How to Organize Your Writing
Project for the Summer
"How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time. "
-- Fred Brooks
Summer is on the way. It's time to assess
and improve your level of organization, so you can
accomplish some writing! Today I describe one
nifty solution for organizing yourself.
Does this sound like you?
 If
you're a professor: You can't
work on your long-term writing project during the
school year, with all the demands of teaching prep,
students, meetings, etc. But then summer comes,
with longer stretches of time for writing, and you're
overwhelmed.
If you're a graduate student: You
have endless pages of notes, millions of file folders,
little sense of intermediate deadlines, and a general
feeling of overwhelm. Even when you have lots
of free time, you don't use it well.
If you're a post doc: All of
the above, in addition to the need to track your job
search activities.
If you're a principal investigator or
a collaborator on a research project, article, or
grant proposal: You and/or others are confused
about who's been assigned to do what, whether
tasks have been done, and what the deadlines are
for the various stages of the project.
Don't Make it Even More Complicated
Some organizational systems are just plain overwhelming. Have
you ever bought a book on organizing, such as David
Allen's Getting Things Done, but then
realized that getting organized is just too daunting
a task?
I'd like to tell you about a simple, f*ree project
management application I've discovered (and I'm
using enthusiastically), called Basecamp.*
Although Basecamp is intended for project collaboration,
you will also find it useful for your solo needs. You
can use it to organize your writing project, coordinate
projects that you're working on with others,
track your job search deadlines, or just keep all the
balls that you're juggling in the air.
When you sign up, you will be given your own password-protected
url that will be called Yourchosenname.updatelog.com. You
can then access it online from anywhere.
Basecamp Functions
To-Do Lists: Create unlimited editable
to-do lists (See my
newsletter articled on action-item lists). Just
check off each item in a list when it is completed
(it will still show at the bottom of the list unless
you decide to eliminate it). What's also
useful is that if you are on a team, anyone in your
group can create or edit the lists. To-do's
can be assigned to anyone, but it is possible to see
a list of just your own to-do items.
Milestones: So many people have complained
to me that they never have a sense of a deadline – especially
intermediate deadlines -- as they work on long-term
research or writing projects. Milestones help
with this problem -- they are to-do items to which
you have assigned a deadline. Thus, you copy
an item from the to-do list, and then add it to Milestones
as you decide when you'd like it completed. You
can opt to be sent an email reminder 48 hours prior
to each milestone's due date.
The Milestones page shows you both a calendar with
tasks due within the next two weeks and a half year
of monthly calendars with the dates of the upcoming
milestones colored in.
Milestones can be assigned to anyone. It's
easy to check what has been accomplished -- there is
a list at the bottom of the page showing completed
milestones. Also, Milestones that are past their
due date are listed prominently at the top of the page.
Writeboard: The writeboard functionality
is like a wiki – you can work on a document alone
or with others, and others can edit it. But don't
worry if you think that you liked a previous version,
or if you wonder what kind of changes your team has
made. All versions are saved, so you can compare
any version with another.
Messages: You can send email messages
to any email address in your group. The advantage
is that all responses are saved under that message
as comments, allowing you to track conversations about
the initial topic.
Tours: You can watch
the excellent, short
video tours for each Basecamp function. I
suggest checking these tours out if my description
of Basecamp catches your interest.
Start Your Summer Out on Top of Things
You'll find that when you use a project management
system like Basecamp in conjunction with a "Remember
Everything” system like Evernote,
you will feel more on top of things and less like a
chicken with your head cut off. Start your summer
out right by organizing yourself!
*Note: the f'ree version of Basecamp is a little
hard to find. Look in the light blue area directly
under the three paid versions on the signup page – there
is a sentence in small font that contains the link.
Warmly,
Gina
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