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!!

Organising with Technology

I'm a HUGE lover of technology and gadgets and things and I definitely believe its possible to be (nearly) paper free. I say nearly because sometimes you HAVE to or WANT to keep the original copies of things. For instance you HAVE to keep your original payslips for a certain amount of time and you may WANT to keep your toddler's first nursery masterpiece rather than just taking a photo of it. However, there are so many things that you DON'T need to keep and I have been using the best online peace of organising technology ever and I'm a huge fan - no, they're not paying me to big them up. 

Have you heard of Evernote? Its really really useful. Basically, there is a desktop app, an iphone/blackberry whatever app and you can store notes/documents/photos basically any digital file or peice of information in there. It has a great search engine so as long as you name the file in such a way that you can search for the title, you probably don't even need to use tags and things. But there is that option too. And the search engine can search text within the note, text within PDF attachments, even written text that you have scribbled on a piece of paper & snapped into evernote with your phone. This is what I use it for (in no particular order):

• Recipes
• Articles or blogs that I read that I think I might want to refer back to (I now have so many of these I keep them in a separate "notebook" in Evernote
• My open university coursebooks & notes that I take (the PDF search facility comes in really handy when doing my course assignments)
• Blog posts that I'm in the process of writing or ideas that I want to note down for later (I'm writing this in Evernote now!!!)
• Wish lists for me and for family members or friends so I know what to get them for Christmas/Birthdays
• Information about Cars, insurance, any paperwork that I think I may later need
• Receipts
• Any correspondence that I draft that I may want to come back to (to copy the wording for instance)
• Documents that I am no longer referring to regularly but I do not want to delete altogether (the rest of my regularly updated files go in Dropbox - more about this later)
• Pet/children/husband details - like shoe size, insurance info, that kind of thing. 
• Logins and passwords - you can encrypt the password information

Basically though I use it for anything that I think I may need to refer back to at some point. 

Having said all of this I love nice stationery and sometimes I find that writing things down is more satisfying than having it all online. For instance, my Command Central notebook - part of the purpose of it is to keep the few paper things that I need to keep handy all in one place but also another reason for it is that I need somewhere to keep my routines. I tried using an iphone/ipad app but because I don't always have those handy and out on display when I'm running around, and also because of the fact that if I'm constantly checking my iphone in between doing jobs, I can easily get distracted by Facebook instead of just checking my routine app and then getting back to whatever I was going to do next. However, I will mention the one that I use as it is the ONLY good housekeeping routine app out there. Its called HomeRoutines. It really is extremely versatile and useful and the iphone and ipad apps can sync between eachother. You could also share it with another family member if they also have the app as you need to log in using a specific username and password to get into the app - so that it will sync properly. However good this app was though, I found that having it on paper works better for me - for now.