Well, I've finished my last day at work. As a result of the fact that I've cleaned up all of my loose ends, I'm left with very little to do today - that will no doubt be a completely different story from my life a month from now.
The timeline for my last day was:
Last day of work:
8:00 Last day arriving at work
8:10 Pour last cup of coffee
8:30 Login and go through morning routine last time
9:30 Fill out timesheets for the last time ever
9:45 Last scrum at Refractions
10:00 Last coffee with Graham at work
1:15 Last JV lunch (while working at Refractions) downtown with Bay
3:30 Sent out goodbye e-mails to co-workers
3:45 Deleted archived e-mails from my computer
4:00 So long Refractions
While cleaning up my desk this week, I came across two of my logbooks that I had maintained when I first started.
I originally started maintaining a logbook when, during my first review, Paul Ramsey (the former president of Refractions, and someone for who I have a great deal of respect) mentioned that he noticed I worked better under pressure and when there was a lot on my plate. He recognized that that he too operated in this manner as well, but that something to work on would be to track what I was working on and to try and maintain a more consistent pace.
The logbook was my first attempt to do this, and really, my first attempt to begin any kind of system. About three years back, I realized that although I was now twenty-seven years old (thirty now!), with both a high-school and a university education, no one had ever taught me any kind of system for managing my tasks (really, for managing my life, both at work and at home). Before I even made this realization though, I knew that I wanted to pursue Paul's advice.
The logbook was the first attempt to accomplish this. Looking through the book is a bit nostalgic: projects that I've long since forgotten, and that have long since died. Attempts at organization that I now recognize as convoluted and problematic. Lists of TODO items that remain unchecked to this day (did these ever actually get done?). Even with all of these flaws, I still recognize the value that these first attempts brought me. They provided me with a starting point. They set me down a path, and gave me a base from which I could start evolving my own system. You can never go for a run if you don't take that first step, and that's exactly what this book was.
I scanned in some representative pages from each month, along with an appendix that I had created at the back, so that you can see how I started progressing along the path towards a full-fledged system like GTD, and get a feel for the missteps that it's okay to make as you attempt to get yourself organized (if you choose to). Let's repeat that one more time - it's okay to make mistakes. Take that first step!
The first two images are simply scans from the month of January and February. Although the domain and context of what I was working on isn't relevant, you can see from the way I was taking notes that there was still much to be desired.
The first scan shows an action item at the bottom, but with nothing to differentiate it from the rest of my notes. How would I know at a glance that this is something that I have to act upon, versus something that I can just use as reference for later on? What about the state of this action item? Did I ever actually complete this task? Did I just neglect to complete this? Did it simply stop being necessary? There's no way to tell what happened here. While I'm sure that I did in fact complete this item, you can see that it is important to create ways in your system that allow you to determine the answer to these questions quickly and at a glance. Otherwise we're just taking up valuable mental cycles that could be devote to more valuable tasks.
Unfortunately, I only realized now that I scanned in the wrong pages from my appendix, so I no longer retain the code I used to mark up the pages. The main colour used were blue and green. Blue items indicated discussions I had with co-workers, while green items indicated useful information or knowledge to reference back to later. Orange indicated important TODO items. Whenever I had a page where I had created one of these items, I would colour the top or bottom corner (or both if I had multiple items on a page), allowing me to quickly determine if I had something that needed to be referenced on a given page.
This system quickly got out of hand, as it is impractical to flip through pages of a book trying to find the correct coloured corner that corresponds to a piece of information I need. There is no ability to categorize a given piece of reference information, as it sits forever on a page in the book. I have no folder that I can put the information in, and no ability to search through the book, other than sequentially flipping through each page. Obviously this system left a lot to be desired, but it was a starting point.
Once I started PMing projects, I moved away from a static book and to a system that was more focused on the GTD approach to managing tasks, using looseleaf paper, and folders to organize it.
That's the end of my time spent PMing. Onwards to new challenges!