I’m reviewing my entire platter of responsibilities and personal strategic goals. Wrote down a plausible process, and ofrced myself through it.

I’ve been in a programming rabbit hole for quite some time, free of projects of a pressing concern. Lately, though, I’ve been wondering if I should start actively pushing some of these projects through; is it possible that people WANT to be pushed? I dislike pushing people, but perhaps it’s what people want.

If I’m going to be able to drive several disparate projects at the same time, then I actually need to have some kind of infrastructure in place for this. A system of managing multiple projects without getting sucked into the detail work. I’ve developed a sense of balance regarding this through monitoring my mental energy.

To kickstart a new phase of project management, I need to do a quick sweep and review of current projects. That means going through the following sources quickly:

• Recent Email
• Flagged Email
• Active Basecamp Projects
• Calendar
• Recent Blog Posts
• Friendship Review
• Wunderlist

From this sweep, I expect to construct several lists:

• The List of “Top of Mind” People
• The List of Deliverables, Dates, and Clients
• The List of Immediate Priorities
• The List of Strategic Activities
• The List of Positive Indicators for Success or Progress
• The List of Future Milestones and Deliverable Dates

It’s the third list, “Immediate Priorities”, that is the one that I really want right now, but equally important are the following three lists. I also need a place to keep these lists that I can easily update and review. That’s the point of developing my own web application, as I haven’t seen anything that really keeps these kinds of big picture lists.

The most flexible application I can think of right now is probably InDesign, which allows for multi-column text layouts. I can just make a bunch of text boxes, so I’ll do that.

1500 PROCESSING EMAIL 2010 TO PRESENT … 1615
1630 PROCESSING BASECAMP ETC … 1700

I now have a five-column letter-sized sheet that I can use to keep everything top o mind and prioritize. It’s roughly organized around my Attitude Guide, and could use a second pass to identify people, deliverables, and other things.

Next…time to start queuing tasks, which I’ll do later tonight. I am really tired.