Office workflow / organising techniques

Hi all,
Just wondered what the STW hive mind does for organising themselves on a day to day basis.
I work in a busy department, handling multiple projects at once, along with the dreaded PDP objectives and goals etc, and sometimes I feel I could be doing things better to organise myself. Ive read about various methodologies, such as Getting Things Done, and I have an iphone and Ipad, as well as a windows laptop, and Ive tried a few list type apps to try and organise myself. These have never quite worked for me, and tend to fall by the wayside.
I revert to a notepad for meeting notes / general notes etc, but I think there must be a way to organise that better too? What do you guys do? Split the notepad into sections? ToDos, Meeting Notes, General Notes, PDP Objectives etc?
Just need some inspiration of what works for you, and even if you have found a way to manage using online iphone/ipad tools instead?

I’ve tried various things over the years, but to be honest writing a to do list at the start of the week and plastering a load of post-it notes around my monitor takes a fair bit of beating!

I like Trello.

Basically Post-It notes on your computer.

Hmm, I like the look of Trello! Will give that a go, cheers

post it notes
notebook for meetings with stuff crossed out when I’ve done it
Trello is pretty good

Trello here too – awesome for agile projects. Everyone can update their shit throughout the week and then in the weekly call the PM can kick your arse and move your post it notes about for you when you go ‘oh yeah, that’s done’

The good thing about Trello is that you can organise it around how you want it to work – have a good delve around as there are some great features (like the check lists, assigning tasks etc).

We have a master template then roll it out per project at work.

Hi guys,
Ive been trying Trello for the last week now, and I like it a lot, but the missing part seems to be time tracking, i.e. how long things are in the working on column, and when they were finally moved to the Done list? Any ideas how to augment this to reflect what Im after?

Seems really good otherwise

If you look in the trello powerups then you can get ‘card aging’ so they start looking older the longer they have been in lists.

Big Trello user here, have got the whole school support team driven by it.

when I’m in the lab I write out a to do list. I workout how long each part will take and organise around the time I actually have.

I like the Near Work Activities[/url] approach.

trello is good on the phone too – makes you look like you’re txting in meetings which is fun 😕

I still end up with a short to-do list but Trello takes care of the longer running projects and collaborative work

It’s not a project management tool though so you don’t get time measures other than deadlines

My standard task list:

1 Keep you Boss from been sacked
2 See 1

But seriously, the key thing is knowing what stuff either doesn’t need doing or just needs the minimum of time spent (usually at the point it occurs, eg telephone call). Once you’ve this out of the way, you can concentrate on the rest.

I’ve tried various tools over the years but I get hit from so many different directions they just end up looking messy and being forgotten.

I’ve also tried to get team members/managers to use collaborative tools to help us track and prioritise work (tasks rather than longer term work) amongst the team but that sort of thing gets sneered at slightly and I’ve never had the energy to force it upon people.

These days I just use email as a filing cabinet since most requests and/or info come that way, flagging them for importance/follow up. Priorities are generally set using the squeaky wheel methodology.

Our team struggles. I’m evaluating our Dev groups implementation of TFS right now. I think I can cludge it to work with powerpoint and articulate in place of VSD and code. Seems to be a heap load more flexible and feature-rich than the series of excel spreadsheets that we currently use.

Yes it’s designed with an agile methodology in mind, but that’s probably a good way to work on anything – do a little bit, is it any good? Go back, fix it, is it any good?

We have a great jive implementation for collaboration & project planning, but no reporting capability at all.

I’ve just tried Trello and like it a lot from what I’ve seen. I’ve got it on the laptop and phone. The SO is list mad so this may be a good way to keep joint lists organised. Of course it’s also a good way for her to load me up with jobs 🙄