Projects you work on for 5 minutes once every 4 weeks.

[MedSchoolRat]

I have a lot of these, I do some work, send off files &/or emails to colleagues for them to do their part. if I want to hit the ground running when the colleagues finally make decisions I could act on (could be 2 minutes or 4 months later) then I need detailed notes to remind me where I got to, what I planned to do next, where the files are, what data problems I must not forget, etc.

The way I keep track at moment is keep an "in progress" file in my outlook calendar, copied to 9am Monday, updated most weeks, which has text notes like "Beans project progress: see if Tom wants to be coauthor, if Keri will do the stats her way or my choice, look at emails I sent on 2 Dec 22, files in dir = \bleep\bleep place" to try to remember what was decided or what wasn't decided yet, and how I thought I would proceed, and where the most recent key files are.

If this problem sounds remotely familiar, how do you keep notes on "sprase-activity" projects like this, where you end up doing a few hours at random long-apart times on the projects? How do you keep track of all the details? Sometimes I struggle to recall where files are or which version is most recent, etc. I know my system isn't perfect.

ps: I am junior person, no one to delegate to

I use an app called Tasks, which is essentially a Trello board, to keep track of everything. I have a separate board within the app for each parts of my job (research, teaching, service, admin) and have different columns (task list, to do, waiting on others, done). You can attach subtasks and comments to each item, which I use to keep track of any details that I need to remember. You can assign labels and due dates to each item too. I like it because I can get everything out of my email inbox and into one place that I can check every day and plan out my week. By keeping items in my “waiting on others” column, I can forget about them until I get feedback. If I want to set a reminder for myself to follow up with someone at a future date, I write an email to myself that is delayed to send on the day that I want the reminder.

I've seen Trelllo on other people's screens (different employer), it looks like a Solitaire game, doesn't it?

I use Uni-administered machines which I suspect Trello isn't on, so unless I can find a website version I could only run that on my personal laptop. I couldn't easily get Trello installed. I will look for Trello anyway.

The obvious work around (can do on Uni-servers) is to have an Excel workbook with one tab per project & some level of detail in each sheet with subsections like you describe. I am wondering how complicated that would be because part of me wants simplicity but that may be unrealistic, too. Hmmm. Will ponder. Thanks for reply.

I put reminders in my calendar to chase things up, but they are mostly pointless, I can't persuade people to reply just have to wait or reset the reminder for another date in case I get some idea how to proceed.

I use Asana for personal and team task management. The basic version is free and cloud based.

It allows you to set tasks, due dates, write notes to keep track of where you're at and assign things to other people. It's all in one place but will send you email reminders too

Trello runs in the browser, so you should be fine to use it on a uni machine. But if your files are in OneDrive something like Microsoft Planner (also browser-based) might be simpler. You can then attach links to the latest version of the document into the task.