Part 2 of a 3-part series: notes on what works for me, when managing alt-academic job work-chores. This one covers Slack, tasks, and meeting notes. The 1st post covers my email practices, as well as some caveats about my particular context relevant to why I can and do things this way. The 3rd post on supporting work practices like these as a manager will be linked here, once it’s published (assuming I remember…).

Slack

I have a daily “Slack catchup” time, like I do for email. This works best when I do it at a time there aren’t many folks actively chatting, so that I do eventually get to all waiting messages; on the downside.

  • As with email, I do in practice check Slack elsewhen, but having the daily catchup time lets me close Slack (and Outlook) when I’ve scheduled myself to focus on getting a specific thing done. I could easily spend all day answering email and Slack if I just kept them open and checked them throughout the day.

Slack has a couple helpers I like, both superior to “mark unread” (as it’s easy to accidentally open a channel, and have it auto-mark something as read when you didn’t actually look at it):

  • Bookmark icon/”save for later” holds messages in a “later area => stuff I want to remember or look at again during my weekly Brain Day time or after, but zero urgency
  • Message menu > remind me about this => for messages I want to be reminded of at a specific time (e.g. something I skimmed but need to respond to by the end of the day, but not now because I’m leaving for a meeting; something I want to remember at the end of term).

Task management app

I use a task management app that allows setting recurring reminders:

  • There are many good, free options; it’s worth playing with a couple to see which is comfortable and matches your particular way of handling tasks (also look for: syncing to phone/between computers; ability to export/backup in readable format). I use Things3 for Mac.
  • I keep a “Brain Day” area on my task app that fills with recurring tasks on my Friday “Brain Day”s, in the order I want to do them in (stuff I can’t miss doing weekly or it’s a problem, e.g. email catchup, first).
    • I add a weekly reminder to check Slack’s “later” area for messages I should respond to, that I do once I’m on top of email.
    • This approach also helps with non-weekly reminders, like “add your consult stats to LibInsight bimonthly” and “bimonthly block out any leave days on my calendar for the next two months” (so I remember to mark stuff so people know when they can’t schedule me).
  • I have task app areas for various categories of things, including
    • “flagged” (do this first when you start work on x day)
    • sets of tasks I only want to look at/work through in priority order at specific times (e.g. my ACH volunteer work, during the ACH meeting’s work time)
    • tasks I can’t/shouldn’t do until a specific date (so I don’t need to see them until then)
    • things I asked of others (as a manager; reminder of when to check in, if don’t hear back)
    • “errands” (zero-urgency things I get to in priority order, just as time allows)

Meeting notes

I use a Remarkable 2 tablet (e-ink tablet) to take notes during meetings:

  • I use a different notebook for each meeting kind: 1 notebook per
    • recurring 1:1,
    • recurring groups like our all-staff meeting,
    • related aggregators of ad hoc meetings, such as external consultations, SLab website sprint discussions
  • Each new meeting date starts on a new page of the notebook, with the date and meeting title at the top.
  • I keep a small lined paper pad and pen next to the Remarkable. If a task for me comes up during the meeting (something I need to do or say), I write it on the paper tablet:
    • Things that must be done before my next “Brain Day” get a star, and I try to remember to do them or add them to my task app that day. I used to use symbols in my meeting notes to mark things that were tasks, but that means I need to look back through my meeting notes to find tasks from the past week, and I repeatedly did not and let those build up.
    • Keeping tasks on their own paper list means I can just see all incoming tasks there; paper vs. directly into task app means that the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” and “I can do this in 30 seconds after meeting ends” don’t clog the task app (I used to struggle with putting way too many “wouldn’t it be cool if” ideas into my task app, making it hard to see what’s actually urgent and look like I’m behind on working though tasks).