It’s been a while since I posted, and directly related to the way my world seemed to spin out of control in February and March.

As well as closing down one project, and starting another, I was asked to help manage the response to an RFP. It didn’t sound much, but these things never do. Suddenly I found myself juggling three projects across three time zones and trying not to double or triple book meetings. It’s all very well to suggest using an online calendar, or paper to manage this all, but the overhead is horrible. I know, I tried both and I wanted a simpler option.

I’ve written about the Obsidian application several times on this blog, and no surprise, we’re going there again. One of the three projects I mentioned is tracking the progress of several thousand line items on a shared Excel spreadsheet. I got a handle on my piece of that by building a quick tracking board using the Obsidian Kanban plugin. I have about twenty distinct items in flight at any one time and finally I know the status of each one.

The calendar was a little harder. Eventually, I went really basic. Using the Obsidian Canvas feature, I built a column for each day of the week, then added a note for each meeting with the time, description, and a color code for the type – client or personal. Because Obsidian synchronizes seamlessly across all my devices, it’s a quick glance to see if a specific date and time are free.

For the moment, I think the chaos is under control. One of those three projects finishes at the end of March so the need for coordination should become less. Except you know how it is with chaos. It’s never completely tamed.