in keeping up with all my tasks.
Time will tell if this approach is really working for me.
