How I handle many projects at the same time

A colleague recently contacted me asking if I could recommend a particular project management software. Here is the question:

Hi Mark, hope all is going well for you in HK. Just wondering if you have tried a project management software? I have so many facets running in my project I need to create something that tracks each aspect. Something that I can share with others would be good. Thought you might have needed something similar?

There are literally thousands of articles devoted to project and productivity systems and apps. This post provides a brief overview of how I work, because the system is designed in such a way that I always know where everything is and what is or isn't up to date for each project.

I keep all of my work within Cloudstor, which is an Australian-based Dropbox alternative for academics. So when I backup that folder, I know that I've got everything. Having moved around the world a few times, trust me it makes a big difference to know that you've got everything after backing up a single folder. Within that folder are the following folders: Comments, Conferences, Employment, Ethics, Experiments, Grants, Papers, Payments, PDFLibrary, Presentations, Reviewing, Software, Supervision, Teaching. There are some others, but those are the main ones. Let's take the two most important as examples: Experiments and Papers. Within Experiments there is a subfolder for each of my research projects. For example, I have a project in which we teach older adults a second language, and it lives in a subfolder called L2AGE. Within that folder are the experiment files and stimuli, and for each project I usually have 2-3 subfolders:
1. I always have a folder called ~archive which stays at the top and contains any old files - I never ever ever delete anything.
2. I have a folder called Results which contains all data and an Excel sheet with the processed data and figures etc. Once data goes into the excel sheet, I usually archive the raw experiment files.
3. For some projects I will have an additional folder called StimDev which contains the files that I used to develop the stimuli and some notes about how I did it which will eventually go in the method section of the paper.

That brings me to writing up papers. I have a folder called Papers in the top level Cloudstor folder, and within it is a subfolder for each paper that I am writing, the names of which usually correspond to the studies in the Experiments folder, but not always (e.g., there might be an L2AGE folder in the Papers folder too). Within that there will be different versions of the paper, e.g., "L2AGE 01ma.doc", where L2AGE is the name of the paper, 01 is the first draft, and ma are my initials. So, if I send it to a coauthor and I get her comments, I will mark that version L2AGE 02xx (where xx are her initials), and then work on L2AGE 03ma and so on. As a general guide, I end up with about 15-25 versions of a paper before it is published. Once it is in press, I move the folder to /Papers/~archive/.

In terms of gathering references for each paper, I use a reference software called Zotero. For each project, I have a folder in Zotero, e.g., L2AGE, and when you click on it, only the relevant references are displayed. This makes adding references in Word easy, or generating a bibliography for somebody else easy as well.

I have a notebook that I take with me to all meetings. I write the name of the meeting and the date and take notes that I will need to remember in future. These include quick jobs and tasks as well as longer term plans and goals. My note taking ability is one of my strengths, I think because I try to include context and information so that I will remember what the note was about even in a year's time when I have forgotten what the meeting was about.

I use Things to track the progress of each project and to manage my daily tasks. I use Things both on my Mac and iPhone. The best thing about Things is that it captures all of the tasks that I need to complete and gets them out of my head. These can be small things such as sending an email, or big things like overseeing a project or preparing a grant application. Things has the ability to set due dates for tasks, but equally crucial is the ability to set start dates so that tasks are brought to your attention before they are due. I have found this to be a very productive setup for staying on top of a large number of projects and responsibilities that constantly compete for my attention.