Penguin Girl

My hope for the next couple of “tool” posts is to write about the process and tools I use to manage my small projects and find focus and clarity in the chaos.

Most of my projects are incredibly small and I’m sure that many in the larger corporate world would scoff at formalizing much of the process in a traditional manner. My husband often “giggles” at those items I define as projects. For years I have struggled to find a methodology that works for what I’ll term ‘Very Small Projects with Little Budgets and Resources’. I’ve had difficulty finding what will let me know at a glance what I need to work on and what the status of the project is.

In the coming weeks I hope to write up the processes and tools I’ve found most helpful and also perhaps what isn’t and why. In the past three months I think I’ve finally solidified what works for me and what doesn’t.

A tentative list of topics include:
- Estimating time
- Calendars vs Task Lists
- Multi-Tasking vs Managing Multiple Projects
- Client-Vendor-Self Management & Negotiation
- Email & Web/RSS Management
- Billing
- Mobile worker
- Working from home (or not)

I’ve not yet forgotten about the list I wrote last week. I’ll probably fold some of those topics into the Tuesday posts as I have little idea what to write about on Tuesdays anymore.

Also: I seem not to be receiving email notification of comments at the moment. I’m looking into what is causing this and hope to resolve it shortly.
Update: I think I fixed it.