the semester is winding down, final exam grading will be finished by this time next week (yeah!!), and this means it is time to revisit my medium-term to-do list and goals for the rest of my time in the PhD program, my shorter-term goals for the next 6 months, and my REALLY short term goals for the work i want to accomplish over the next three weeks or so.
yes, i really do have lists of all that stuff.
so, i use OmniOutliner, which came with my mac, to keep to-do lists that are grouped by topic/project, and by how far into the future i should be thinking about actually doing the items in the list. every so often though, i need to sit down with my to-do list and a calendar and create a more direct mapping between what i have to do, and when it will get done.
i have tried various software packages for project management and list-keeping, including various commercial packages, and even a failed attempt at using this really cool open-source timeline creation software package from MIT that’s part of the SIMILE project. the problem is, most commercial software packages are too expensive and too heavily featured for my needs; the SIMILE timeline turned out to be a major pain in the butt to edit and update, because the ‘timeline’ data is represented in an XML format that must be edited by hand. no drag-and-drop to move tasks around, or change the duration and dependencies = WAAAAY too much overhead to be worth my time.
the thing is, i find this list-to-calendar mapping to be an extremely valuable activity, because it forces me to think about deconstructing higher level goals into discrete tasks, and then to write down how long i think the various tasks will take. i am wrong in my duration estimates more often than i am correct, but the act of doing this planning is so important that accuracy doesn’t matter all that much. and since i’ve been doing this, my accuracy for types of tasks i’ve done a few times in the past (like planning and running an experiment, for instance) has increased quite a bit.
i am once again searching for software that will make this easier (and more update-able) than pencil-and-paper. if you have any ideas or suggestions, i’d love to hear them!
de-lurked and registered to say that Thinking Rock is really cool (http://www.thinkingrock.com.au/)
1) free
2) kind of based on GTD, but doesn’t force you into that
3) works well for brainstorming as well as methodically planning projects
4) lets you mark things with context (do at work, do at home, etc.)
I use Remember the Milk (http://www.rememberthemilk.com) for To Do lists. It automatically generates weekly planners, and you sync it with iCal. I haven’t found anything I really like for mapping to-do to calendar, but for keeping track of to-do’s (including due dates and time to completion), RTM’s been working for me.