I’ve been musing on my work and planning out my 2025 1st quarter projects. I am a big proponent of planning and tracking changes. Here are some of the tools I use:

For capturing ideas:

• Pocket Sized Field notebook and pen – At the simplest level for times where I do not have connectivity or even power for my phone or computer, I carry a small field notebook and pen in my front right pocket. I can always whip this out and jot down a note or a thought. If I’m at a client site, I can write down details of a new feature or bug they are experiencing so that I can revisit it in my development environment.
• Email to create new Task in EasyRedmine. Beyond that, my customer requests usually come in via email, or I can quickly write an email to put an idea or customer request (with attachments) into my project management system, EasyRedmine. The subject becomes the task title and the body of the email becomes the task description.

Once I have ideas captured, I still have to process them. That means taking time usually once per day in the morning to plan things out for the rest of the day.

For managing tasks to do:

• I use Microsoft ToDo to store daily and other scheduled repeating tasks. I will review this daily and use it in my morning routine. Anything I don’t get done can get re-added to a “My Day list” that resets itself every day and offers suggestions of things to put back on it.
• For all business tasks I have them stored in EasyRedmine in projects organized by customer. I have a task category called Do Next that puts those tasks front and center on my EasyRedmine home screen. I work these as able to completion. New tasks that come in throughout the day either are processed via an email to create a new task, or simply adding a task into the EasyRedmine system. EasyRedmine is a web app I pay a subscription for.