The Solution
- by Patrick Liekhus
So I recently attended a class about time management as well as read the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. Both have been instrumental in helping me get my priorities aligned as well as keep me focused. The reason I bring this up is that it gave me a great idea for a small application with which to create a great technical stack solution that would be easy to demo and explain. Therefore, the project from this point forward with be the Liekhus.TimeTracker application which will bring some the time management skills that I have acquired into a technical implementation. The idea is rather simple, but leverages some of the basic principles of Covey along with some of the worksheets that I garnered from class. The basics are as such: 1) a plan is a must have and 2) write it down! A plan not written down is just an idea. How many times have you had an idea that didn’t materialize? Exactly. Hence why I am writing it all down now! The worksheet consists of a few simple columns that I will outline below as well as some modifications that I made according to the Covey habits. The worksheet looks like the following: Status Issue Area CQ Notes P F L 1234 P F L 1234 P F L 1234 P F L 1234 P F L 1234 P F L 1234 P F L 1234 P F L 1234 P F L 1234 The idea is really simple and straightforward; you write down all your tasks and keep track of them along the way. The status stands for (P)ending, (F)inished or (L)ater. You write a quick title for the issue and select the CQ (Covey Quadrant) with which the issue occurs. The notes section is for things that happen while you are working through the issue. And last, but not least, is the Area column that I added as a way to identify the Role or Area of your life that this task falls within based upon Covey’s teachings. The second part of this application is a simple phone log that allows you to track your phone conversations throughout the day. All of this is currently done on a sheet of paper, but being involved in technology, I want it to have bells and whistles. Therefore, this is my simple idea for a project that will allow me to test my theories about coding and implementations. Stay tuned as the next session will be flushing out the concept and coming up with user stories to begin the SCRUM process. Thanks
