avoid crisis/active projects

[Anonymous]

Once again, I am hit by crises that could have been avoided by better work flow management. As I look at the whole situation, it seems to me that just keeping all the reference material for active projects together and separated from reference material would have helped prevent the crises and enabled me to take appropriate action a little faster. But, I have a lot of projects goging on. I am thinking that in the processing phase, after determining that some "stuff" pertains to a project, it would help me to have a clearer idea of what constitutes an active project, maybe n/a to be performed within 4 weeks versus a "sitting-in-the-background project" versus a SDMB (which maybe not be defined at all in regard to outcome). Any ideas?

 

[Scott_L_Lewis]

Re: avoid crisis/active projects

... it seems to me that just keeping all the reference material for active projects together and separated from reference material would have helped prevent the crises and enabled me to take appropriate action a little faster.

I keep project files that are separate from general reference files. The only time I would put materials for an active project in the general file is if the materials were shared by multiple projects.

That being said, it seems from your post that you rely on the project materials themselves to serve as reminders to action. You might be better off putting reminders in the calendar or tickler file. You might also consider reviewing the project files on these not-quite-active projects as part of your weekly review.