I love being organized. I feel if I am organized I can be more efficient and better prepared to do whatever tasks I need to. Recently two people have really helped me get better organized. My youngest daughter, Stephanie, set me up with a new budget spreadsheet. I think I like it better and just need to finish filling in the information for it. Then I’ll copy it into my current spreadsheet and use it. I have to keep the old one though as it has historical info I might need.
Tia, one of my new faculty members, gave me an idea on how to use a spreadsheet to track progress on projects. She told me how she lists the projects on the left and the tasks in the columns. I loved the idea. I could see where I could use this to stay on top of the tasks I needed to get done and just keeping track of where I was with all the projects.
Then today she tells me that for the bigger parts of the projects she has separate sheets for the details of the tasks. Now I know this is beginning to sound geeky and maybe a bit compulsive (woman after my own heart). As I looked at one of the tasks there are at least 25 tasks that go into it. On my main sheet I just call it Formatting. Then I linked it to the sheet where I talk about all the formatting tasks.
Back to what Stephanie gave me, she incorporated conditional formatting in there. I’m just using it to highlight the cell when I put my little x in it. However, it gives a wonderful visual cue that look this is where I’m at.
My new spreadsheet isn’t quite done. I have tasks on my list that I’m not sure what it will entail because a few of the tasks I’ve not done before. As I move through the process, I’ll continue to develop this spreadsheet. I can also see this new spreadsheet having other purposes like in my genealogy, projects around the house, and even in developing the writing aspect of my writing projects – especially ones that include research.
Perhaps I’ve taken my geeky compulsion of to do list a bit far with this latest development but I don’t think so. I think it will just help me be better organized and maybe use fewer post its to keep track of everything. To the two women who helped me out – thank you! I’m thrilled to have the new tools that you shared with me.