Q&A: Detail in planning of tasks

I have been reading your posts, especially those on organising time and plan tasks. It has helped a lot already, thank you very much. Following a post of yours, I started using Todoist, and I’m finding it very useful to keep track of recurrent tasks and everyday tasks.

That’s an excellent question! I actually use Todoist for recurring tasks and reminders mostly. I use it, for example, to put a reminder 3 months and 6 months from now to check if I received an editorial decision on a manuscript I submitted. I use it as a daily checkbox for the action of planning my next day, logging my workout, and writing in my journal and my daughter’s journal. I use it to remind myself that in August I will draft an abstract for a conference – things like that.

In addition to ToDoist, I use my Google Calendar and my weekly template with fixed amounts of time to reserve the time to write (or work on revised versions of manuscripts). I also use a notebook (a bit like a Bullet Journal, but slightly modified to suit my needs) to list the most important things I need to accomplish in a day as well as appointments that are planned – between 3 and 6 items on the list. This approach helps me focus. I like having the notebook open next to me on my desk.

With regard to your specific question on reworking a manuscript, I don’t divide the task of working on the new version into different tasks. What I usually do, is the following. I read through the comments of the reviewers. I like reading a printed out version on paper and highlighting things that are priority (i.e. any major data analysis or restructuring the reviewers require). I may jot down a list of ideas on a sheet of paper. Once I have an idea of what I need to do, I will estimate the time this takes me: between 40 (or more) hours for a big major revisions or revise & resubmit, down to maybe 4 hours for some minor corrections and a last round of proofreading. From there, I put this on my calendar in the reserved timeslots in my weekly template. For the current or next week, this can be quite detailed – so that I know what I need to be working on, but for the weeks after that, I may either not fill out the timeslots yet, or just write Journal X paper in the timeslot.

As an example, say that I need to redo data analysis, edit the manuscript, write the answers, and read literature (as you mentioned). I would put the data analysis and reading extra literature as priorities. This sounds like a fair amount of work, so let’s say 40 hours, max 2 hours per day (in my case, you may have more time per day in your weekly template) – so for the coming month, I’d be working on the revisions of this manuscript. The data analysis may take a week or more, so I’d put that on my calendar for this week, with some detailed descriptions. I may combine this with reading 1-2 new papers per day, and writing out my main findings. Then, at the end of the week, on Friday afternoon, when I make my planning for the next week, I will assess how much progress I’ve done and how much need to be done to see if I may need more time that the next 3 weeks to work on this and to define my tasks for the next week. So, I use a general planning for the work and on a shorter time period, I make the tasks more defined.

I hope this helps you!