A spreadsheet for everything

Its been a running joke (especially with a friend I used to work with) that I have a spreadsheet. Other than work things (which I have lots of spreadsheets for) I have a spreadsheet for:

• Birthdays 
• Routines
• Finances
• OU Course - my schedule
• TMA Progress (for each new TMA I just copy from the last file)
• My weight loss goal
• Childcare costs and arrangements
• List of my facebook friends (so I can manage who is in what list)
• A countdown calendar that I use to visualize things I'm looking forward to

I'm sure I could go on and on....


I really DO have a spreadsheet for everything. 


So recently as you may know I've been busy doing some coursework for my Open University course on Java and I created a spreadsheet for the overall course. And a separate spreadsheet to track my progress through each TMA.


The course one has 4 tabs. 


The first tab is called "Books" and just has a list of books and how many chapters each book has. I made this before I'd started the course just so I had an idea of how much reading I'd have to do. Here is a screenshot of that tab. 

The 2nd tab is a list of the units along with a calendar where I've attempted to track my plan vs actual progress through each chapter of each book. 

I've not really kept up with this much. 


I have an overall mark tab which has a simple formula to work out my overall mark so far:

The last tab, which I created the other day after I finished working on my TMA (coursework), is called "Reading Progress". 


It has one area where I put in the number of pages in the current book. Then as I progress throguh the book I put the current page into the green box and it works out how many I have to read and what percentage complete I am. 

The next bit is just a summary of how many days I have to complete the current book (we get given a schedule that tells us this) and I ended up getting behind before this TMA was due and I really don't want that to happen again. Here is what that looks like:

From the above two sections, I created a graph that shows me how my reading progress is doing compared with how far through the allotted number of days I am. 


This is what that looks like now, as I haven't started the next book:

If I add some dummy data in - ie put in that I'm at page 10 and on day 4 or something, this is what it looks like. 

So I know that I'm pretty much on target. If anything, I'm ahead. 


I actually got the idea for the above from my TMA Progress spreadsheet. 


First of all I have a list of all questions and how many points they are:

When I have completed a question, I put 'c' in the complete box. If I've only partially completed it or I'm stuck, I put a 'p'. The balance adds up to full marks for completed and half marks for partially completed. Now I know that I'm not necessarily going to get full marks. This isn't to work out my result its just really to track my progress. 


I have a "Time left" tab which similar to the one in the reading tracker, works out how much time I have left before the TMA is due (if I can only work in the evening, I've only added hours in the evening). 

Again, like the reading progress tab I have a graph that tracks my progress. 

It is true that in creating this lot, I was probably procrastinating actually starting my work, but once I actually DID start, it really helped me to see my progress and keep on going. I would think, I must get this next question done so I can my progress on the chart. 


You probably think I'm mad!!