Back to the day job

So after 5 weeks working on an agile project, I have returned to my normal day job. And I’m already feeling the lack of focus is becoming an issue. After 5 weeks in which I turned up on a Monday knowing exactly what I was expected to achieve by Friday. And working with a small group of people all focussed on the same area.
Now I return to a much larger project, with a few things I should be doing, but nothing specific to get done this week. The department is still really in disarray in the midst of a re-organization. So today felt a little wasted. I just didn’t feel like much specific was achieved.

I did however spend some time trying to find an application I could use to organise my tasks for myself.

Short of just installing my own jazz server, I figured I’d try some personal note taking options. Today I’ve tried to use ‘tomboy‘ It’s pretty good at being generally usable. I quite like being able to write a list of things, then just highlight some text to create a new note from it, which is automatically linked from the original note.

However I’m really looking for something a little more focused around the idea of tasks, and todo lists, something that has time stamping, and tasks that can be marked as working, blocked, and complete.

Ideally it something that would be easy to manage a bunch of disparate notes about current activities. and easily refer to old tasks. I want it to act as a record of the things I’m working on and what I find out about them once I’m done with them. I have a terrible memory and I’m aware that I occasionally hit problems that I’ve hit before, and yet can’t remember the solution. It would be nice to think I might keep good enough notes that I’d be able to find the information again.

So I’m looking for recommendations, but I shall also spend some time hunting..