Monday, May 08, 2006

Something Fresh and New

"Louie, this could be the beginning of a beautiful freindship..."
 
Saturday night (OK, it was Sunday morning at 1:15ish) I was in bed. All the little Saturday projects were finished, my school assignments were done, my desk was (more or less) clear, and I was ready to go to sleep.
 
Then it hit me- an organizational outline that would allow me to have an overview of exactly what I needed to do (school-wise), organized by topic, on a bi-weekly basis. I have a hard time grasping when things need to be done (Many of my professors can probably confim this), and for a few weeks I've been thinking about how I can rectify this.

I've looked at online organization/project workflow/collaboration sites (basecamp, backpack, et al) and a common theme that's stood out has been the Project Overview pages.

The Project Overview is essentially a timeline/project/todo list, with everything arranged in one central location. There could be links to project pages, specific deadlines, etc., but the key factor was that it was all condensed into an easily graspable overview page.

Saturday night, it clicked.

I could create a "project overview" page for my school assignments! Each topic could be a department, with a column for the assignments related to it. Each assignment would be a "primary entry" in the topical column, with explanatory/related assignments in a tree structure below it. It would all fit on a landscaped 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, which would be clipped to a 8.5 x 11 sheet of cardboard. It would be sturdy and rigid (physically, anyway) and would 'float' above the scattered papers. And it would work.

In theory, at least. We'll see how it goes.

4 comments:

Shannon Jessup said...

Is it working?

jhjessup said...

I think so. I can tell at a glance now exactly how far behind I am!

Shannon Jessup said...

Yeah- you should post! :-)

Anonymous said...

You are a sporadic blogger. :-)