Staying organized

A couple of folks have asked how i keep track of everything that needs to be done on these machines. When i started working on Big Guns last year I was so overwhelmed by the number of things i needed to do (tasks, purchases, learning, etc) that i started keeping a Google Drive spreadsheet for each of my machines. The format has changed over time but it’s pretty much what you see in the image above. I add each distinct task as it’s own row with description and priority. I imagine that over time i’ll kill the “next step” row, which was more useful when i had never done any of these tasks before and used that spot for links to tutorials or research notes or whatever. You’ll see above with ID2, i have a next step task to post photos and ask for help on Pinside (for example).

The main thing is prioritization. In general i use aa-az to denote cleaning and teardown tasks, and ba-bz to denote rebuilding mechs or doing other repair work related to game play. When i’ve completed a task i mark an “x” in the completed column, shade it gray, and turn the priorty to “z” so i can keep it priority sorted with unfinished tasks on top.

The “parts?” column is used to show which tasks require parts purchase before i can do them. I usually highlight the cell in yellow if i still need to order parts.