My Executive Function Strategies

This is inspired by Executive Function Strategies by Musings of an Aspie, where Cynthia outlines her strategies for managing her everyday life (neatly… a very useful post).

It is a rework of my comment on Cynthia’s post, and outlines my current executive function strategies.

I have written about how I use Todoist before and that is still my key everyday life management tool. My setup has grown and evolved a bit over time, but it is essentially the same as when I initially wrote about it, so in regard to Todoist, this post may be considered an update. It is more than that though; I aim to outline all my main everyday order strategies.

 
Todoist

So, my overall “big picture” management tool is still Todoist. Every task I need to do is scheduled in Todoist; big and small; recurring (mostly), one-off tasks, single tasks and complex tasks that require a sequence of sub-tasks to be done. I use the premium version of Todoist, which enables me to use more and nicer colours, tags*, comments, templates and boolean operators … all of which I use extensively. I use Todoist on my computer and android tablet.

I use folders and colour coding to give the visual overview over the major aspects of operation in my life: Work, Home, Creative and Social (and currently an additional folder related to the processing of my dad’s estate).

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Executive Function Mentor: strategies

This describes my recent experience of taken on a mentor-like role in regard to executive function skills, to assist my little brother (and myself!) after my dad passed away.

Freelance Project Wrap-up

Project Daisy: Part V.

Good and bad project management (at once).

Project Daisy is over: I have received the final payment and feedback, and the client says that she is happy with the final result. This is a brief self-evaluation of what went well and not so well with the project.

 

 
Good

What I think I did best was the quality of the outcome, and the professional communication.

The original website content was verbose, looked messy, was heavy loading (lots of photos loading on each page), poorly written, and had no e-commerce function.

The new website content is concise, visually neat*, consistent and orderly. There is much less text and fewer photos, and the size and resolution of the new photos is browser -friendly. There is no duplicate text, no grammar mistakes or clumsy English (I hope;-), and the spelling is all-Australian. The website now has a shopping cart implemented and tested.

The meetings went well (albeit stressing for me – but I think not for the client). They were well organised and had clear, actionable outputs. The quality of the email correspondence was good: well organised and concise with some extras, e.g. print screens and well organised how-to instructions following-up on some questions. The communication also included SMS and phone calls, which went OK, except I was a bit slow to reply to some SMS.

The work organisation was good too. I converted the (quite detailed) quote into the contract, and the contract into my to-do list for the project to structure the work and make sure to meet all the requirements.

 
Bad

The weak point was my time management. Daisy did not give me a deadline so I didn’t technically deliver too late, but the project took much longer than I expected.