Managing 20 different tasks simultaneously

[A2]

i have 20 different tasks/project unrelated going in parallel.
I face difficult to track them all.
Like whose schedule is up on which date, which mail to send by what date...

Is there any way I can look at a glance about all .

Right now I am maintaing a diary. But I still find it difficult as I cannot visualize at a glance. Also I want tp update my seniors about what's going on?


Is there any software for it.

[nowlan]

Wont help with due dates etc.
But maybe look up kanban boards.

You have 3 columns, and post it notes.
Waiting, Doing, Completed.

Write post it note for each task, put in waiting column.
As you work on items, say 3 max, move them to doing column.
Then move them to completed or back to waiting if on going.

This helps you focus on specific tasks, rather than getting bogged down in one task, or taking on too much at once.
It also helps your boss see your work load, so you can distribute some tasks to someone else.

Also nice to see the completed column fill up.

[SeanB]

Look for something that will generate a Gannt chart for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart

This will do that, and you can get free software that makes it and updates it.

[jaxbird]

I'd say learn to prioritize those tasks and ignore anything but e.g. the top 5.

Otherwise you'll end up as one of those useless persons, who are always busy, but never actually gets anything done.

[AndyC_772]

Microsoft Project is the first thing that springs to mind that could help with the practicality - but you've reminded me of my first day on a previous job, which sounds a bit like yours.

It was a small company, and I was hired to be the only hardware engineer. No problem, in theory. The company's products were within my area of expertise, and I was more than capable (technically) of doing the job. But that wasn't the issue...

On the first day of the job I sat down with my new line manager in his office, and I asked him what I'd be working on. I expected to be busy, because after all, that's why companies hire new staff. There's no point taking on a new engineer if you don't have plenty for them to do - right?

He proceeded to describe to me a project that needed working on. And another, and then another, and so it went on. I counted about 10 in all. Cool, I thought. Plenty of new jobs to get stuck into.

I asked which was the one that was most important, and needed my attention first.

"All of them" was his reply. And he wasn't kidding. Every individual job was the single most important thing I could possibly be doing.

An analogy: Imagine writing some code in which every process and every interrupt has a priority of 1, and you'll get the idea. Make sure to run it on a single core - me, in this case - and see how much time there is for sleep().

It's hard to get much done when most of your bandwidth is consumed by task-switching overhead. Silly me thought that the job of a manager was to, well, manage resources. How naive I was back then.

Now I run my own business I still have as many different jobs to do, and of course, they're all the single most important thing I could possibly be doing. But now I'm the manager.

[Dongulus]

I've never tried this particular software, but maybe you could try something like OpenProj.

I like node diagrams best because they show visually the dependency of tasks on one another and which tasks can be done concurrently.

[MatCat]

I use redmine, It's sort of designed for software related projects but it works well anyway.   We have projects for each of our products, and various business aspects.  Since redmine is designed for software is has full support for version tracking, so I use git to manage each products Altium files which also allows for easy versioning and collaboration.  Of course firmwares and softwares related to products are easy to manage as well.