Stephen Robbins here.

Welcome to the get it done guys, quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

Today's topic is how to track a dozen things at once.

So, I am the point person for somewhere between three and four student projects.

I figured it would be a cinch.

How hard can it be to keep track of four projects

comprised of 22 students, three faculty members, and four sponsors who only have to deal with

16 or 17 administrators around three different topics? What could be easier? Hurting cats. That

could be easier, because I get easily confused. I could keep track of mommy and daddy when I was

young, because one of them had a beard. I wasn't always sure which one, but at least I could tell

them apart. My project here started out easy. I wrote up the project description for one group

and sent it to them. Then, I started to work on the project description for the second group,

but the faculty member

for group three called to chat. So we outlined group three's project while I accidentally sent

the description for group two to the administrator who would be working with group one. Then I had to

get back to project two, or was it one, to help them schedule their next meeting with the administrators,

ah, which administrators?

I think the administrator I was just talking to was from Project 2, or 1, or 3, or

arg.

Similar projects cause great confusion.

What made this so hard to deal with is that all the projects were

roughly similar. They all had students, faculty advisors, sponsors, and administrators.

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