I think I lost the right to complain about Jira, after making the conscious choice of using it to manage writing my novels. xD
I had been using Trello for a while but the first and last columns on the board got huge (to-do and done).
I was thinking one day “man it would be nice if all this stuff I’ve completed would automatically leave the board but still be easily searchable after so I don’t have a huge done column until I archive everything manually. Also, a backlog away from the trello board would be nice to tidy up this view and stop me from feeling overwhelmed with tasks I don’t need to work on immediately. And having different types of tickets for planning, writing and editing work would be nice… Oh and a way to break them down by the different books I’m working on…”
Anyway about a week later I started a full-on Scrum workflow supported by a Jira board. I do daily stand up with myself and weekly writing sprints with refinement, planning and retrospectives. Also big project planning sessions where I break down the structure of an upcoming book, ask questions and improve it, then break it down into small tickets which can individually be completed in 1-3 hours. I even started sizing tickets and using estimates from past sprints to estimate how much I should bring into the next sprint. xD
Thought I hated working like this, but I guess I secretly loved it all along.
Is there anyone else out there who uses tools from work to manage your home projects or other aspects of your life?
I’ve used a number of different project management software to keep tabs on personal projects, like games that I was working on, but tended to be pretty rubbish at keeping up with it. However one that I did use consistently was I created a kanban board for planning my wedding and forced my then fiance into attending daily stand ups after we got home from work (it didn’t put her off going through with the wedding).
I even once tried to do Kanban board for my private stuff. Projects at the house, garden, car.
I still want to continue that. I’m lacking a good place for the physical board.
I want my partner and kids to participate in this.
I know that this guy is even doing retrospectives with his family. http://www.berndschiffer.com
Sadly I just know a German podcast episode where he is talking about this:
Really interesting to read. We’ve used a pinboard as a kind of scrumboard for our bathroom reno. An online tool would have been a good idea - but my product owner wouldn’t find it intuitive.
On the book side - I used just folders filled with notes for my books and anything useful for my books. For my current project I’ve felt a little like I need some kind of index card system, but generally it’s just a Google Docs of plot points + character names and bios. I can be a little chaotic.
This current novel is really challenging as it’s a crime drama. I had promised to look through your review notes in February, and somehow it’s Feb already. Hmmm… I think I might need a tool just to plan my editing process.
I use Trello for working with other folks like writing a book :-). But for my personal tasks/projects, I use a physical wall. I have slicky notes for my kanban board: “to do” (not priortized at a detail level), today, now and done. my today column is for those tasks I plan on getting done today and is in priority order. The now column is for what I am working on now. And I clean off the Done fairly regularly. I never need to go back to those once they are finished.
Thanks for sharing, @undevelopedbruce. Glad to hear about your secret love of Jira.
I’ve tried all sorts of productivity tools to manage my life. Turns out that for work I’m using a Notion Board to manage my tasks that aren’t on our company’s various Basecamp projects. We use Basecamp at MoT.
And I’ve not made the switch to using Notion or Basecamp for personal project management. I currently use the Reminders App across iOS and macOS. It does the job.
And I look forward to one day checking out one of your novels.
I’ve been using https://app.any.do/ as a TODO & Reminders list - free with minimalistic design and I bookmarked it in my web browser + downloaded the free app on my mobile phone.
I’ve been using Notion as well for ideas, etc.
If I had to use a kanban board, my thoughts would be around Trello
I used Trello for a few years, but even Trello felt too heavyweight and “distant” (in that I had to open it up, instead of for example having post-it notes on a wall), and especially so when I moved from a single large project to numerous small projects (which also makes the physical post-its less useful). GitHub Issues was too much as well, despite the benefit of having tasks where the code or writing is.
Instead, and hear me out on this, I use the Markdown note-taking system Obsidian. I give each small project its own folder containing a checklist note, research notes, and other notes with drafts or code snippets. The reason this feels less distant for me is because I already use the same note-taking system for everything else in life, so I’m in it all the time and easily switch to tabs with the most recent projects.
I learned the basics of Jira by using it to plan a holiday instead of using a spreadsheet to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. It was overkill and got in the way, lol!
