If you're anything like me, you have a less than perfect memory, and it only gets worse when you are faced with a barrage of things to do, fix, test, submit etc.  The problem is, it really turns into a self-sustaining issue because the more you get tossed at you, the more you can forget to end up doing.  The result?  A very long day, many hours worked, but then as soon as you get home you realize that you actually forgot to do a whole bunch of stuff so you end up working for another few hours from home.  The worst part is, you can't blame anyone but yourself.

So what to do?  Well, this week I've come to a realization.  I need lists.  Not huge lists, and not lists that cover every minute detail of what I need to do each and every day, as that's both overkill and incredibly intimidating.  What I need is to do lists of small things, the every-day things that need to get done no matter what, since they're typically the first to be placed on the back-burner when larger issues come around.  They also need to likely be made the very first things I do every morning before the crisis of the day hits.

To start off, I'll list my First Thing Friday Morning tasks.  It's a half-day for me, so it's extra important I cover these immediately:

• Read JU for any articles posted overnight that I think would make a good addition to the front page (and feature them)*
• Make sure that the Dream submission queue is clean.  We're getting a lot of traffic on that right now so I have to be doubly-sure I'm on top of that*
• Post the end-of-week news bits to WC*
• Finish the WC Wiki Week article series
• Do a forum sweep to see if anything noteworthy occured overnight*
• Begin prep on holiday content for sites (trying to get ahead of it this year)
• Prep items for Monday posting.

* - Items that need to be covered to some extent every day.

That will fill my morning and then some.  Trying to get some of it taken care of tonight too.

How do you keep the chaos of life/work organized?  Do lists work for you?